Nashville’s own Ali Sperry is a singer, songwriter, yoga teacher, transcendental meditationist and now… mother.  Her journey to the joy of motherhood was especially hard fought and fraught with pain, grief, and spiritual exhaustion.  

To those of us who have known and felt Ali’s clear eyed and incisive song writing and singing, it comes as no surprise that she does not shy away from any of those existential flash points on her new EP, When I Was a Mother and Other Songs.

That Sperry, the living embodiment of “If you know you know,” even in Nashville’s thick matrix of low key master song crafters, manages to keep her lens steady when turned directly on the hardest nights of the soul, offers an odd kind of solace to the listener. Joy, Grief, Hope Trauma, are treated with the same  anti-operatic clarity, and she sings her truths with the kind of crystalline under-singing that is her signature. 

When I Was A Mother was produced by Sperry’s husband and life-collaborator Jamie Dick at Joy Carnival — a studio built onto the back of their house during the pandemic. Even before the studio’s creation, Dick Manor was a social hub for East Nashville’s finest musicians, so it's not surprising that many turn up again on the EP, lured by the prospect of maybe cutting a tune, but almost certainly sharing a bottle and a gang of laughs… the kind of laid back effortless musical connection that feels like a bygone dream of a lost Nashville. 

No one will accuse Sperry of being a furious careerist - it’s not in her genes - or her upbringing as the daughter of Iowa’s deep welled TM community.  Her many  cheerleaders do coax her out on the road though not as much as any of us would like — and when they do, she remembers how much she loves it, and why she does it. So rest assured, there will be tour dates coming in 2026.

In the meantime, you may have to come  to Nashville and seek out this healer in her environs -  on a yoga mat, or in a low lit bar, trading songs with her fellow song catchers and senders. She doesn’t dwell on the differences; we get our meditation and medicine where we can.

-JT Nero