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“What the fuck do you want?” Singer-songwriter Madi Diaz poses the question as the opening line of “Same Risk” on her new album, Weird Faith. It’s abrupt and up front, paired with an airy acoustic-guitar strum that just begs you to open yourself to the song. And you do.
Then, the chorus kicks in the door, and there’s Diaz, singing, “Do you think this could ruin your life?” (Warning: The line’s melody is nimble as a worm and will burrow in your ear and live there for weeks.) It’s vulnerable and relatable, sung by someone who’s not new to life’s way of veering away from expectation, but who knows how it feels when things don’t work out. That sense of the stakes, and ability to try again, has been a driving force in Diaz’s career for almost two decades.
Diaz has been making songs since the mid-2000s, landing on a small label and releasing Plastic Moon in 2012—the body of the sound was mostly singer-songwriter folk with a poppy backbone. It wasn’t catching with a larger audience, though, and by 2014 Diaz was looking for other options, starting new bands. But those disintegrated, along with a romantic relationship. All the endings landed her in Nashville.
“Nashville didn’t really care about all the things that I’d been through; Nashville just kinda cared about how to nurture me as an artist,” Diaz says. “People that I hadn’t spoken to in years were like, ‘Please come over to the studio,’ [or] ‘What do you need?’”
Diaz moved slowly, bringing fragments to a friend’s studio and digging around until she found the songs she really wanted. That space led to 2021′s History of a Feeling, an album that marked more than a decade of growth as a songwriter, and one that caught the ear of a wider audience. Some referred to it as Diaz’s debut, and it was, in a sense.
“It feels like a combination of debut and déja vù,” Diaz says. “I’ve been grinding at this for 15 years, but I think History of a Feeling, because I had to get so honest with myself in that process of writing and recording, it did feel like a debut of sorts. As far as me just being out here, it’s totally not—but as far as the caliber and quality, maybe.”
The album put her back on the road as a solo artist, supporting artists like Angel Olsen and Waxahatchee, along with opening for (and playing with) Harry Styles. Somewhere in the middle of it, Diaz was writing again, making her way to upstate New York to record, then wrapping up ideas in Nashville.
What came was Weird Faith. The songs take a fairly minimal form led by driving guitar, sometimes glowing and electric on a few, like the slammer, “Everything Almost,” or the painful love ballad, “Don’t Do Me No Good,” with Kacey Musgraves. The album hovers lyrically around the challenges of love’s logistics, the practical questions of how to make things work. Diaz takes them all on with a hearty voice, a kind of assurance even in the midst of posing the question.
The album has landed Diaz on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and CBS Mornings and touring across the country (including a stop here in Portland at The Get Down on March 27). Diaz is taking it all in.
“I’m really grateful to have done whatever work it is that I’ve needed to do within myself and my career so I can actually understand how to be here—especially on this tour,” Diaz says. “I’m with one of my best friends of 20 years, who’s been through the ups and downs with me, so it feels like even more of a doubling down of ‘this is really happening, right? We really did go on that one tour that did suck that bad, right? And this totally doesn’t suck right now; this is actually happening to us!’ It’s just super emotional.”
Diaz has been around long enough to understand the ephemerality—a breakthrough isn’t a fixed thing. The work is still a grind, a risk, but she’s still happy to keep taking it.
“You do something like this for so long—you run a marathon, and right now almost feels like a sprint,” Diaz says. “We’re still staying in funky hotels right outside town, we’re still driving these crazy long hours. I have a soundcheck in 15 minutes; they’re long grueling days. But I really am trying to just breathe into it and keep my eyes open to how incredible it is that this is happening at all—I could get hit by a bus, I’m in Chicago.”
SEE IT: Madi Diaz plays at The Get Down, 615 SE Alder St., thegetdownpdx.com. 8 pm Wednesday, March 27. $25. 21+.