On her third major-label album, Humble Quest, Morris, 31, sings of the joys of motherhood and the lows of postpartum depression. On the project, she was able to reflect on her career thus far and connect with her husband to deliver some of her most intimate songwriting.
A week ahead of the release, we catch up with the Arlington native via Zoom as she's preparing for her son Hayes’ second birthday party.
“We’re getting a home petting zoo for his birthday,” Morris says. “He’s obsessed with animals.”
The pandemic has allowed Morris to spend time with her son and her husband, though she admits the early days of motherhood were difficult. Bringing a first child into the world was no doubt a nerve-wracking experience already, but doing it in March 2020 as the world was shutting down was an unprecedented challenge for Morris.
“It was pretty scary, just because it's my first kid, and so I’m already just scared shitless,” Morris says. “Add in the fact that all the hospitals are cracking down on spouses and guests. I think I was the only person on that floor giving birth that night. It felt really eerie. But looking back on it now, the world was shutting down during a time when I was bringing this new life into the world, and it was so quiet. It really allowed my husband and I to get all of this time with our son that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
"Now he's turning 2, and I feel like the silver lining of COVID was, for me, having tours shut down and at least being able to see my son take his first steps and start talking. I didn't miss any of it, so that was a gift.”
Like many mothers, Morris dealt with postpartum depression. Writing the album allowed her to cope, but she also says asking for help made the healing process easier.
Talking to her therapist and reaching out to other “mom friends” helped bring Morris out of her postpartum funk.
“I never thought that I would connect with anyone in that way,” Morris says, “being like ‘Oh my God, you had to get on antidepressants too,’ or ‘Oh, my God, I'm not crazy, you did the same thing, we're all going to be OK.’ Those things brought me out of that isolation in a lot of ways. And I hope that we can talk about it more because it's a very real thing. It's stuff no one really warns you about until you're in it.”
Having that type of support system was vital for Morris and that's what she wants for her son. Hayes was recently prescribed glasses, and in order to encourage him to wear them, Morris and Hurd started wearing fake glasses around the house. She says Hayes now loves wearing his glasses and feels “so confident” when he puts them on in the morning.
Many of Humble Quest’s songs were written with Hurd. The husband-wife duo were “pandemic buddies” throughout the conceptualization of the album, she says. Morris tried working with a team of co-writers via Zoom, but says she hated it.
“It just took all of the fun out of it, and all of the humanness that I need to write out of it,” she says.
Morris calls Humble Quest a “patchwork record.” It was written mostly remotely, and parts of it were written in various studios in Hawaii and Nashville. Morris brought in Greg Kurstin, whose credits include Adele, Beck and Foo Fighters, to handle production on the album. Some of the songs on Humble Quest came together after Morris witnessed Kurstin fiddle around on guitars and pianos.
Whatever Kurstin fixated on gave Morris inspiration to mold a song or a concept around what he created.
“I kind of just get to be the writer in the room,” Morris says. “I can play guitar enough to write on, but Greg Kurstin is Greg Kurstin, so I allow him to do the music.”
But even with Kurstin’s input, Morris' raw emotions and vulnerability shine through on each of the album’s 11 tracks — especially on “I Can’t Love You Anymore,” which she and Hurd wrote on a day they were fighting.
“It was just fun to write a song, even in a tense moment,” Morris says. “We’re totally giving each other shit and but still being like, ‘No one is gonna get your kind of weird but me. And I know where all the bodies are buried.’ It just felt like the realest way to say you love somebody.”
“I never thought that I would connect with anyone in that way,” Morris says, “being like ‘Oh my God, you had to get on antidepressants, too,’ or ‘Oh, my God, I'm not crazy, you did the same thing, we're all going to be OK.’" –Maren Morris
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On “Background Music,” Morris asks herself and her husband “Who really knows how many songs we got left in us?” pondering their mortality and promising to love Hurd until all that’s left of them is “background music.” The track was partially inspired by the discovery of just how frail the music industry can be.
“He and I joke about this,” Morris says of Hurd. “When we're old and has-beens, and we're not making hits anymore, we joke about the fact that we'll still have each other, even though no one will remember who we are. Nothing is promised and you just can't plan so concretely anymore. You just have to go with the flow. I mean, I hope that I have a long career in this, but I still have Ryan at the end of the day and he could give a shit if I get another number one or another Grammy.”
Challenging the largely puritanical norms of country music, Morris embraces her sexuality on “Nervous,” in which she's coquettish but not coy. While Morris wrote the song with her husband in mind, she says she meant to empower women.
On “Hummingbird,” she finds the joy in motherhood, and even includes a sound clip of Hayes in the intro. This song is special to her; it's the first time she has ever sung from the perspective of a mother. Morris says “Hummingbird” is her favorite on the record, but as is the case with all musicians, her favorite “changes every day.”
Humble Quest is the singer's most personal collection of songs to date, and many of them stem from a sense of peace she fought hard to find. The past three years have presented many challenges for Morris, particularly with the death of her friend and longtime producer Michael Busbee, known simply as Busbee, in 2019. Morris wrote the album’s closing track, “What Would This World Do?” with Hurd and with British songwriter Jon Green after Busbee was diagnosed with glioblastoma.
“It was really quick how soon after his diagnosis that he was gone,” Morris says. “We wrote that song when he was still with us, as a way of putting energy into the universe to keep him going. Ending this record 7\with that song dedicated to him was my way of saying, ‘Thank you for all that you did for me.’ Even though he's not on this record, musically, he is always going to be a part of my sound.”
Despite being a full-time Nashvillian, Maren is still a Texas girl at heart. Some of her fondest memories of the Lone Star State include being scrappy with Bowie High School’s limited theater budget, working her first job as a receptionist at her parents’ salon, Maren Karsen, named after her and her sister, and playing various bars in Dallas and honky-tonks in Fort Worth.
Weeks before our interview, Morris visited Fort Worth and showed her son and her husband the stockyards. While in town, she bought Hayes his first pair of cowboy boots, and enjoyed some Tex-Mex food, the kind she "can’t get in Nashville.”
Although she and her family ate at Joe T. Garcia’s during her visit, Morris says some of her favorite local food spots are the “mom-and-pop taco trucks.”
“Nashville hasn’t quite figured that out,” she says.
