Mexican-American Christian recording artist MŌRIAH (Smallbone) is set to release a new EP and visual album on October 29th, titled Live From The Quarry. Composed of honest and transparent lyrics, MŌRIAH drew inspiration for the album from her own personal experiences with friendships, faith, personal insecurities, and worth. The new album is centered around contentment. Like many, MŌRIAH experienced a range of emotions in 2020: feeling angry, hurt, scared, insecure, and remorseful at times. Yet, all of these phases were necessary steps on her journey toward a greater sense of calm and gratitude. In addition to the EP, featuring the live recordings, the visual album will offer listeners an intimate experience of the recording process. In this TCB exclusive, MŌRIAH gets candid about how her initial desire to write songs as a therapeutic way to process her experiences evolved into a new album that she was encouraged to share. MŌRIAH also discusses the importance of the visual component of Live From The Quarry and her definition of success for the collection.
Congratulations on the upcoming release of your Live From The Quarry EP! Can you share the first time you had the vision for this project?
Thanks for the congratulations – I really appreciate it! With any creative project, it tends to have an initial stop/start beginning. And I really wrote these songs for myself. It sounds super selfish, but I’m just going to say it. I had no intention of sharing this music with anyone beyond my husband and parents. I really set out to write these songs as therapy to get through heartbreak, hurt, and pain. I had never written or produced on my own. My husband packed up my car as I headed to a cabin to write. He packed up my computer, MIDI keyboard, and mic. He created a tutorial on how to set everything up. He told me not to just grab my guitar and vocal notes, but to go produce demos. My favorite producer and mentor, Matt Hales, told me I was a producer. My manager told me I could do it. So I had all these incredible guys in my life surrounding me and encouraging me. When I finished writing these songs, again never for people, and when I finished them, I had more people around me, my mentors, my friends, surrounding me and telling me that these songs needed to be shared. There are wounds that other people could relate to, and it can help heal. So through a lot of constraints, I was comfortable sharing, but because of the last 18 months, I don’t want to just deliver an audio clip and be done with it. I want to create an experience. There are certain things that you can communicate through visuals, through your body and your movements, that you can’t express through song alone. So I’m really glad that everyone’s first introduction to this music, and my first reconnection, was through a visual medium.
In addition to writing, you also produced the project. Being so involved in every aspect, how were you most surprised by the process?
The surprises are endless. If you start with the production side, I never knew what an incredible world it could be. I think when you, at least in my experience, move to Nashville and are surrounded by these incredibly talented people, you tend to find your way and stick with what you know. And for me, I really only thought of myself as a singer. I’m an average guitar player at best. I tried to get into production and it just didn’t make sense to me, so I just felt like it wasn’t my territory. But what I realized when I got into it, I have so many people to thank for giving me those 10,000 hours. The number of producers that I sat behind and just watched them work and tweak and layer. And then, coming into TRALA, a project I did with some wonderful female musicians in Nashville, I got to watch my friend Julie Odnoralov sit behind these computer screens and get to work. I think sometimes you can’t be what you can’t see. So I was grateful to have so many people in that role, and they were all generous with me in the process. So I was really excited about this idea of encouraging other singers and songwriters, especially women, to have more autonomy in the production process. You might be able to get a song 50% done and then partner with people to bring it to the finish line, people who are better and more experienced than you are in polishing it and finishing it. But I think it’s important, because not only do lyrics communicate something and a melody communicate something, but sound, an instrument, a rhythm, all of these things are part of the communication and the birth of the vision that God has given you. And I can’t wait to see that evolution!
You pre-released two of the tracks – “Known Seen Loved” and “Trust.” Since you wrote these songs for yourself first, are there any lyrics or impact from them that strike listeners a little differently than they do for you personally?
Yes, there is, and I didn’t expect it or see it coming. The pre-chorus in “Known Seen Loved” is:
I thought I wanted answers
I thought I wanted to heal
But what I need most
It’s about being known, seen, loved
I thought I wanted justice
I thought I wanted power
But what I need most
It’s about being known, seen, loved
When I was feeling hurt and betrayed, those were the things that I thought would make me feel better, or give me resolution and peace. And I did everything I could to chase those things. I got to the end and it didn’t solve any of my problems. And it took me fighting for all of those things. And they’re all important, we want healing for the people we love. We want justice for those who have been wronged and for the victims. We want power for those who are powerless and we want it to be distributed fairly. But if you have it and you feel invisible and unloved and like no one knows or understands what you’re going through, then none of that matters. It’s all in ashes. I think in writing those lyrics, I was coming from a very personal experience with all of that. And I was nervous to share it with people because there’s a lot of room for misinterpretation. The fact that of all the lyrics published, this is the one that people talk to me about the most. I am here in [Washington] DC and I just finished a worship set for an intimate group that works in the legislature to combat sex trafficking. There are people in that group who are survivors themselves. The person leading the retreat asked me to sing “Known Seen Loved” and after we played it, those were the lyrics people said they took away with them. We are all fighting for justice and power and it is important that these women who have been saved are known, seen and loved by God first and foremost, none of that makes a difference.
How does your definition of success change for the collection as a whole, versus the individual releases?
I think success means something very different to me now than it did when I first started making music. I never wanted to be a professional musician. I feel like I fell into it by accident. Being 17 and being in this world of writing and releasing music, I was a sponge and learning. So initially my definition of success was based on streams, listens, and numbers. I’m naturally a competitive person, so I wanted to grow. As the years went by and genres jumped and trying to be authentic to the creative ideas that God has given me, I have realized that success for me is rooted in inner peace and contentment. I wrote a mission statement a while back and I come back to it often. There is a part of it that says just that – to create from a place of deep inner peace and contentment. I try to align everything I do with my top five values. I did an exercise where I started with 100 and went down to my top 20, 10, and 5, and my two favorites are growth and working with open and honest people.
Who or what inspires you right now, musically or spiritually?
I think it’s definitely changing day by day. Today, I’m inspired by the men and women who are on the front lines of the fight against human trafficking in America and abroad. People who have dedicated their lives to creating safe homes for survivors and women who have been rescued. I’ve spent the last few days with these people and hearing their stories and how they’ve fought it has inspired me. I tend to live very much in the present.
What are you most looking forward to for the rest of 2021?
This is a tough question for someone who is very present. I think I have a vision for the people around me more than I do for myself. I work with some really wonderful people and I live with some incredible friends. My husband and I host something called a slow church in our home, and people from our area come to our house and we live together. I think COVID and quarantine have revealed our need for community. I am hopeful that by the end of the year, a lot of the struggles that my friends and coworkers are going through, that they will overcome them. I have seen such progress and I think a lot of it comes from verbalizing and sharing, and when you do that in a space of trust, there is an opportunity for growth. So I am hopeful that they will find healing by the end of this year.
The post office Exclusive: MŌRIAH on How Songwriting as Therapy Transformed into a Relevant New Album first appeared on TCB.
Author: Jessie Clarks
