Madi Diaz

If she can make it there...
At 22, Madi Diaz is on the verge of finding her sound, be it in Boston, New York, or Nashville


By Joan Anderman
Globe Staff / June 13, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas - It's a sweltering morning in the Lone Star state, where singer-songwriter Madi Diaz has traveled from Boston to ply her wares at the South by Southwest music festival. Diaz and her team have scored a table in the lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel and are busily conferring amid the music business movers and shakers at the swankiest outpost in Austin. But all is not as high-powered as it seems.

Diaz's team consists of her two-man band, Kyle Hurlbut and Adam Popick, and her manager, Ty Stiklorius, a novice who followed Diaz backstage after hearing her sing at the Bitter End in New York last year and offered up her services. Diaz doesn't have any official appearances lined up here, only brief slots at two parties - one hosted by Berklee College of Music, the other arranged by a guy named Phil who reached out on MySpace - and a local radio station interview. She has no badge, no showcase, and no real business here.

"We're making ourselves available," Diaz says.

"Even if you're not playing you're meeting people," notes Hurlbut.

"I've failed miserably," moans Stiklorious.

Diaz, lanky as a filly in shorts and sneakers, doesn't seem to care. She's an "instant-gratification person," game for anything except standing still.

"We tried to get those potato chips with messages on them made to give away to people here," Diaz says. "But it didn't happen."

At 22, Madi Diaz is something of an anomaly: a seasoned newbie, jaded and wide-eyed all at once. In one sense her career is just kicking into gear; during the past year she's taken on a manager and signed a publishing deal, and this spring she has begun making trips to Los Angeles and New York to perform for music supervisors and label executives.

But Diaz's resume stretches back to her early teens in Philadelphia, when she enrolled in Paul Green's now-famous after-school music program. Diaz was featured as the precociously talented and preternaturally bullheaded teen to beat in "Rock School," the 2005 documentary about Green's rock 'n' roll boot camp that inspired the Jack Black film "School of Rock."

At Berklee, Diaz's next stop, "she just stood out," says veteran songwriting professor Pat Pattison, who handpicked the budding tunesmith for weekly private tutorials and recommended her as the opening act for Linda Ronstadt at last year's Newport Folk Festival. "She made some waves here."

Yet Diaz isn't quite ready for her close-up - not for lack of talent, more like the opposite. Three months ago in Austin, singing literate folk songs at the off-grid party, Diaz was a smart coffeehouse songbird, poised to follow in the footsteps of Patty Griffin. Last week she e-mailed me a rough mix of a sparkling new tune that smacked of indie-pop sensation Feist. Diaz and Hurlbut have been holed up for a month in Nashville at Sugar Hill Records A&R exec Gary Paczosa's house, binge-writing with each other and an assortment of local pros.


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"There are so many different directions to go in, indie and folk and Americana and that weird pop sound," says Diaz. "It's all fun right now. I go to sleep at 3 and get up at 7. I'm exhausted and excited. I'm floating."

Everyone seems to agree that floating is exactly what Diaz should be doing. Even Paczosa - who months ago offered Diaz a deal with Sugar Hill, an esteemed roots label, and is getting a little impatient waiting for an answer - supports her freewheeling ways.

"I think she should be experimenting," says Paczosa, a Grammy-winning engineer who works with the Dixie Chicks, Alison Krauss, John Prine, and Nickel Creek. He says that he hasn't been so moved by a singer since he first heard Shawn Colvin. "How do you find the style and genre that you want to go and play until people don't want to hear it anymore? You have to write a lot of songs, try things out, see what fits. In Nashville you can do it every night, in living rooms, and clubs, and as part of a community."

Diaz and Hurlbut, who are strictly platonic music partners, were supposed to move to New York on June 1. Three weeks ago they decided to stay put in Nashville and plunked down first and last month's rent on a sweet house in the "Brooklyn-y" part of town. Either way, it was high time to get out of Boston. She'll play farewell shows tomorrow at Toad and next Friday at Berklee's Cafe 939.

Diaz attended Berklee for three years and left last summer - partly for financial reasons but also because she was feeling confused about her musical identity and needed a break from the pressure of school. She watched movies at her apartment in Savin Hill, drove a pedi-cab, tended bar at the Pour House, and tried without much luck to break into the local club scene.

"Doors were kind of closed to me," Diaz says. "I tried to contact people at the L - The Boston Globe

Another year, another SXSW on the books. Somehow, amidst the parties, food and general chaos of 6th St., the Paste staff managed to see some music. Here are the 10 acts we were most impressed with:

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6. Madi Diaz
Bells chimed delicately above acoustic-guitar strums in the dim light of the Driskill Hotel's Victorian Room last friday night, the indie folk-pop of Nashville singer/songwriter Madi Diaz and her band wrapping snugly around the crowd's eardrums. There was something so inviting about the whole scene—especially Diaz's voice, an instrument that comforts as if a favorite blanket leftover from early childhood. Diaz first gained attention as a student in the documentary Rock School (which provided the basis for fictional Jack Black vehicle School of Rock), but has since cut her teeth at the Berklee College of Music and is now co-writing with Paste favorites like Katie Herzig, David Mead and Garrison Starr. That's right, little Madi is all growns up, and—with new EP Ten Gun Salute—her music is maturing nicely, as well. (Steve LaBate) - Paste Magazine