From screen to stereo with Morgan Nagler

With her debut solo album, I’ve Got Nothing To Lose, And I’m Losing It, she’s distilling all of the experience gained through her TV and movie acting career, and about 20 years of writing songs with and for other people, into something that’s finally her own.

“I was a child actor from when I was five years old. I did a lot of television and film and some commercials,” Nagler tells me. It’s her understated way of saying she appeared in most of the seminal TV shows of the 1990s, including The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, ER, Home Improvements, Star Trek: The Next Generation, and so many more.

At that point though, the money and regular sitcom work wasn't enough. “When I was about 20, I was a regular on a sitcom – which we don’t really have anymore, damn shame – and I had a lot of downtime in my trailer. The way a sitcom is structured, you rehearse all week and tape in front of a live audience. So if you're not in the scene being rehearsed, you're just chilling.

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“I had this guitar,” she continues, “which I had never really played, and I wrote my first song sitting there in my trailer by myself. The feeling I had was this connection to the ether in a way I had never felt before.”

From that record-scratch moment with just her and an instrument, she developed a yearning to be more herself, something she wasn’t able to get through acting, which by its very nature necessitates you being someone else. The more the LA native had to do with playing music and experiencing that sense of self, the more she “became addicted to this form of expression where it was my own words.”

Nagler’s transition from screens to music involved financial sacrifices and was partly thanks to her interest in 60s and 70s pop, the likes of Simon & Garfunkel, as well as gangsta rap – two very different genres. But her start in her career was based on a friendship she formed with Jenny Lewis, then launching her seminal band Rilo Kiley.

“We’re best friends now,” Nagler says. “Rilo Kiley was just getting started, and it felt like a freedom pass to say whatever the fuck you want to say. I had no intention of sharing what I was writing. It was really through Jenny’s unabashed encouragement. She introduced me to her guitar player and kind of put it in motion.”

From that small start – if you can call writing with Rilo Kiley small – this new activity grew into something that, over time, replaced her acting career. Collaborating came first; “I had these co-writing situations come up throughout my life, just very randomly and spaced out far apart.”

Then came another twist of fate: being discovered and schooled by the legendary Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings. “They flew me out to Nashville on a one-way ticket. I ended up living with them for six months, just writing. We were nocturnal – I mean, they don’t do drink or drugs – [but] just up all night writing, then sleeping until 3 pm. I consider that my college.”

Nagler’s background in acting helped her ability to create songs and empathise with her co-creators. “Madi Diaz once asked if my acting background influenced how I show up in writing rooms, like playing the character of ‘artist’, which felt really true to me,” she shares.

Those collaborations opened more doors. Nagler ended up co-writing “Falling” for HAIM’s debut album. She’d met Danielle Haim through Jenny Lewis, as Haim played in her band. Writing songs with other people led to some soul searching. “As I started to get older, I was trying to boil down what the thing is that I truly feel drawn to or feel I have the most to offer,” Nagler tells me.

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Those moments of reflection are when it all changed, with Nagler freed from existing deals and able to start a full change in her life and career. Then, while you might have thought working with Rilo Kiley as they started out, or hanging with Gillian and David writing songs into the dawn would be career highlights – along came two Grammy nominations for writing “Kyoto” with Phoebe Bridgers. That was the trigger to finally take it all seriously – “I was, like, okay, that’s a clear sign.”

Next came a full-time writing schedule, five days a week, and publishing deals. She worked with the likes of Madi Diaz, Pearl Charles, Foxes, Willie Watson, Margo Price, and Bethany Cosentino. Among all these co-writes there was space for her own songs to start collecting together, hidden from sight of others. “Some songs, you think, ‘Nobody else wants this – this is mine.’” That’s how the solo album came together,” says Nagler. “I had so many songs – files and files. They’re mostly voice notes – just guitar and vocal, recorded the night I write them. I record as I go. There might be 13 voice notes, and the last one is the complete version.”

This collaborative history is woven through Nagler’s debut, which features a roll-call of indie heavyweights including Allison Crutchfield, Bethany Cosentino, and Courtney Barnett. Together, they lay out a sound that refuses to sit still, winding from the fuzzed-out, distorted guitars of opener “Cradle Of Pain” through to the melodic folk-rock of “Grassoline” and the delicate falsetto of “Greetings From Mars”. It’s a record that doesn’t just acknowledge her past; it celebrates it, and builds towards her future.

“Before technology, I used a Tascam four-track with cassettes,” she goes on. “You had to play the song a hundred times to remember it. There’s value in that, but it’s time-consuming.”

There wasn’t a particular song that started the process of creating I’ve Got Nothing to Lose, and I’m Losing It. “It just felt like time to have an outlet for myself. It was just like I had all these songs and I should put them out in the world.”

Writing for herself has evolved over time for Nagler as well. “I used to just wait for inspiration to strike and then just let it come through. When I was younger, I had what I called the ‘puke method,’” she says. “Whatever came out, I wouldn’t change it. If I didn’t like a part, too bad – it was the song. Then when I worked with Gillian and Dave, they were like, ‘No, you can change it.’ Now I edit. I collaborate. For this record, I opened everything up with Kyle Thomas. We changed chords, wrote new lyrics. ‘Orange Wine’ gained five extra verses.”

And alongside evolving her writing over time, the new record has also seen changes in process for the LA-based songwriter. “When I’m writing for myself, I very rarely am like ‘I'm gonna write about this subject’ before I write,” Nagler explains. “I just pick up the guitar and see what comes out. ‘Grassoline’ is an exception because the word just came to me, and that’s just kind of a fun song. But usually I just pick up the guitar and see what comes out.”

There’s one song on the final tracklist that stands out, though: “Heartbreak City”. The song was written after the album was finished, then recorded live in one take. The poignancy of the lyrics is crystal clear thanks to the underproduction, just a battered acoustic sighing along. It’s a rightfully reserved end to a songwriter album. As Nagler says, it “feels so special to me.”

And after all, that’s what songwriting is all about: making people feel special. Most often it’s the listener, and that’s the aim of most songwriters, but it’s just as great for the writer themselves, knowing that they’ve created something wonderful.