Tae Dye of rising country duo Maddie & Tae will always remember the week that led up to finding out that their debut single “A Girl In A Country Song” hit number one. “All week long, people had been telling us that it was going to happen, so we were hoping. I remember that we were just going about our day not trying to get our hopes up,” Dye told Billboard. “We went to see Shania Twain in concert, and they told us that night that it was official. That wasn’t a bad way to celebrate — at a Shania Twain concert with cheesecake after. It was a very special moment, and I still have the chart printed off in my purse, and I will keep it there forever.”
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This week offers Maddie & Tae a chance to show their appreciation to country radio during the Country Radio Seminar. The duo was one of five acts voted on by the industry to appear on Friday night’s New Faces finale — a distinction that Maddie Marlow says is proof of how much can change in one’s career in twelve months.
“I think it is so crazy that we are playing the New Faces Show,” she says. “We were watching it all go down last year as songwriters, but to be here this year — and to be on New Faces — as the only female act is definitely something that we feel so great about.”
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Nominated for vocal duo of the year by the Academy of Country Music, Maddie and Tae found acceptance by radio with their very first single. Some in the industry wondered how the gatekeepers of the airwaves might have taken to a song that addressed the subject of there not being enough female voices on radio, but Dye said it was actually quite the opposite. “All the reaction to the song has been incredibly positive. It’s a message that Maddie and I are so passionate about, and we knew that we had to back it up 100 percent, and not feel sorry about it,” says Tae. “We truly believe what we’re saying. We were glad to see that everyone was so accepting of the message, and radio was glad to hear from a new perspective. You never get to hear from the woman these days. So I think that everyone was just ready for that message and the fresh sound of the single.”
That’s not to say that their initial radio tour didn’t go without a little bit of an unexpected circumstance. “In Chicago, we were on our third day of the radio tour at US 99, we got into a bus wreck,” recalls Dye. “Our bus was basically decapitated. It looked like a sardine can, with all the AC units ripped off. So, I guess you could say that we started off our radio tour with a bang. I remember being at KEEY in Minneapolis, where people started singing the lyrics back to us. I will never forget that.”
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Of course, playing at the Nashville Convention Center in front of a room full of programmers who have helped them become one of Nashville’s top new artist is a little different than playing a normal concert or festival, but Marlow says she’s more than ready. “We are so excited about this. Of course, there are nerves, but it’s more about being so anxious to play this. To go see all of the friends we’ve made all over the country at radio is going to be a blast,” she explains. “We’re also excited to share some new music that they haven’t heard yet that will be coming out on our full-length album in June. We’ll be doing two of the new ones that nobody has heard during our New Faces set. All in all, it’s going to be so much fun to see familiar faces.”
Maddie & Tae have just released their new single, “Fly,” which they recently premiered on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. They will also be on the upcoming Dierks Bentley “Sound of Summer” tour.