Morgan Wade – Love’s Insane Tour

Rather than smoothing over life’s rough edges, Morgan Wade leans directly into them. Never one to mince words or play coy, the celebrated singer-songwriter has built her career around undeniable honesty and vulnerable storytelling, turning life’s hardest moments into songs that feel both deeply personal and universally understood. With a voice that carries equal parts grit, vulnerability, and strength, Wade has emerged as one of the most compelling storytellers in contemporary country and roots music.

Her breakthrough album Reckless introduced listeners to Wade’s fearless songwriting and raw emotional depth, earning widespread critical acclaim and a fiercely loyal fanbase. Songs like “Wilder Days” showcased her ability to balance arena-sized hooks with confessional lyrics - a signature style that quickly set Wade apart in ashville and beyond.

Since then, the Virginia native has continued to expand her sound and storytelling with her albums Psychopath, Obsessed, and most recently The Party Is Over (recovered). Blending country, rock, and Americana influences, her music explores themes of addiction, mental health, resilience, and self-discovery with striking authenticity. On her forthcoming and much-anticipated fifth studio album, Wade will continue the deep exploration of her psyche.

Wade is making her acting debut with a recurring role in the new season of Dutton Ranch, an expansion of the critically acclaimed Yellowstone universe. Whether on record, on stage, or on the big screen, Wade delivers performances defined by emotional clarity, intensity, and connection, solidifying her place as one of the most distinctive voices in modern music.

There’s one particular family photo that Thomas Edwards cherishes above all others. It’s an image of him in a baby carrier, gently placed on a stage where his mother is playing standup bass and his father is sawing on the fiddle. The picture was taken at the historic Carter Family Fold venue in southwest Virginia, not far from where Thomas grew up in Kingsport, Tennessee, and it speaks to the musical legacy that courses throughout his family tree.

“The reason I’m here in Nashville is far bigger than me,” Thomas says. “My family has played music my whole life. My grandfather was a Telecaster picker, my dad is a fiddle player, and my mom is a music minister with an unbridled, pure approach to music. Her grandfather played banjo for the Carter Sisters. There just has never been a time where I don’t remember hearing music in our home.”

For that reason, Thomas, himself a gifted guitarist, piano player, and cellist, didn’t consider music as a way to make a living — performing was something he did for fun. Instead, he threw himself into sports, playing football at the University of Tennessee, and upon graduating with a degree in supply-chain-management logistics, taking a job with Tractor Supply Company. But rather than sit at a desk, he chose to work side by side with his employees in the warehouse.

“I wanted to figure out how all this works. If I’m going to get into the logistics industry, I am going to be where it starts, and that’s where the people are,” the gregarious 30-year-old says.

Eventually, the desire to follow in his family’s footsteps and become a musician — not to mention a trailer load of hay that landed on his head — prompted Thomas to quit his job in 2021. But he walked away with invaluable knowledge. “The experience of leading a team and getting them excited to come to work,” he says. “That figures into the music I’m making now. It’s meant to inspire and connect.”

On High Times, his debut EP for Warner Records Nashville, Thomas harnesses his own natural energy and boisterous spirit to create a soundtrack for navigating life, its highs and its lows.

Recorded at FAME Studios in the fertile musical ground of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, High Times is seven songs — one for each stage of grief: shock, denial, anger, sadness, bargaining reconstruction, and acceptance.

Thomas, who had a viral hit with the Tennessee Vols anthem “Runnin’ Through that T” in 2023, conceived of the EP after going through a long breakup, one that fortunately ended amicably. His ex-girlfriend wanted to further her career by relocating to New York; Thomas wasn’t going to stand in her way. “It was a very mature end to a relationship and that’s why it stuck with me enough to write a record about it,” he says. “I'm a happy-go-lucky guy, and very positive, but I mourned that breakup. And the way I dealt with those emotions was by writing these very honest songs.”

In the title track, Thomas wrestles with the shocking realization that the relationship is finished and that there’s only one way to get over the initial sting: by getting high. “I can hear my demons whispering/High times for this low life, honey,” he sings in a soulful, bluesy wail not dissimilar to that of Chris Stapleton.

In the piano ballad “Man You Needed,” Thomas finds himself in denial, even as he admits in the chorus that he wasn’t exactly the best partner: “You got out of Tennessee and I hate it took you leavin’/If you find yourself back home, you’ll find me working on the man you needed.”

Thomas co-wrote every song but one on High Times, teaming up with co-writers like Joel Crouse, Michael Whitworth, and Jeff Garrison. The singer looks back in sadness at the good times (including an ill-fated attempt at making blueberry sangria for his ex) in the detail-rich “Mr. Know It All,” and dares to think about the future again in “Bet My Heart,” which also winks at Thomas’s affinity for late-night blackjack (ask him about it sometime...).

To close out the EP, he brings the journey through grief to its destination — acceptance — with a cover of Etta James’ “A Change Is Gonna Do Me Good.” It’s a stellar recording that shows off Thomas’s robust voice and ability to make any song his own.

Vintage, organic sounds, like the kind that Muscle Shoals has made famous, are Thomas’s sweet spot. Before moving to Nashville from East Tennessee, and even before taking that warehouse job on the Kentucky border after college, he immersed himself in the country albums of Ray Charles. Later, at 25, he discovered Southern rock and gravitated toward Lynyrd Skynyrd (there’s a bonus track slated for High Times, a faithfully rowdy cover of Skynyrd’s “I Know a Little”). “How do I fit in this space?” Thomas says he often wondered. “I know the music that shaped me: gospel, bluegrass, rock, and country. Now, how do I make it Thomas Edwards? That’s what I learned over the last few years.”

To Thomas, one of the brightest minds and songwriters to come out of Nashville in recent years, it all happened because of hard work. As he sees it, if he refuses to quit, there’s only one outcome: success.

“I don’t approach life in a hyper-serious way. This is music, after all,” he says. “But music is everything to me, and it’s a gift to be able to share how much I love it with the world. I want to be able to be the relief people need from their lives when they just need to feel a little something.”