Story Behind the Song: Maddie & Tae (Feat. Dierks Bentley), ‘Lay Here With Me’
Maddie & Tae phoned a famous friend for vocal help on their song "Lay Here With Me," which appears on their 2019 EP Everywhere I'm Goin'. Dierks Bentley lends his voice to the tune, harmonizing on the second verse and chorus.
"Lay Here With Me" is a track about calling a truce in a rocky relationship and getting back to vulnerability. Read on to find out how the collaboration came together, in the words of Maddie Marlow and Tae Dye themselves.
Maddie Marlow: Long story short, we were cutting "Lay Here with Me," and we toured with Dierks, so we had been really close with him for a while. So, I wanted to call his number to make sure he hadn’t changed his number, so I called it and it rang one time, and I hung up, just to make sure it worked. I didn’t realize that the call actually went through, so before we could get our ducks in a row and have our bullet points as to why we want him to be on this song, he called me the next day while we’re in the studio.
Tae Dye: I love that he just called. I feel like someone would text and be like, "Hey, you called?" But he just called back. He’s just so standup.
Marlow: The next day, he called me, and I was like, "Oh my gosh!" We were in the studio cutting "Lay Here With Me." We asked him, like, "Hey, we have this song and we think your voice would tell this story so well."
He was like, "I wanna make sure that I’m the right fit for this song, so let me listen to it and then I’ll get back to y’all." He called a couple days later and was like, "I would love to be a part of this, I think it’s a great fit," and so we went into the studio with our producers, Derek Wells and Jimmy Robbins, and cut his vocals while he was cutting his own record, and so that was a really, really cool moment.
Dye: Jimmy had a home studio, and the vocal booth had a curtain that separated you from the room. Dierks was behind the curtain the whole time he was singing. We were all just like, "I can’t believe this is happening," just in shock, so it’s awesome.