As part of the weekly series here on the Sixthman Blog, we’ll be highlighting a Mayercraft Carrier artist every Monday afternoon from now until we set sail on on this floating musical fiesta on March 27th, 2009! For those of you newbies, this will give you a chance to get to know some artists that you might not have heard. Without further ado, let’s shine that spotlight on a Mayercraft Carrier newbie:
Erin McCarley
McCarley grew up in the Dallas suburb of Garland, where she says her parents couldn’t have done a better job raising her and her older sister. “It was a very happy home with very little pain to deal with,” she explains, describing days filled with dance class and choir rehearsal. In a way, though, her ideal childhood led to an unexpected wake-up call later in life. “It kind of gave me an unrealistic view of everything,” McCarley notes with a laugh. “That’s not how the world is, you know?” In McCarley’s music you can hear her charting the distance between fantasy and reality, as well as the heartbreak that inevitably accompanies its discovery.
McCarley’s brand of honesty doesn’t come without the occasional flash of regret. “I’ve looked back at some of these songs recently and thought to myself, ‘Are you serious? I can’t believe I put that out there!’”
McCarley currently calls Nashville home, but she cut her musical teeth in San Diego, where she’d moved after college to pursue a life that didn’t feature music at its center. During her undergraduate days she’d spend weekends singing with a country cover band for extra cash, yet in San Diego, selling clothes in a boutique and hanging out on the beach, she began thinking not just like a singer, but as a songwriter, which satisfied a different artistic jones. “Once I discovered songwriting it became an addiction,” she says now, remembering countless days she spent holed up in her house from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., doing writing exercises (and staring at the wall) while wearing the same pair of linen pants.
Here is a video that chronicles the creation of her songs on her new album, “Love, Save the Empty.” A very cool video, and a great story about how she ended up in Nashville:
Watch her music video from her song, “Love, Save the Empty” from the movie He’s Just Not That Into You.