The Phases and Stages of Maggie Rose’s Illuminating Half Moon

Maggie Rose is perennially growing her audience the old-fashioned way – by taking it directly to the people.

This summer, the Nashville musician co-headlined venues with Molly Tuttle, warmed up outdoor crowds for Melissa Etheridge and Wynonna, and opened stadium shows for Chris Stapleton. And just for good measure, she filmed a set for Austin City Limits, returned to the Grand Ole Opry stage, and performed on CBS Saturday Morning. On the day her new album, Half Moon, was released, you could find her signing vinyls at Grimey’s record store, which just might be the nucleus of the East Nashville music scene. It’s a point of pride for any musician to see their new album painted as a mural on the side of Grimey’s, and Maggie Rose is no exception.

Co-produced by Lawrence Rothman and Daniel Tashian, Half Moon offers her personal reflections on identity, integrity, and motherhood. (She and her husband, Austin Marshall, welcomed their first child, Graham, in April 2025.) A far cry from her days being marketed to country radio, Half Moon is her most revealing work to date. With three Grammy nominations to her credit and Half Moon turning heads, this is the season of Maggie Rose.

BGS: Tell me about those moments leading up to making this record. What was going on in your life and your career

Maggie Rose: In my career, I’d just gotten done with the album cycle for No One Gets Out Alive. I was actually in the midst of finishing up Cocoon, the last EP that I released, when this started to take form. I had just gotten my first Grammy nomination. I was in my third trimester of pregnancy when I started writing the songs for Half Moon as well. So, it was a pretty intense moment in life. So much beauty, though. 

I had a lot to be grateful for, and there was some pressure on what the next project was going to be, just because I had received accolades that I had not received in my career up to that point. But it wasn’t stifling pressure because I do think this album, with all the circumstances surrounding it, was such a gift. I wrote the lion’s share of the songs with my producers, and we were so frequently writing for it that it was a pretty accurate documentation of this incredibly transformative time in my life.

What does the image of the half moon bring to mind for you?

I think there’s mystery to the moon itself. The title track was written two days before Graham was born. At that point, we had already written a lot of songs that would eventually be on the album. So, the theme of the moon became a big analogy for the whole project because I was literally growing. You wax and you wane, and the moon revolves around this much bigger object than itself. And it’s very dependable. It shows up every day, but it’s not always given the same amount of light, so it works with what it’s given.

There’s a dark side to the moon. It’s mysterious. It returns to itself. That was another thought that was definitely in my mind. Some of the songs on the first half of the album are almost more aspirational, in the sense that it’s like, “Red shoes! That part of me will be there on the other side of this.” That carefree, lighthearted, rebel-risk person. And I think motherhood, in particular, feels a lot like the moon. There’s a loneliness to it, but also like this vibrance and this powerful aspect to it as well.

I wish that at the outset I had even known that the moon was going to be such a powerful symbol. It was sort of something that we stumbled into halfway through crafting the whole LP, and it was like, “Of course, the moon, that’s the touchstone for this.”

I did like the line about “walking through the phases” in the song “Half Moon.” And those phases of the moon, and the phases of life – they do pass.

Yes, I think there’s a patience with myself that I was trying to conjure, to write about becoming a mother, and then also the postpartum phases that we go through, just trying to remind myself that those things pass. That song, along with many others on the record, actually makes more sense to me now, in hindsight, since I’ve gotten to walk this path as a new mom.

I often tell Daniel and Lawrence that they were my songwriting guardian angels because they were helping me capture all these things that maybe would have been too hard for me to articulate in a plain-spoken way. But through songwriting, and the fact that they were physically with me so often leading up to this big moment – and then right after too – they got to really observe me walking through this. We continued working pretty shortly after Graham arrived and they were so helpful in guiding me to what it was that I was actually feeling.

I like the song “The Other Woman,” because it’s got that songwriting twist. That other woman is you. What were you hoping to capture as you were writing that song?

That is the first song I’ve ever written with Austin. We were only married 10 years before we attempted it. We’ve done so many other things together well. That would really be awkward if that was one of the things, like, “Oh, that didn’t work out!” But it did. And no one has gotten to witness my career and the evolution of it more than my husband, and just how he knows me as a person, but also the path that my music has taken me on. I had to sort of save myself from some of the places that it could have taken me.

I had this new 335 Gibson that I had just acquired, and it was late one night. Graham had been put to bed. Austin and I were like, “Okay, here’s your bourbon. Here’s my bourbon. Let’s officially write this first song together.” We already had most of the record recorded, and we knew what we were looking for. Just a high-energy song. I had a “Heat Wave” kind of progression going, and we gravitated to what we’ve been so passionate about, which is sharing this collaborative work that we do for my music together, and we’re congratulating ourselves that we have taken it to a place that is authentic and something we’re proud of and sustainable.

Reinvention is really the name of the game in Nashville. Figuring out, what else can I do? Where else do I fit? What are the other skills that I have? And you do that as well as anyone. You’ve gone out on tour with a wide variety of people. How does it feel to be able to just step into any room and feel like, “Yeah, I belong here, I fit here.”

I think that is probably why I transcend so many genres, because I’ve been so lucky to work with so many different artists who are capable in so many different spaces. Sometimes I think it’s maybe even made it a little challenging for me, in terms of getting playlisted or getting that full embrace on this radio station or from that genre. But it’s meaningful, what we’ve built, because I think it all comes back to the live show. 

Also, I really revere the songwriting process. I think Nashville has instilled that reverence in me. There’s so much great music out there, and it’s more about getting the proper discovery in the right spaces. We just did this tour with Melissa Etheridge, and she said, “Don’t have too many hits. That’s what Bruce Springsteen told me,” and I was like, “Well, not quite a problem for me yet.” But I do think what we have is something that’s unshakable.

I’ve been on the right clip for like the last 10 years, but I’ve been here [in Nashville] for 18. When I was more in commercial country, had some of those early releases taken hold, I may have not found the joy that I’ve found now. I embrace the struggle, and I think a lot of the things that were challenging about country radio, and the more Music Row way of things that I used to abide by, maybe pushed me in this more authentic space.

This being the Bluegrass Situation, I have to ask, are you a fan of bluegrass?

I am. Old Crow Medicine Show – I consider them to be bluegrass. On their new record, they featured me on a song called “Beautiful Land,” and I’ve always loved what they do. I think what’s happening with this jamgrass scene is so exciting. Del McCoury – I love him. I got to do DelFest last summer and I still think “Nashville Cats” is so modern-sounding, it could have been cut yesterday.

Alison Krauss is one of the voices that made me want to move to Nashville when I was very young. Talk about just absolute purity of vocals. I think that a lot of the mastery that goes with harmonizing in bluegrass is something that drifts into gospel, too, and that’s what I enjoyed listening to growing up. It maybe tuned my ear a little bit without me realizing it.

Oh, Sierra Hull is someone I have to mention. She’s unbelievable. Blows me away as a writer, as a player, and she’s the queen of sitting in with other bands. She’ll always say yes if I ask her last-minute and I find out we’re at the same place. She says yes, and that’s something that I like to do as well. And I think that’s what’s brought us into all these different genre spaces.

I was also curious if you’re a vinyl collector or if you have a record collection.

I do, yes. Every year, Austin and I will re-alphabetize it, which is always a fun night. In that same room where we started writing “The Other Woman,” we have… I mean, I would say… well, maybe I’m being hyperbolic, a couple thousand vinyls in there. I have not had the chance to even listen to everything that we have. We have been married a long time, and I’m still not sure what I’ve acquired from this partnership! We love instrumental tracks. We have a great turntable that is hooked up to our Sonos, so we can listen to our friends who go to the trouble of putting vinyl together. It’s nice to listen to the vinyl as it was sequenced.

And I know that there’s technical aspects of it where it’s maybe not as great of a sound quality as a CD or something digital. But I do love that the concept of vinyl invites people into settling into the full experience. You can’t just wander off. You have to come back and flip the record to hear the whole thing through. And you can hold it in your hand, and the artwork is just much more vivid with vinyl. It just feels like a little bit more ownership of something that can be hard to hold in your hands.

Photo Credit: Shervin Lainez