Beloved country duo Maddie & Tae spent the day with Cowboys & Indians in Tennessee to do some fishing, talk about their new album Love & Light, reflect on the decade since their debut album, and share the ultimate life hack.
Maddie & Tae are the reason you can never judge a book by its cover.
They are young and beautiful and gracious and charming. Until they sit down on the fishing dock and start cutting live worms in half with their bare hands to bait their hooks. That’s when you know that this country duo is not afraid to get their hands dirty, whatever the task. That, and their commitment to take what they’ve built over the last ten years and keep on building it. “We’re gonna be in our eighties, with oxygen tanks,” Maddie Font predicted of their future in country music. “It’s gonna take a lot to get us to not do this.”
Font and Tae Kerr have been chasing this neon dream since they were 15 years old and shared the same vocal coach. The very first song off their first album from 2015 — “Girl in a Country Song” — went to No. 1 before fans even knew their names. And now, with a brand new album out, Maddie & Tae have become actual household names for country listeners across ages, genders and lifestyles. Their music has and will always be sincere, because that’s exactly what they are.
So after the worm cutting and casting and reeling, we sat down by Old Hickory Lake to talk about their music from Start Here to Love & Light, and all the songs that took them from point A to Point B.
Let’s talk fishing first: when you learned, what you love about it.
Tae: I started fishing when I was in diapers. I have photos of me at my nanny and pawpaw’s pond in Oklahoma. They had this beautiful property and a couple ponds where we learned to fish. I’m in my diaper in this big t-shirt and my dad’s trying to hand me the fishing pole. When I think of fishing, I think of my dad. That’s what we did growing up, and we still go fishing together. We’ve participated in tournaments and it’s so much fun, and I think it fosters such a still and peaceful environment to bond with people you love.
Which one’s better: fishing for fun or fishing in a competition?
Maddie: If we have a chance to beat boys at fishing, we’re in.
Tae: At the tournaments that we have done, I have caught the biggest fish, but I haven’t caught the most fish.
Maddie: We still beat Carrie’s (Underwood) husband Mike Fisher, and when we went on tour with her, he was like, “You know, I’m still mad about that.”
Tae: We’re just pissing boys off one fish at a time.
What’s the biggest one you’ve caught?
Tae: A 50-pound sailfish deep sea fishing in Florida. It took 45 minutes to boat her, and she was angry.
Do you think that you’ll foster that love of fishing and the great outdoors with your own kids?
Maddie: My son Forrest is really taking a liking to fishing. We have a little fake fishing pole with fake fish in his kiddie pool, so he’ll practice. We’ve got a pond by the house and my husband’s teaching him how to bait the hook. He’s normally a busy body, but when we go fishing, he’s very still and focused and concentrated.
Tae, you’re from Oklahoma. And Maddie, you’re from Texas. What’s the thing you miss most about your hometowns?
Maddie: I miss the big Texas sky. It’s like no other. In Hill Country, you just feel tiny, and I love feeling like this little thing in the world because it makes you zoom out and correct that perspective.
Tae: The thing that I miss about Oklahoma is my family. My parents, brother, sister, niece and nephew are there in Durant. My parents actually live in this very quaint little area that has no cell service. And it’s amazing. When I go home, we just sit on the front porch and talk, or we sit around the bonfire and solve riddles.
So you were in Texas and Oklahoma, and when you started making music, you were basically teenagers.
Maddie: We were 15. We were babies.
What I love about your story is that yes, you were teenagers, but the album was so well received. There was never any talk like “they’re too young to make their mark on country.” You just did. What was it like making that record and being so young?
Maddie: We definitely had something to prove. Sometimes I miss that energy and fire and hunger we had. The magic about that first album was that we didn’t know we were making an album. We didn’t know if our songs were ever gonna be heard. We were just chasing the dream and seeing how far it was gonna take us. And now we wake up 10 years later and we’re still doing it together. The hack to life is to work with your best friend and do something y’all love, because it will not feel like work.
And now a decade after that first album, you’ve released Love & Light that’s more reflective of your lives now. You wroteall but one song. Why was that important to you?
Tae: After a week of changing diapers, we need to get in a writing room and get all of our creativity out. This season of life is so crazy and chaotic. There’s a lot to write about, and we’re thankful because there’s a song on Love & Light called “Chasing Babies & Raising Dreams” and it’s the perfect snapshot of our lives right now. We are raising tiny little humans but also raising a dream that we’ve been raising together for 15 years. Both deserve all of our love.
The lyrics in that song are so clever, and I know that’s important to you. And to John Mayer. He said the song had “lyrics that astound me.”
Maddie: That was a full-circle moment listening to that, because when I moved to town, my dad passed his Toyota Tundra down to me, and I had six CDs in it. John Mayer’s first, second, and third records, and then Lee Ann Womack and Otis Redding. When I drove to writing sessions, I’d listen to John Mayer’s records over and over again, and I remember being so inspired. I thought, I have to get better at this because this is the type of songwriting that I want to do.
When you took these new songs out on the road for your Love & Light tour, what did the fans love most?
Tae: They are gravitating so much towards the new music. The first show we played after the record had been out for a week, they were singing “Drunk Girls in Bathrooms,” “Kissing Cowboys,” “Love & Light,” all word for word. And obviously when you’re in the middle of creating a record, it’s so personal to you. So when they’re singing it back, it’s so beautiful.
