In House With Madi Diaz: From Music-School Dropout to Indie-Pop Success

In House is AOL Music's series in which we welcome artists into our offices to play some music, chat with our staffers and, generally, just hang out. For our latest visit, we sat down with up-and-coming singer-songwriter Madi Diaz to discuss her new EP, 'Far From Things That We Know,' how sad songs make for great icebreakers and why she dropped out of music school.

Sitting in a small room in Spinner's New York office, Madi Diaz doesn't know what to play. A sad song? A happier tune? Or maybe she'll just talk. Her songwriting partner, Kyle Ryan, scratches his beard and suggests 'Heavy Heart.' He plays the song's ascending melody line before his partner interrupts. She's not going to play just yet.

"I feel like sad songs are a really great way to break the ice when you're writing, when you've never written with someone before," Diaz says while Ryan continues to fiddle with his six string. "You can always relate to sad stuff."

"It's probably better if one person's there and the other one isn't," Ryan responds. "Because then you have the opinion from the depths and the other person is throwing the rope down, so you don't end up with [pretends to shoot himself in the head]."

Despite the somber topic, the room doesn't turn into some sort of sad-fest; Even on this overcast day, Diaz is radiant while hanging with the AOL Music staff. And whether she wants to play a sad-bastard ballad or a toe-tapping pop anthem, we're happy to be her audience.

The songwriting duo met five years ago at Boston's Berklee College of Music, a school that hundreds of Top 10 hitmakers have attended for decades.

"A mutual friend was putting a project together. [Madi] was the project and I was the guitar player. That's kind of how it started," says Ryan. The initial session went swimmingly but it wasn't until the final vocal take was finished that Ryan approached his future bandmate.

"Kyle was like, 'Ever want to play or write?'" Diaz recalls. "And I thought he was just being nice and it wasn't real."

"She never called me, and I thought that she hated me," Ryan responds with a chuckle.



Diaz was home-schooled in Lancaster, Pa., where her father was -- and still is -- in a Frank Zappa cover band, Project/Object. Her music-loving dad also attended Berklee and CDs, tapes and vinyl were stacked everywhere around the house, never to be put into alphabetical order. Diaz grew up to listening to everything from Paula Abdul to the Beatles, and understandably can't listen to much Zappa anymore.

The lengthy list of Berklee grads features some of music's biggest names, including John Mayer, Steve Vai and Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagan. But it's the ever-growing list of Berklee drop-outs on which Diaz belongs, while Ryan stayed until the end.

"I'm still fighting it, personally," Ryan says of living and breathing music education for four years. "They teach you an approach and it's definitely like studying music more than playing it. I find myself being like 'Carry the two ... minus is the ... subdominant.' And it's like, 'Who gives a s---?'"

Madi's songwriting ability was simultaneously challenged, molded and stretched, but her tenure ended before her music could be morphed. "I was in these songwriting classes, and in any liberal arts path you're realizing that it's so subjective," she says. "That person's opinion isn't the end-all be-all. If that teacher tells me to go rewrite the bridge, it doesn't mean that the bridge sucks.

"A lot of those teachers really do enjoy giving their knowledge, but you've also got your profs that are so bummed out that they spent 13 years in Nashville and now they're teaching a bunch of nose-pickers G chords. So, I ran away."

Diaz and Ryan left Boston to start anew in Nashville and its flourishing Americana scene. The guitar that sits lightly on her knee is adorned with a picture of the couple underneath a large Nashville pine, her favorite tree. They joke about having brochures for their alma mater, a school they certainly still respect.

Diaz's new EP, 'Far From Things That We Know,' was recorded in the country compound studio of the Dave Matthews Band in the hills of Charlottesville, Va. There, the pair joined acclaimed producer John Alagia for a session that yielded songs of incredible warmth and pop depth.

'Let's Go,' the record's lead-off single, combines the alt-country bravado of Kathleen Edwards and an infectious hook that'll get you humming imediately. But it's the startling breakdown, complete with tumbling pianos and crashing snare beats, that establish Madi Diaz as an arranger to be reckoned with.

"We tried to visualize what it was about 'Let's Go' that made us feel so good," says Diaz before performing the song for us and announcing that she hopes to record more this December. "Your favorite summer moment when you're 19 or 20 and you're on an awesome rooftop, and you snuck up there and you've got a bottle wine that you got your friend to buy you. Or you're on the dunes in Cape Cod, and there's a bunch of fireworks and totally you're careless."

After the performance, the pair pack up their instruments and, just as soon as they had walked into our office and captured our attention, disappear into the New York bustle. To get a taste of their allure, check out Diaz and Ryan on the road and watch the video for 'Let's Go' below.

Madi Diaz's 'Let's Go' Video