Cowboys & Indians
Morgan Wade Is Back With The Party Is Over (Recovered)
The maverick singer-songwriter offers a mix of music that bridges her past and present.
So what’s new with Morgan Wade? The singularly gifted country singer-songwriter is changing her wild ways, shifting her focus on her priorities — but still making music that appeals to her loyal admirers, and expands her ever-growing fan base.
The Party Is Over (Recovered), her newly released album, is a potent package of 11 songs, all of them solo written, featuring a mix of previously unreleased older material and new tracks that connect her past songwriting with her present day self. The collection includes songs that have proven to be fan favorites in Wade’s live performances, and are getting studio treatment here for the first time.
All of the songs are intensely personal, reflecting her trademark themes of mental health, addiction, heartbreak, and healing. “I was a little bit nervous and I had to get out of my head with it,” she says of dusting off the older tunes. “As a 19-year-old kid, I wrote these songs myself, so I had to look at it from that view. There’s a lot of good memories that came back, but even the painful things that I was reflecting on, I was still glad.”
We recently had the chance to speak with Morgan Wade. Here are some highlights from our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
Cowboys & Indians: Morgan, the word recovered has more than one meaning, and I’m wondering if that was at the top of your head when you decided to title your new album, The Party Is Over (Recovered)?
Morgan Wade: At first, it wasn’t. These were songs that I wrote a long time ago, and I decided to revisit those, and give ’em life again. And in doing that, I didn't want to put out session tapes. I didn’t want to put “Deluxe” on it, because obviously that wouldn’t have made sense. So I was thinking about it — and honestly, my mom kind of helped me come up with that. She was like, “Well, recovered is pretty good for that. You’ve recovered these songs, and you wrote them before you were in recovery. You’re putting them out while you are in recovery.” And so I was like, “This is absolutely perfect.” And I pitched it to the team, and everybody loved it. So I kind of had my mom to thank a little bit on that one.
C&I: How do you feel now? Do you feel like, if you’re not fully recovered, you’re recovering?
Morgan: Yeah. I would say the thing about sobriety and recovery and healing — I mean, it’s a constant job. I’ll never be fully recovered. I'll always be working on that just one day at a time.
C&I: I’ve often talked to people who have gone through recovery, and many of them admit they do miss some of the wild times. That’s something that comes through not only in the title track for your album, but in the video you’ve done for it. The idea that, yeah, you don’t want to go back there — but back there, you had some good times.
Morgan: Oh, totally. Totally. It wasn’t always bad for sure. I think if it would’ve been nothing but bad times, I probably wouldn’t have kept doing it.
C&I: Which of these songs are you happiest about snatching from semi-obscurity and getting out there again? Obviously, “The Party Is Over” is one. But what about the others?
Morgan: One of them definitely is “Parking Garage.” That is a song that I remember writing and singing when I’d get drunk and play songs in my college dorm. We would all be drinking and I would bust my guitar out. And I wrote that song about a couple girls that I went to school with — friends that I honestly haven’t talked to in years. That song was never recorded, I don’t think. Maybe I did play it live. But if I did, I don’t remember it. And if I did, it wasn’t a song that was played much.
So to be able to go back in and kind of relive the memories of that and thinking about the friends that inspired that — I’m hoping that some of the people I went to college with, they’ll be able to hear it, and they’ll look back on it, be able to laugh, and think about some of the memories we had.
And it’s funny, when you’re 19 and you think you’ve got all these problems, you have no idea about what’s to come. Everything felt like the end of the world. And I can look back on that now and laugh and be like, “Wow, I wish those were the only problems I still had.”
C&I: Do you ever have stage fright?
Morgan: Yeah, for sure. I didn’t there for a while. And I don’t at my headline shows. But on tour with Shinedown and Bush — it’s a different crowd, and I’m the first of three, so I’m going out there trying to win these people over. I definitely did get a little nervous for that. I mean, you want to go out there and make these people like you and show them what you can do, and you’ve got six songs to do that. So it’s a little bit of pressure, and I want to prove that, “Hey, there’s a reason I’m on this bill.” I think that still gives me a lot of anxiety. That, and anytime I play a smaller crowd generally gives me more anxiety. I’ve done some stuff back in my hometown [in Virginia]. And at one of the events, there were only 40 people in there. And I think that was the most nervous I’ve been in for — well, forever. It felt like my first show again. I’m not sure why that is, but it seems like the smaller crowd, the more anxiety.
C&I: I have always marveled at performers who can keep their cool while performing at The Bluebird Café in Nashville. There, you’re practically in the audience’s laps.
Morgan: Yeah, Eddie’s Attic in Decatur, Georgia is like that. It’s the cutest little venue and not many people can fit in there, but it’s very personal, very intimate. And yeah, those are the places where you always seem to be the most vulnerable.
C&I: Finally, do you have any long-range plans for the future?
Morgan: This is funny that you’re mentioning that, because I’d been reflecting on that a lot prior to COVID, right? Two weeks before the world shut down, I finished my album Reckless. And so then I had to sit on that. And then when we were allowed to start doing social distancing shows, and finally moved back into full shows, everything — I was actually for the first time going out and playing shows and actually making a little bit of money. Prior to that, I was opening, and maybe making a couple hundred bucks a show. I had no money, I was doing my merch, was doing everything myself. And all I wanted at that time was like, “I’d just like to be booked with steady shows and have people come. If it’s a hundred-cap room, I’m fine with that. I just want to play my songs.” And then I was like, “I hope I get a bus one day.”
Well, it’s like, right out of COVID, I got on a tour, was playing with more than a hundred-cap rooms — and ended up with a bus. I was like, “OK, well, that’s one goal down.” And I always try to set little incremental goals.
But if I look at the next five years of my life — I definitely want to slow down a little bit. I want to start a family and I want to play because I want to play, not because I feel like I have to. And I don’t want to tour 250 days out of the year. I’d like to slow down, scale back just a little bit, focus more on my writing, and just go out and enjoy it. And obviously, I want to grow. I want to play bigger rooms. I want to tour places I’ve never toured before and get in front of crowds. There’s a lot of work that goes into it, and I’m very excited for that. But I want to pick and choose everything I’m doing.
C&I: One step at a time, right?
Morgan: Right. But because I love it, and because the fans want to see me, and I just want to experience everything with passion again, I think sometimes it’s easy to just go through the motions. And that’s why I’ve been looking back recently and thinking, “Wow, you don’t realize how far you’ve come because sometimes you feel like things aren’t moving. They're not changing, they're not growing as fast as you want it to.” And then I look back and see where I came from, and how far I’ve come, and then it really puts things into perspective.
But I know that if one day I was to quit tour touring and going out playing shows, I’m always going to write. And if I don’t ever want to put another record out — I don’t ever see myself doing that, but who knows — I know I’m still going to write for myself. Because writing songs for me is the number one thing that I do. It’s the one thing that brings me the most happiness, and I’m always writing for me. I just happen to end up putting it out to the world. And I’m very blessed that people are listening.