“I had written a couple songs by myself, and they felt pretty personal,” country hit writer Luke Laird tells Apple Music, “and a lot of those really personal ones, they're just hard to pitch to people. Or I guess maybe I just tell myself that when nobody wants to record it. But I played them for my wife, Beth, and she's like, ‘I think you should make an album.’” Laird—who’s renowned for his ability to tailor songs to certain singers or help artists including Sam Hunt, Kacey Musgraves, and Dierks Bentley compose clever songs that suit them—finally agreed to write and produce an autobiographical song cycle of his own. “It reminded me of being a kid in high school again, sitting by myself in my bedroom writing songs. There's such creative freedom. You're not thinking, ‘Would an artist say this? Will this get played on the radio?’” Laird, who first gained recognition as a producer for helping shape the sound of Musgraves' Same Trailer Different Park, also applied his whimsical recording sensibilities to personalizing the sound of his 10-song album. “I wanted it to just be rough around the edges, but also listenable,” he explains. That meant tinkering with hand-played traditional country instrumental parts along with sampling, looping, and beatmaking techniques learned from hip-hop, and layering them together like a collage, so that the disparate textures would stick out while adding up to the whole. Here he takes a stroll down each of Music Row's tracks. Music Row “That's my story. I really dug back into that feeling I had the first time I came to Nashville, seeing real songwriters and feeling so passionate about ‘this is what I really want to do with my life.’ As far as the production goes, as I was doing that little demo, I beatboxed and played the guitar and did the bass part. Then I actually went in with a band. I originally had drums on it, and it was good, but I was like, ‘It doesn't feel unique anymore.’ So I stripped it back down. I was really excited because I thought it was unique, but it's still pretty traditional-country-sounding.” Good Friends “That production was probably the most fun for me on the whole record. I'd started a song a few years ago in a hotel room in Austin. I had this little acoustic guitar [riff]. It was very country-sounding. I thought, ‘What if I sampled this?’ I messed with it, pitched it way up, and started making a beat around it. I had that sample going throughout that song. And then the drum started with an old soul drum break. And once I had that, then I think I did the acoustic and bass part. I feel like the steel guitar just glued everything together.” Hangin’ Out “Beth and I've been together for quite a while now, and I don't typically sit down and write songs for her. She's inspired a lot of songs in different moments. But that one, I just felt like I wanted people to connect to it, because I feel like the way we met and started hanging out is not like some crazy story. Like a lot of people do, we were at work, and just so happened we were the two youngest people there, both single. I just wanted it to be real casual. It’s exactly like it says in the song: ‘We were just hanging out first, and I guess we weren't just hanging out.’ I feel like that's a pretty clear picture of the two of us.” That’s Why I Don’t Drink Anymore “Originally, I even thought about writing that song funny a few times, but it just wasn't the right [approach]. Finally, one day I just sat down and the first verse came out. The little talking part at the beginning of that song, I was sitting there with my microphone and I just told the story about when I went to jail and got out. After I did it that first time, I tried to do it a few other times, but it just sounded so bad-acting and so rehearsed. So I left it like that. I'm kind of stumbling over my words and stuff, but I feel like it was honest.” Why I Am Who I Am “I think all of us, it's the way you were raised, what your mom and dad are like, you have all these different relationships and experiences that make you who you are. So it felt right to include it.” Leaves on the Ground “I love the fall, but it also makes me think about people I miss, in particular this friend that I lost when we were both young. I think about school starting, and how we used to hang out all the time. And when I go home, I'll drive past his house, and actually talk to his parents. This is one I had the title for, and I knew what I wanted to write it about, but I had to marinate on it for a while.” Jake and Mack “That's one I had started a couple years ago, just for fun at home as a joke. I think it's just the ages they are, and we're always having so much fun.” One More Divorce “A few years ago, I was hanging out with the pastor from my church, and he was asking me about songwriting. He's like, ‘Do you ever write songs where they actually stay together?’ We laughed, and I was like, ‘Man, this is country music. It's drinking, cheating, leaving.’ One day, I thought about that, and I was like, ‘What would it look like to write a song that's still honest and real, and no marriage is perfect, but to where there was also some hope in it?’ Actually, Kacey Musgraves wanted to cut this song, and we cut it on her, but it just never came out. It's still one of my favorites that I've written.” Branch on the Tree “I wrote this one morning when I was reading my Bible. It was a verse about the vine and the branches that triggered the idea for the song. I sat there and wrote the chorus. I knew it was something I really wanted to include on this project, but I just couldn't ever find the right way to approach the verses. I got together with Barry [Dean] and Lori [McKenna], and I played it for them, and I said, ‘Look, no pressure. I don't want to waste a day where we could be trying to write a song for Tim McGraw or whoever. This is something I really want to include, but I don't know how to write it.’ They’re so sweet. We just knocked it out.” Country Music Will Never Die “Being a songwriter myself, I thought it'd be cool to include a couple of the legendary writers. Harlan Howard’s obviously more known, but Bob McDill is a legend. He's written 30 No. 1 songs, and the majority of those he wrote by himself. I've talked to people that know him, and knew him back when he was still writing. He would come in on Monday, work on a song all week, and demo it on Friday, just very methodic, nine-to-five, and that just always blew my mind.”