Singer-songwriter Logan Mize's latest album, "Her Heartland," was released last week. The album is his sixth and is built around several singles he released over the last year.
Much of the lyrical content on the LP finds Mize reflecting on the comforts of home and family, celebrating not only his roots but also his good fortune.
Having spent more than a decade in Nashville, Mize and his wife, Jill Martin, returned to Kansas for good about five years ago. Since then, Mize has built his own recording space in downtown Andale. He and Martin have released on EP as The Mizes — he says that they would love to release a full length at some point — as he continues building his fanbase through live performances.
Mize recently visited the KMUW studios to discuss "Her Heartland," his return home and how music won out over sports in his life. (That said, he hasn't fully stepped away from athletics: He finds time to coach various teams his two children are involved in.)
Mize will host an open house at his studio, 314 Main St. in Andale, on Friday, July 26, from 6 to 9 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Not on all the songs on the new record but on a lot of the songs are about being content in the place that you are and that place, a lot of times, is home.
Yeah, there's a lot of that.
What inspired that?
Just that realization of the passage of time. When your kids are little, you feel like you're going to be in that phase forever. "This is a lot of work, we're not sleeping." Now, I've got a 9- and a 12-year-old. "Man, this is going by really fast. A lot of the things I thought mattered before don't matter as much as the little things." Just being present in the moment, being there for your kids and your wife and just enjoying the small day-to-day things. That kind of became a theme with a lot of these songs.
There are so many songs about chasing the good life and, listening to the album, I thought, "This is about not chasing anything."
For sure. There's a lot of that. I spent a lot of years in Nashville. I lived there for 13 years. It is a rat race. Everybody's chasing something, whether it's getting their songs to a big artist for a big artist to record or becoming a big artist [themselves]. When I left there five, six years ago, this light kind of clicked on, "OK, I saw that side of it. I looked behind the curtain and now I know what matters and how I'm going to approach this from here on out."
You came back to Kansas in 2019. Just in time.
Just in time. I was in Europe three times in 2019. I was over there coming into the new year. I came home real sick and couldn't smell or taste anything. I said, "I got this weird sickness over there." My wife got it and then we started a West Coast tour right at the beginning of 2020 and it came to a screeching halt. I flew home and thought, "This'll be a few weeks, and I'll be back out." I was home for a year. It was great. We live north of Andale. I cut grass, hung out and looked at sunsets. [Laughs.]
I think we've all learned in recent times that you don't really have to go someplace to be part of the music industry. Air travel is such, home recording is such, that if you want to go live in Idaho, you can do it.
Nashville is interesting because it's a middleman. You realize, eventually, "Man, I can just go directly to the source." I did a little station wagon tour in 2016. I sourced it right through Facebook and Instagram. I had all these people who just messaged me, and I would book shows and go play their backyards, bonfires; some places were bars, whatever. You kind of realize that the industry is set up [where] they'll make it easier for you, they have power to promote. But they're in your pocket, too. You can figure out a direct line to your fans if you can figure out how to do it. It's not as easy but Nashville's just a big middleman. They have all the resources. I'm sure it's the same way in L.A., New York, wherever.
But when you left Kansas, that was still a period where it still kind of did matter a little bit where you were at.
In 2003-2004, I was just out of high school. I moved to Illinois. I was playing college football there, Southern Illinois. I wasn't really cut out for school. Sitting down in a chair is just not how I learn. I'm just more hands-on. I have to fail a bunch of times to even learn how to do something, so textbook learning wasn't for me. I thought I wanted to play college football but that wasn't for me either. I spent most of my time writing songs in my dorm room, learning guitar. I'd play gigs at night around Carbondale, where I lived. I made it two years. I made a ton of friends and worked it all out with the coaches and stuff. It just wasn't for me.
It was only three hours from Nashville, so I'd drive down and play the Bluebird Café's open mic night every Monday. At that point, I was just obsessed with it. All I could think about was the next song I was going to write and scratching ideas down. When I quit [school], I knew that I needed to save a little bit of money. I figured that if I came back to the Wichita area, I could save up some money, write some songs and then go to Nashville.
Of course, I didn't save any money. I was making eight bucks an hour framing houses out in west Wichita. I made it eight months, and I said, "I've just got to go. I've just got to get in the truck and drive." I think I had sixty bucks cash, a couple guitars and a notebook full of songs. "Here we go! Jump in!"
When did the desire to write and sing come about?
When I was little, I took piano lessons. Really nice lady, her name was Robin Bartley. She lived down in Clearwater, where I grew up. ...I wasn't really good at learning the little lessons in the book. But every time I would learn a new chord in the book, it would be, "Oh, this can turn into that, and you can invert it and play this." I'd end up making up [something from that]. I figured out then that I liked toying with music and coming up with ideas. I just didn't like the regimented part of it, of just trying to pound something into your brain [through] repetition. Just feel it and hear it. But then I moved onto sports and got into that, just like a normal, Midwest high school kid.
But I had a music teacher, her name was Ms. Stallman, and she always would beg me to play piano for the class. Every now and then I'd play an Enya song. I loved Enya. Still do. I always felt a little embarrassed by it because it wasn't the cool thing but, also, I secretly thought it was cool. I could tell that there was something there, and she really encouraged me to do the music thing. "Break out of your shell, quit trying to fit the mold. Just do your thing." And I listened. Eventually.
[Laughs.] There's a little more longevity in music than football.
Absolutely. Absolutely. If I had made it anywhere, I'd be retired by now and trying to figure out what to do. In music, there's always something to learn. I feel like I'm just getting started. It's definitely the longer game.
"Her Heartland" is out. It's been done for a while, but you've already lived with it for a long time. Now, you get to hear what other people think. Is there a nervousness that goes with that, like, "I hope other people like it as much as I do"?
I don't know if this is normal. I have this thing where I'll get done with it and then I'll listen to it and then I've already moved on. By the time the thing's come out and it's out in the world, I'm already [thinking], "That one's OK, but I've got this next thing that I'm really excited about." You're already excited about the next thing that you've already been working on. I already have quite a bit of the next thing already pretty conceptualized, half written. I'm very bad at remembering [that] I've got to promote the current thing. As an independent guy, if you're not out there screaming on the mountaintop, "I have a new record out!" no one's going to listen to it, so you gotta do it.
