Rory Feek Says He May Return to Songwriting, But Not Quite Yet

It was just last Thursday when Rory Feek took his now six-year-old daughter Indiana to ballet class, and couldn’t help but notice that none of the other students were there.

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“I was completely unaware about this whole coronavirus thing,” he says innocently in a recent interview with American Songwriter. “I hear people talking about it, but I don’t watch television and I don’t read anything. We are just going to continue to do life as normal as possible.”

Indeed, it’s a secluded life away from the hustle and bustle of Nashville and the rest of the world in which Feek and his daughter Indiana have basked in for many years, and it’s a place that is now featured in his RFD-TV show This Life I Live.

“Whether its coronavirus or a president that’s very polarizing or the million, gazillion things we always seem to have coming at us, it’s nice to have something to look at or think about that sort of bring it down a little,” Feek says of the show. “We hope that’s what this show gives our viewers.”

The show is essentially his popular blog come to life, a blog that began as the country duo known as Joey + Rory took time off to have their first child together, and a blog that exploded onto the national landscape when it’s shining star, Joey Feek, passed away from cancer back in March of 2016.

She was just 40 years old.

“I was just ready to see if I could bring the blog to life on a personal level,” he says. “When my wife (Joey Feek) was here, the blog and the camera and the words were pointed at her. Indiana gets the brunt of it now because she’s the one I’m looking at all the time. (Laughs.) And she’s so precious.”

We’d have to whole heartedly agree with that.

Indeed, Feek lives a life where he is in fact surrounded by beauty, from his beautiful Tennessee property to the love of his children to the nature that envelops the little white house that he and his wife Joey built a life in. It’s a life that certainly must inspire the songwriter with songs under his overall straps such as Blake Shelton’s “Some Beach,” Jimmy Wayne’s “I Will” and Tracy Byrd’s “The Truth About Men,” to at least consider the idea of writing again.

Or one would think.

“That just hasn’t happened,” he admits. “I haven’t done any songwriting in 5 years. I have been in the studio recording a little bit lately but I’m only finding other people’s songs. I have only recorded two songs so far. There just hasn’t been a return for me to songwriting.”

Of course, the reasons behind that are many, both professionally and personally. Feek currently has a filled to the brim schedule of editing and writing and fulfilling every single need of sweet Indiana.

“When I started writing the blog, I quickly realized that I was still a songwriter writing songs, but they just weren’t in a normal format,” he says. “They didn’t look like songs. If you read my blog posts, they are very much like a song. It just wasn’t for someone to sing. I am a songwriter, but my songs look different right now. I may come back to songwriting. I’m starting to play more music and go to studio and record so it may have me going back to songwriting.”

Indeed, songwriting continues to be a love for Feek, and a love that is on display on another new show he has his hand in called Muletown in the Round.

“I think one of the reasons (the show) appealed so much to me was because I spent so much time when I first moved to Nashville in the 90s at the Bluebird Café,” says Feek of the show, which is filmed at Marcy Jo’s Muletown, a local restaurant and music venue co-owned by the Grammy Award winning musician and author. “I played a million shows at that place. I knew how special it was. I have always thought if you are not a fan of country music or songwriters, you would still be interested in these stories. It gives people a glimpse of something more than songwriters night.”

So the question remains – does Rory Feek miss songwriting?

“I don’t miss songwriting at all,” he says, sounding like he is telling his truth. “When I started writing a blog I realized a direct connection to people that I didn’t have as a songwriter. I mean, as a songwriter, you are in a room creating and you are proud of what you are creating and then you have all of these unsurmountable hurdles to get people to hear it. (Pauses.) But then every once in a great while – God points His finger at you and the light shines and people get to hear your song on the radio.”

He pauses at the sheer idea.

“It isn’t that the faucet is turned off because I have nothing to say or because I don’t want to speak without Joey here…but I’m full. I’m just full.”


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