BY ALISE CHAFFINS
As Mountain Stage continues its 40th anniversary celebration, it heads to Morgantown for a show on Sunday.
One of the performers at this event is Madi Diaz, a singer/songwriter out of Nashville, Tenn.
Diaz spent four months of the last year touring with Harry Styles’ band as a guitarist and backup singer. She also spent some time opening for My Morning Jacket.
Because she was not headlining much in 2023, she used the time to work on her upcoming album, “Weird Faith,” which releases Feb. 9.
In anticipation of the upcoming release, Diaz has put out several singles, available wherever you listen to music. In the single “Don’t Do Me Good,” she teams up with Grammy-winner Kasey Musgraves in a song about leaving a relationship that is more painful than healthy. Their voices blend spectacularly with soaring harmonies, allowing the listener to feel the agony of finally choosing to leave this relationship.
Diaz admits that while she is not currently in the midst of a breakup, her songs are borne from her life experiences.
“I try to write mostly from personal experience. I wasn’t going through a breakup when I wrote that song, but life happens.”
Most of her life has been spent pursuing music. Starting out on piano, Diaz switched to guitar as a teenager. She turned to music as a profession around 2008 while she was at school at Berklee and later moved to Nashville with a songwriting contract. Her first solo record, “We Threw Our Hearts on the Fire,” was released in October 2012. She has released two additional full albums, “Phantom” in 2014, and “History of a Feeling” in 2021.
“The first official ‘on a label’ release I did was in 2012. I’ve been playing music for a long time, and I’ve just been trying to stick the landing for the last 15 years.”
Her performance of original music at Mountain Stage will be a solo act — “… just me and an electric guitar.” When asked about the dynamic of playing with a band or playing solo, Diaz said, “I do like playing solo. I think it forces me to exercise a different muscle and lock in a little bit deeper.”
Diaz said her songwriting process varies, depending on the song. She works both alone and collaboratively. She also said that sometimes she comes up with a lyric first and sometimes a melody first.
“It’s different, really, every time. I think that’s the thing that keeps it exciting and intriguing. You can never really plan on it happening. It finds a new way to get to you every time.”
Diaz will participate in the Mountain Stage performance Sunday at the Lyell B. Clay Concert Theatre in the WVU Canady Creative Arts Center. The show starts at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased ahead of time at mountainstage.org.
You can find out more about Diaz’s music at madidiaz.com.
