By Arden Berry | Arts & Life Editor
Country and folk-pop artist Max McNown released his “Leave On a Light” album Sept. 25 as a representation of the people leaving a light on for him back home.
On Sunday at Austin City Limits, 17 of his friends from his Oregon high school took the titular request a step further and came to support his second set of the festival.
“And that’s just a perfect representation,” McNown said. “It’s those people. It’s those people that have kept the flame burning even as I have been gone. And so it just means a lot to me.”
Each song on the album revolves around this concept.
“Slow Down, Slow Down” is the first track, written for McNown’s wife on the back end of about 40 songs McNown had spent six weeks writing.
“I was really burnt out, I was really tired, and it felt like the train was going at a speed where my body was being left behind,” McNown said. “I had this image in my mind of just everything going so well, but so much of me felt like it was crumbling a little bit at the core. And so that song was just a desperate request to my wife, and not just my wife, but other people as well that love me, to tell them that I’m really looking forward to the time that I get to slow down and try to appreciate the smallest things.”
Meanwhile, “Same, Same Sun” is about a location.
“We took so many family trips down to this grove of redwood trees, of sequoias, and it’s called Calaveras Big Trees,” McNown said. “And we’d go there as a family, and every time I’d be there, it would remind me in a beautiful way of how small I am and how grateful I should be that I exist on this earth with all these things that have been watching civilization over thousands and thousands of years.”
“Greatest Audience of All” is about all the friends, including the ones present Sunday at Zilker Park, that support him.
“’Greatest Audience of All’ is written about Oregon specifically and all the friends … that listened to me singing my songs around a campfire before anything,” McNown said. “So that’s a big thank you.”
When McNown writes a song, his process begins with his “eclectic” notes page.
“To anyone else, it probably looks like gibberish,” McNown said. “To me, I have a certain everything in its place. My brain works in a certain way, and I understand it. And so some of it is just a voice memo of a melody that I am drawn to. Some of it is poetry. Some of it is a verse and a chorus and occasionally a full song. You know, a song. Sometimes. Typically, I like to co-write. And then sometimes it’s a singular word, and it’s just something that stood out to me and something I want to try to capture in a song in a larger way.”
Whether co-writing or writing alone, McNown said it is important that his writing comes from his heart.
“One of the main reasons I’m in music is to try to use it as an outlet for the way I’m feeling and write down what I’m going through, whether it’s the hills or the valleys,” McNown said. “And so that’s very important to me … I’ll take it, I’ll have a notes page, I’ll have a stockpile of a hundred different things, and I’ll go into a writing room with people that I’ve grown to know and love and trust over my career of this last three years or so, and we’ll bring a song to life.”
He said seeing fans enjoying his deeply personal music is “the greatest reward music can bring.”
“I always say that songwriting is my number one favorite thing about this career just because turning to music my whole life in my darkest moments, music has helped me so much,” McNown said. “ … But what always battles for that number one slot is seeing the faces of the people that my music has impacted and people that have taken personal stories of mine and related them to their own lives and felt as though they helped them.”
One example of this was McNown’s breakout single, “A Lot More Free,” which he said was about a difficult breakup. He said has heard stories from fans relating the song to their own divorces and losses and about how the song helped them through.
“Basically the song has now become something greater than I ever saw,” McNown said. “ … One thing that really impacts me is when men come up to me. And specifically, I feel like there is definitely a stigma in the world that you’ve got to lock it up and you’ve got to close your mouth and you’ve got to fight it alone. And I couldn’t disagree with that more. And so when I realized that from the position I was in where I felt that way, I am now helping people express their emotions and dissect their feelings and break free from the chains that are binding them. It’s just incredible.”
McNown has released three albums, reached over 330 million Spotify streams on “A Lot More Free” and has played around 300 shows in two years with a “Slow Down, Down Under Tour” coming February 2027. However, “Leave On a Light” reflects his persistent gratitude toward his friends and family back home.
“I always say one of the worst parts of touring is missing home,” McNown said “ … You miss a lot of really special times with your family and your friends. The people that have raised me and the people that have been in my corner since before any of this are still in my corner, and they still care about who I am beneath the music and love me for who I am.”
