1) "She'll Let Herself Out," I was walking around mulling over the line "she'll let herself out" for a long time before I brought it into a co-write with Dean Fields (also a co-writer on "Kind" with Mindy Smith). I knew he could help me make sure we got the most out of the two angles: the conversational and the revelational. We wanted it to have a calm, knowing swagger and for every line to work with either side of the meaning. Once it got to where I like her, I'm rooting for her and I can relate to her, I knew we had something.


2) "Old Dreams" is a reminder to myself to let my dreams grow with me. What I really want from my personal and professional life is going to change over the years so if I don't get something now that I wanted when I was 25, I have to check myself to see if I even still want it. Usually, thankfully, I don't. My co-writer and longtime friend Garrison Starr and I were just catching up one night, not thinking we were going to write, when we hit on this idea. She was the one who said, "Dude, you know we have to write this right now." I'm pretty sure I swore and rolled my eyes and then we went and wrote it because she was right.


3) "On A Good Day" is cautiously celebrating progress and any spells of optimism after a breakup. My co-writer, Kim Richey, came in with the verse chord progression which sounds like a conveyor going around and around, the perfect palette for our story where our character is still working on it but not quite holding steady yet. Some days feel like she's getting a handle on things and some days she slides back. But even the slide-back days are getting better and she keeps proving to herself she can survive them.



4) "California" is ripped from the real-life headlines. In 2019 I left my home state and my wife when, for most of my life, I couldn't imagine leaving either one. It was a dizzying leap of faith that mercifully has proven to be the right move (but I don't think I could say that if my ex and I hadn't stayed as close as we are). About halfway into writing the song (with Peter Groenwald and Garrison Starr) I realized that it was about the place and the person. That was a gut punch and confirmation that I had to record this one.


5) "Kind" began as a vent session with co-writers Mindy Smith and Dean Fields. It was 2019 and the steady stream of news stories about people being unapologetically awful to each other had the three of us wondering where basic kindness had gone. We started down the rant path and realized it'd be more universal and more fun to sing from the positive point of view. So we set out to cover the things people might prejudge like race, gender, faith and orientation with lighter images like jalapeno ice cream and honeybees. Sounds wacky but it makes sense if you hear the song.


6) "Too Far Now" is how I trick myself to keep going even when I'm thinking about turning back. Just go a little further, then a little further and the next thing I know I'm too far to turn around and I might as well see it through. I brought the first verse into a co-write with Mando Saenz. He kicked off the second verse with, "There's a monster in me who scares away the fear," and I knew I had brought the idea to the right person. Production-wise I tried to keep it as hypnotic as possible like a mantra. Then, just before it was time to mix, I decided to dust off the tenor sax (my first instrument) and bring a '90s-style solo to it. My face hurt for a while but it was worth it.


7) "Gone Cryin'" was written at the beginning of the lockdown and right after we lost John Prine. My co-writer, Elizabeth Elkins, and I were trying to keep the wheels turning somehow by writing on Zoom. We started talking about the overachieving lock downers learning languages, starting gardens and baking bread and we decided to give ourselves and each other license to just be sad and scared and stuck some days. I had the title "Gone Cryin'" picturing a wooden sign in a window like "Gone Fishin'" and Elkins agreed it was good timing for this one. Musically we definitely had John Prine in mind and when it came time to produce it, I kept it simple and all about the story.


8) "Fallen Angel" is from a line I had in the notes of my phone for months - "She said, 'Honey don't fall for a fallen angel,' I said, 'Baby, you never had wings.'" I didn't know what to do with it until a woman I was crushing on said sometimes she feels like a fallen angel. That brought me back to the line and now I could build a story around it imagining what it would be like if the crush turned into more. It didn't, but I wrote the song in that magic window before I knew one way or the other.


9) "Everything You Need" was written in 2018 with Madi Diaz and Anna Schulze. We thought we were writing for Madi, who sang the hell out of a guitar/vocal the day we wrote it. Years went by and the chorus melody just never left me alone. It would pop into my head at the most random times and finally I surrendered to it and realized I needed to record it. I took it down two whole steps from Madi's version and played baritone electric guitar instead of acoustic. The production approach is different from the rest of the album but hopefully it's just the shift the listener needs in the second to last spot on the album.


10) "The Road To Hell And Back" has a totally different story and inspiration behind it. I've been writing for SongwritingWith:Soldiers for about six years now doing regular retreats with veterans, active duty service members, first responders and/or their families, sitting down with them to make a song out of whatever part of their story they want to tell me. My work with SW:S and my artist career have always felt separate so I've never put any of those songs on one of my own albums.

This song came out of a retreat that changed it up a little bit where we had combat photojournalists and soldiers. So my co-writer, Amanda Voisard, now the Climate Change Photo Assignment Editor at the Washington Post, is a fellow storyteller. She uses images and I use music, but we have more in common than we expected. She had spent years in South Sudan observing the women in an Internal Displacement Camp and she wanted her song to be about them and how they walked the road to hell and back (her words) every day to find anything useful to bring back to their families. They were in constant danger and working in an environment that was yielding less and less but sometimes, on their walks, they would sing. It took my breath away when Amanda said that.

She showed me photos of her time there, some beautiful and some heartbreaking. We tried to capture both sides of that in the song. There are too many layers of the day-to-day struggle and tragedy that is still going on there today, but we did our best to capture one slice of it.

August 15, 2023

Tour dates and more info at maiasharp.com

Further Reading:

2012 Interview with Maia Sharp
Interview with Mindy Smith
Interview with Edwin McCain
Interview with Kathy Mattea

Photos: Anna Haas

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