In the summer of 2020, Meg Gehman, a 59-year-old, newly retired junior high school counselor, lifelong songwriter, and seasoned performer, decided to cross an item off her bucket list and head down to Nashville from her then-home-base of Western New York to record a few songs with some world-class cats. With the help of a Nashville friend in the music business, she found The Studio Nashville, contracted for a five-song EP, and sent 12 Garage Band demos, giving the producer, The Wood Brothers’ Jano Rix, free rein to pick five songs from that collection. Down she went, walking into an experience that was about to change her life.  

 

“I had no idea what to expect,” Gehman explains. “I just wanted to sing my songs with complete freedom and let the band paint the canvas for me. I knew that I’d be in the room with musicians who were in service to the song and not wanting to just demonstrate what they could do. I’d had years of battling with bandmates to play less, to play more quietly, to listen to each other, and to listen to what the words were saying. I stepped into that vocal booth and was immediately wrapped in the blanket of groove and warmth that these guys wove together. On the first take of the second song, I had to take a break and let out some of the emotion I was feeling. I’d never felt so supported before. It was literally like a dream was coming true. Drummer Derrek Phillips got up from the kit, met me in the center of the room where I was having a small come-apart, put his arm around me, and said, ‘Meg, this is what it’s all about.’ On the plane ride home, I made the decision to move to Nashville. I was never more sure of anything in my life.” 

 

After making the move, Meg decided to extend the 5-song EP to a full-length album, and, in 2022, she released The Way The World Knew Her, backed by an impressive line up of industry greats. Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist Rix played all manner of keyboards, percussion, and backing vocals (all of which he does simultaneously when playing live with The Wood Brothers). Incendiary guitarist JD Simo (Jack White, Dolly Parton, Stevie Nicks) brought an incredibly diverse palette of sounds to the record. Deeply accomplished and always original-sounding bassist Ted Pecchio (Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks, Shemekia Copeland) added to the vibe in so many unexpected ways. The aforementioned Grammy-winning Phillips (Sara Bareilles, Mumford and Sons, Alison Krauss) lent his minimalist but always original and tasty style on drums. Adding fully to the sound imagery of the album were the backing vocalists: the Grammy-nominated Maureen Murphy (Eric Church, Lucinda Williams, Zac Brown) and Wil Merrell (Elle King, Smashing Pumpkins, Sheryl Crow) contributed depth and soul.

 

The album met with critical acclaim. Americana Highways wrote of the release, “You seldom get this kind of vibrance from a novice. If this was sent to Motown in the ’60s, they would’ve signed her. No doubt.” The Alternate Root also had praise for the album, writing, “Gehman has a gift for bringing feelings center stage, and the fact that she bares her soul with such intense emotion is a credit to both her and The Wood Brothers’ Jano Rix, who produced the project. An auspicious introduction, The Way the World Knew Her has a title that tells all.” Pop Culture Classics shared, “Meg Gehman will hold you in her thrall from the opening notes until the final melody fades into the ether. Her emotion-drenched, spectacularly soulful voice deserves a wide audience.”

 

Gehman recalls jumping right into the deep end of independent album promotion, saying, “I had this great-sounding record - the thing I was most proud of to-date in my musical career - and I had no freakin’ idea what to do with it! I put it on the streaming platforms, made a homemade video for the first single, and kinda watched it disappear into the void. It was the start of a very lonely, self-doubting period where I started to see the reality of how difficult it is to break into the music scene and to question this gigantic change I had made.”

 

To battle that loneliness and self-doubt, Meg did what she thought everyone should do when they’re depressed: She started drinking after a 33-year period of sobriety. “I thought I was pretty confident in who I was as a musician and a human, after lots of therapy, of course, but Nashville is intimidating, I tell you,” she says. “So drinking again was actually really helpful at first, because it took the edge off my loneliness, and it lowered the walls of fear I had about going out to play open mics and to meet other musicians. But the addict in me doesn’t know how to stop, and I got dangerously close to the edge of that cliff. Luckily, I knew where to go - 12-Step meetings - to get my head right again.”  

 

Gehman toughed it out, forged solid relationships, found her ground, and is now emerging with her second Nashville-based album, LoveSister, bringing along four alums from the first record: Maureen Murphy (this time as producer, along with backing vocals), Wil Merrell (vocals), Derrek Phillips (drums), and The Studio Nashville’s engineer, Brook Sutton, who mixed the album. Ten of the album’s 11 tracks were recorded at the East Nashville studio, The Bomb Shelter (where Alabama Shakes cut their Grammy-nominated album, Boys and Girls), recorded to tape, and engineered by studio owner and analog wizard, Andrija Tokic.  

 

Gehman ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in October of 2024 to fund the production of LoveSister. Once the money was raised, she sent 60 - yes, 60 - songs to Murphy, all of which she had written and co-written in her time in Nashville. “I have so much faith in and respect for Maureen’s vocal and arranging talent, ear, and experience in the studio,” Gehman explains. “But maybe more than all this has been her belief in me - she’s been in my corner from day one and is always there to lift me up out of the lonely, dark, ‘what’s-the-point-ment’ times. We all need a champion, and Maureen has been that for me. When I told her I was sending her 60 songs, she didn’t bat an eye. She listened to every damn one. I will say, though, that is one of the upsides to having so much time alone - I had so much space to write. Plus, going to open mics around town connected me with a lot of great songwriters. That became my full-time focus.”   

 

From that collection of 60, Murphy and Gehman settled on 16 songs for the project, rounding out the band with another collection of Nashville’s finest.  Multi-instrumentalist Freddy Angelico (Brandy Clark, Uncle Kracker, Molly Tuttle), whom Nashville Scene calls “an ace of all things stringed,” lent his significant guitar prowess. Ryan Madora, bassist for such greats as ZAYN, Allison Russell, and Lamont Dozier, held down the pocket with drummer Phillips, with whom she shares a long-standing friendship and plenty of musical collaborations that stretch back years. One of the most notable instrumental shifts for Gehman was the strong use of the Hammond B3 on LoveSister. For this, she went to keyboardist Mike Hicks (Keb’ Mo’, Buddy Guy, Michael McDonald).  

 

Gehman says, "Every single person on this project was brought on not only because of their immense talent, but also because they are a group of beautiful humans. This wasn't a group of hired guns - although that is exactly who they are for so many of today's most accomplished artists. This was a group of brothers and sisters sharing decades of experiences with one another, and whom I knew would come to the studio without egos, with a deep respect for each other and the process, with the ears to listen to each other, and the talent on their instruments to make LoveSister come to life. And that is exactly what they did.”

 

LoveSister’s first single, “The Dawn,” was co-written with a salty ol’ cowboy by the name of LH Halliburton, who Meg met at one of her favorite open mics in East Nashville at a tucked-away-upstairs venue dedicated to the writer, The Bowery Vault. (Meg is now one of the hosts of that open mic.) “I thought I was always the oldest person in the room - and that ain't easy - ’til I met LH,” Gehman says, chuckling. Written on a couple acoustic guitars in Meg’s living room, the song transformed in the studio into a slow-building gospel anthem that encourages the listener not to give up five minutes before the miracle. The choir comes in after the lines: It gets harder and harder to cope / And sometimes faith / That’s a slippery slope / Trust feels like walking a tightrope / But at the end of the tunnel there’s hope. 

 

The record’s second single, “LoveSister Whisper,” was channeled by Meg in the living room of her rented East Nashville bungalow at the end of her first year in town. Guided that evening by a sacred psilocybin journey, she discovered something. “I’d been hearing and taking in what other people had to say about me since I’d made the move to Nashville,” she recalls.      “Really beautiful, complimentary things. Not just about my music, but also about the person that I am. That night, like it always does for better or worse, the medicine showed me the truth: I am who these people are telling me they see. I’m not the broken thing. That was the exact moment this song came through. It’s f*cking weird to write a song about yourself like that, but it’s the truth, and I’m not afraid of it any more." 

 

Then there’s “Get It Before It’s Gone,” a gritty, down-tempo, back-room blues track capturing the torture of addiction, a subject Gehman’s had a lifetime of experience with. “I started getting high when I was 11 years old,” she says. “I had a desperate need to numb the loneliness that consumed me. For the next 16 years, I stayed numb. Getting clean and sober at 27 saved my life, but the pull to want to check out is always hovering close by, seductive and hypnotic, like the snake, Kaa, from ‘The Jungle Book’ singing, ‘Trust in me.’” “Get It Before It’s Gone” throws a haunting spotlight on that seduction, with Hicks’ sizzling Hammond B3 undercurrent and Angelico’s searing guitar work. The chorus begins: There’s a flash of a match / Over there in the alley / A crackle, a hiss / So seductive and strong. But the song isn’t just about the pull, it’s really about seizing the moment to not be hypnotized by it, and the chorus ends with: But these pipe dreams ain’t real / And this moment is passing / Like that smoke disappearing / I got to get it before it’s gone.  

 

The album’s overall feel, song to song, is one of great storytelling, deeply pocketed grooves, and clear messages of hope for this very dark time we find ourselves in. LoveSister is an album that the listener will return to over and over to discover the lyrical Easter eggs, the messages, and the carefully crafted masterful musical performances. And, it’s entirely possible that one just might find and grab hold of the golden thread of hope that weaves itself through these songs and begin to believe, as Meg sings, that it’s always darkest before the dawn.