Luke Laird remembers the first night he set foot in Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe. Just 17-years-old and on vacation away from his rural Hartstown, Pennsylvania, home––population about 200––Laird sat, breathless, in a wooden ladder back chair next to his mom and dad as Tony Arata sang “The Dance” just a few feet away.

“Seeing him play that song right there, from his heart with just his guitar, you actually got a sense of, wow, that guy sat down with a pencil and piece of paper and wrote those words––came up with that melody,” Laird says. “I’ll never forget it. From that moment on, I was enthralled with the idea of being a real songwriter.” Laird pauses, then laughs as he adds, “We were scheduled to do some other tourist things the next day, but I couldn’t get the night before out of my head. I told my parents I wanted to stay in the hotel room and write songs––and they let me. They left, and I sat there all day, working on a song.”

Spending all day, working on a song––that’s Laird. Quiet but full of music, hard-working but playful, quick-witted but kind: He has also long-since joined the ranks he idolized as a kid. Over the last decade, the Nashville-based Laird has penned 24 No. 1 country songs, earned two Grammys, clinched Songwriter of the Year titles from BMI and the Academy of Country Music, and taken home too much more industry hardware to gracefully list here. But while music’s top-tier and liner-notes lovers know his name, Laird has typically shirked spotlights––until now.

With his new album Music Row, Laird offers an intimate look into his journey from Hartstown to Nashville. The first-ever record from one of music’s most trusted creators and collaborators, Music Row is a songwriter’s story, traversing childhood, grief, addiction, family, and the community he loves. The songs are deeply personal and sometimes raw, all delivered by the songwriter himself. 

“I’ve always been a fan of albums, but I’m not a huge fan of writing songs and randomly throwing them together then calling it an album,” Laird says. “But this made sense. It’s my story as a songwriter who moved to Nashville to write songs for other people.”

For Laird, “other people” has included Carrie Underwood, Kacey Musgraves, Little Big Town, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Eric Church, Jason Aldean, Thomas Rhett, Sam Hunt, and many more. He produced Musgraves’ Grammy-winning album Same Trailer, Different Park, as well as her Grammy-nominated record Pageant Material. Never one to feel boxed in by genre, Laird has also worked outside of country music with a broad range of artists, including Ne-Yo and John Legend.

On Music Row, Laird offers a collection of music he’s written not for others, but for himself. The title track begins with the kind of toe-tapping, lazy-day beat that grounds so many of Laird’s most beloved hit songs before he jumps in to recall the 1995 family trip to Nashville that changed his life, and then to lovingly sketch the colorful old houses, far-reaching reverberations, and camaraderie of 16th Avenue and 17th Avenue. It is both an ode to a community and a personal history, wrapped seamlessly together. “I wanted to root this project in the feeling I got when I first came to Nashville––the allure of driving on Music Row and knowing there were songwriters working in those houses,” Laird says. “It was so cool to me. I can still romanticize it, and I still like coming into Music Row to write in one of those little houses. There’s something magical about it to me.”

“Why I Am Who I Am” offers an autobiographical snapshot of Laird’s life, themes of simplicity, faith, laughter, and love underpinning it all. A lesson in how to create lasting images also imbued with meaning, “Leaves on the Ground” grapples with heartbreaking loss. Laird wrote the song for his childhood best friend who passed away too young. Opening with a stark first-person recitation, “That’s Why I Don’t Drink Anymore” is precisely what the title suggests: an explanation, vulnerable and real, of Laird’s sobriety. “I’ve seen the way it could have turned out, and I’m so grateful God delivered me from that,” Laird says. “I have really strong faith, and that’s what I believe. It wasn’t anything I did on my own. I try to remember that––to never think, ‘Oh, I got a handle on this.’”

Sweet and sincere, “Hangin’ Out” pays tender tribute to one great love’s unassuming start. Laird wrote the song for his wife, Beth. The two met when she was a publishing company’s new receptionist and he was a new songwriter, trying to find his way. “Beth’s definitely been an inspiration in other songs, but this song is specific,” he says. “This song is me and her.” The couple’s two young sons make a cameo on “Jake and Mack,” a romp that revels in the permanence of a dad’s love and the joy of carefree kids.

Sad but hopeful, “One More Divorce” is songwriting for adults, capturing a couple unwilling to fake it but also unwilling to give up. “My preacher is always joking, asking if we ever write songs in country music where they stay together,” Laird says. “I thought, what if I wrote one where they stay together, but it isn’t glossed over––they don’t have a perfect thing going.” The only co-written song on the album, “Branch on the Tree” was penned with Lori McKenna and Barry Dean, two of Laird’s closest friends and favorite collaborators. Over fiddle and pedal steel, Laird explores the internal dualities we all share, and the resilience that only comes with faith. 

“Good Friends” traces a lifetime’s worth of buddies with smiling gratitude. Laird’s uncanny lyrical ability is on brilliant display––verses swimming with details that enrich but never overwhelm. He brings the same magic to “Country Music Will Never Die,” extolling the timeless power of the genre’s core through his own beautifully distinct cadence: “That prom night regret, those stolen cigarettes made you feel grown up even though you hadn’t left yet / The song that was playing when you told her goodbye.”

Laird is proud of Music Row––and thankful that these songs he initially felt compelled to write just for himself can now touch others, too. “When I write a song, I enjoy it, and after I finish it, I like playing it, but really, as a songwriter, you want to share your songs with people,” Laird says. “That’s my favorite part of writing songs––sharing them, just seeing people connect to them. It’s such a gift.”.