Max McNown spoke to The Knockturnal about his recent album release, online virality, and having faith in his work ahead of releasing his March 7 single, “Call Me If You Miss Me.”
Max McNown’s work is honest before anything else. His sound may fall into the realms of country and folk, but it’s most important to him that his work answers to his own tastes and stories more than any genre. He uses music as an outlet to reflect on both love and darker moments of loss and struggle derived from his lived experience. And many of the people who inspire his songs – his brother and girlfriend, for instance – are present both in and around his artistic journey, supporting him in the crowds of his first headlining tour.
The past three years have seen McNown progress from teaching himself guitar to finding immense traction for his original work and covers alike on TikTok. The romantic promises in “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)” and somber reflections of “A Lot More Free” have garnered widespread resonance and relatability, with the latter’s sales accumulating to Gold Record status. McNown’s sophomore album, Night Diving, was released in January and provides further dimensionality to his musical and narrative efforts.
His most recent single release, “Call Me If You Miss Me,” is a warm acoustic number that preaches a tale of nostalgia and heartbreak. The song sees McNown working forward in the aftermath of a breakup despite being haunted by memories and the hope that “Maybe it ain’t over” at every turn.
McNown spoke to The Knockturnal about Night Diving while on the road for the A Lot More Free Tour.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Knockturnal: You’ve recently opened for artists like Wyatt Flores, JOSEPH, and Sam Barber. Now, you’re on your own sold-out solo tour. What has it been like to share a full set with your fans – especially after the release of Night Diving?
Max McNown: I put a lot of heart into the music that I write, and lyrics have always been the center point of the music I enjoy. So to be able to tell more stories and say more things that I want to say is a privilege. It has been interesting because when I first released the album, I played a show that night and sang some of the newer songs… It’s almost a little awkward singing them right off the bat because nobody knows the words yet! But then on tour, people start to sing the deep cuts. People are starting to sing, like, “Rather Have A Nightmare” from the Wandering album. I didn’t know anybody knew that song!
The Knockturnal: When people dig back into your discography, they must find songs of yours from a while back that turn out to be particularly special to them.
McNown: Because of the nature of algorithms and social media streaming, it’s easy to think that those songs can just be lost to the maze of time. You think that nobody’s ever going to hear them. But I’m starting to see people discovering those songs, and that’s awesome. You guys are going back and finding songs that you relate to. I thought nobody would ever hear those because I’m writing these new songs, and I’m kind of pushing forward. It’s easy to think that you need to let go of them.
The Knockturnal: There’s a definite effect of apps like TikTok on music consumption, whether for new songs or music from the past. A lot more content churn. Do you feel like that brings pressure where you feel like you have to be moving forward?
McNown: It’s like a double-edged sword because, on one hand, you have to keep moving forward and releasing music to feed the algorithm, to keep the buzz going. On the other hand, some of my biggest inspirations – Tyler Childers, Gregory Alan Isakov – some of their songs came out in 2012, and 2014 and blew up on TikTok almost 10 years later. You have to kind of hold it with an open hand and be like, “Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen.” If people are meant to hear the songs, they will, and my job is just to keep singing.
The Knockturnal: Night Diving came out a little less than a year after your debut album, Wandering. Did you feel like that served as a kind of natural lead-in to your sophomore record, or did you feel like you had to shift directions creatively?
McNown: I think it was just the next stage of me learning how to be an artist. It’s all so new to me. I put out my first song in 2023, so it’s barely been two years. So all of the songs that I’m putting out are basically a natural progression of me kind of finding myself as an artist. All of the songs have a very special place in my heart, but Night Diving is kind of me getting closer to the self-confidence and understanding that my honesty and authenticity are what separate me from potentially more talented artists. So I’m just gonna keep on bringing what I do, honing my craft, and being as “Max” as I can. So that’s what Night Diving is. Not necessarily better or worse, but kind of closer in my mind to where I want to be at this stage of my life as an artist.
The Knockturnal: On the album, it’s really cool how you’re able to take feelings of introspection and sorrow to reflect back on past experiences. And then you’re also able to interject between those songs with warmer, lighter cuts, like “Marley.” In moving between these moods on the record, and in your performances as well – it all feels very cohesive. Where do you find the connecting line between them, in a way that works?
McNown: I think production connects songs. Jamie Kenney, my producer, just does a phenomenal job. And the songs have this sound that we came upon together. It’s funny that you say that about “Marley,” because that was legitimately Marley’s job. I’m writing some heavy stuff, and it’s honest and it’s deep, and it means a ton to me. “Night Diving,” to me, is the most important song – a therapy session of a writing session. Jamie has a bar in Nashville, and I was there with him after. It was there that the “Put the needle on Marley and let the good times roll” hit me. The song is about how everything can feel very heavy sometimes, you know? It’s almost talking about what it did for the album. Sometimes the world is headed nowhere fast. You got nowhere else to go. Sometimes you need a break.
The Knockturnal: When you’re working with your producer on these songs, how do you know when the sound is right? How do you know when they are finished?
McNown: Every song in the album was written with Kenney, or Kenney and one other writer in the band. I like to read the song after we’ve written it without any instrumentation. You just see how it feels. “It’s Not Your Fault” got me choked up. When we read it, I was like, “That’s a powerful song. It doesn’t matter how we end up doing this.” As far as the production goes, Jamie and I usually mock up what we want the feel of the song to be with just instruments – we don’t professionally track it yet. Building this skeleton of what we want the song to sound like… It’s kind of like writing an essay in school – you start with the bold points of what you’re going to write about.
The Knockturnal: You’ve mentioned the artists that have been sonic influences. Given that you’ve lived in Oregon and California and live in Nashville now, have these different places influenced your style as well?
McNown: I think the way that the locations find their way into my music is just in their literal sense. Like I will write about this beach in Oregon, Manzanita, or the coast of California. I think what influences the style or the writing of my music first is more the music I listen to. Noah Kahan and Zach Bryan, but also ranging to Amos Lee and Ray LaMontagne and Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, all of the people who have made me who I am musically. But I’ll experience things, like my location in Nashville. When I first started writing there, I stayed in the hotel room for like 40 days straight. It was burnout central like I was dying. And the song “Running On Empty” was born from that… So the factors that play into my writing are heavily influenced by my experiences.
The Knockturnal: Were athere ny other songs on the album that served as a particular challenge, or aspects of the project that surprised you?
McNown: One thing is that there have been songs that have kind of come out of thin air. It almost feels supernatural. So that’s probably a surprising thing for me – sometimes I go into a room and I think, “Man, I don’t know if I’m ready to write a song,” and then it just kind of flows out. And to see songs like that reach so many people is the greatest reward. You’re like, “I didn’t even think this was something that I could do,” and then to hear all these people coming to my shows now and singing the words back to me? It’s real.
The Knockturnal: They can end up impacting people more than you ever would have expected.
McNown: I think I remember hearing that Zach Bryan almost didn’t put “God Speed” on his album. That ended up being one of my favorite songs, one that I covered to grow on social media. So it’s just crazy. By the time my songs come out half the time, I have to remember how I felt when I was first listening to them. I always have to be careful, because some songs I kind of lose my hope in. I will admittedly say “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)” was written a long time ago, and it was written very specifically about how I felt about my girlfriend. It was just kind of like a personal love song. And I had heard it so many times and been producing it for so long with Jamie that it didn’t make sense anymore. I almost didn’t make it a single. I was going to put it out, but it was going to be an album track. Then my manager – who is also my uncle – said, “It’s a smash, dude, and you need to release it as a single.” He ended up being right. It’s doing great, but it’s just so funny how you almost can’t trust yourself by the time you’re releasing stuff.
The Knockturnal: It’s interesting to hear about the stories behind each song and how you stay in contact with your own work – and kind of re-reckon with what it means to you.
McNown: My goal is to re-enter the stage I was at when I wrote [a song] when I go on to the stage to perform it. You’ll see me sing “A Lot More Free,” and you’ll be like, “Man, that dude’s angsty, he’s hurt.” But I’ve forgiven myself, and I’ve absolutely healed from everything that, you know, caused me to write that song. But at the same time, all these fans are here and relating to it right now. So the least I can do is go up there and try to do my best to feel what they’re feeling again, to channel that. It’s easy to lose the emotion of a song when you’ve performed it thousands of times… But the best thing ever is to put yourself there and then go give my girlfriend a hug. That’s such a privilege, whereas a lot of these people are down in the weeds right now. I think it would be a disservice in the long run to move on when I release a song. I think that would take a lot away from a lot of people.
The Knockturnal: To the tune of revisiting, what did it mean to you to revisit and re-record a new version of your first release, “Freezing in November?”
McNown: It was super enjoyable. It’s another one of those things where I’ve grown from that dark place I was in. My brother had just relapsed in his cancer journey, and one of my friends from high school had just committed suicide. I was at a low point in my life. To come back to it now… I’ll always love the original version, because it has this kind of magic to it. It’s acoustic and honest – it’s not immature, but you can tell I’m just not trained, and there’s kind of this beauty to that. So it’s cool to do something that pays tribute to the first song I ever released. We’re not letting that song go. I’d like to do that with a couple of songs, and give them a time of day in front of an audience that they didn’t get the chance to see.
Photo Courtesy: Big Feat PR