Max McNown

Name: Max McNown
Start: 2025-10-17T21:00:00-07:00
Location: The Showbox

Schedule

Fri, 17 Oct, 2025 at 09:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

The Showbox | Seattle, WA

Showbox Presents
Forever Ain’t Long Enough Tour
MAX MCNOWN
FRI, 17 OCT 2025 at 09:00PM PDT
Ages: All Ages to Enter, 21 & Over to Drink
Doors Open: 08:00PM
OnSale: Fri, 8 Aug 2025 at 10:00AM PDT
Announcement: Mon, 4 Aug 2025 at 10:00AM PDT
Singer/songwriter Max McNown creates the kind of songs that soundtrack our mostintimate moments: times of intense heartache and tremendous loss, immense upheavaland life-changing revelation. Within just a year of teaching himself to play guitar, theNashville-based artist set off on a meteoric rise largely fueled by his breakout single “ALot More Free”—a RIAA Gold-certified track whose explosive success includes peakingat #1 on the iTunes singles chart and earning him a #1 spot on Billboard’s EmergingArtists chart. Following the release of his widely lauded debut album Wandering, theWillfully Blind EP, and his acclaimed sophomore album Night Diving, the 23-year-oldOregon native continued his fast ascent to stardom and made his TV performance debutwith an appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show in early 2025, in addition to selling outhis first-ever headline tour within just hours. Named a 2025 Artist To Watch by AmazonMusic, Holler, and Country Now, McNown now embarks on a thrilling new chapter withNight Diving (The Cost of Growing Up): a 21-song powerhouse that shows the completedepth of his artistry like never before.A drastically expanded edition of his sophomore LP, Night Diving (The Cost of GrowingUp) features 11 never-before-heard tracks built on McNown’s quietly potent form offolk/country. “Even though Night Diving was the length of a full album, in my heart it neverfelt complete to me,” he reveals. “All of these songs were written in the same time period,and my intention was always to have them be one body of work.” Still, McNown pointsout that the previously unreleased songs surfaced from a recent evolution of hismesmerizing sound, spotlighting an earthy tonality informed by his upbringing in thePacific Northwest. “Since my first EP I’ve been on the hunt to find myself as a musician,and with this album, I’ve officially made something that fully represents me, both sonicallyand in my songwriting,” he says. Produced by Jamie Kenney (Colbie Caillat, Laci KayeBooth) and made with an A-list lineup of session players, Night Diving (The Cost ofGrowing Up) ultimately provides an extraordinary vessel for his profoundly moving andsoul-baring storytelling.Anchored in the charmingly warm vocal presence that McNown partly honed by buskingat the beach in Southern California, Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up) takes the latterhalf of its title from a gorgeously textured track that perfectly exemplifies his newly refinedsound. With its rootsy yet ethereal instrumentation—luminous steel guitar, lush mandolin,soulful organ—“The Cost of Growing Up” arrives as a clear-eyed but melancholymeditation on the inevitability of pain (from the second verse: “Ain’t it interesting/Thatdiamonds come from coal, and steel gets sharper the more time spent in the flame/Andthere’s consistency/Between heartbreak and ashes/Scraped knees and taxes/One stepback for every two you gain”). “To me, the cost of growing up is an acceptance that difficultthings are going to happen—from minor inconveniences to devastating loss, it’s all a partof life,” says McNown. “But there’s also beauty in that because, without those hardmoments, you wouldn’t be able to truly love.”In the making of Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown revisited the title trackfrom the original album: a lived-in meditation on cycles of addiction, set against aspellbinding backdrop of otherworldly textures, moody guitar tones, and strangelyhaunting rhythms. This time around, he includes a feature from Cameron Whitcomb—arising singer/songwriter who’s written extensively about his personal history withaddiction, and whose force-of-nature vocals add a raw and fiery intensity to the newversion of “Night Diving.” “One of the things I respect above all else is authenticity andhonesty in music, and Cam is the epitome of that,” says McNown. “When I started thinkingabout a feature on that song, I knew there was no better person than Cam to join me. Hegave it so much energy and his voice is so distinct, and now the song has a whole newlife to it.”Elsewhere on Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown lets his inner hopelessromantic shine on songs like the unstoppably joyful “Forever Ain’t Long Enough.” Aglorious counterpart to “Better Me For You (Brown Eyes)”—a lilting and dreamlikestandout from Night Diving, written when he’d first started dating his girlfriend—“ForeverAin’t Long Enough” rushes forward with a pulse-pounding velocity as McNown lists off allthe places he hopes to travel with his beloved (“Let’s chase horizons off the Catalinacoastline/Jeep ride all the way to Santa Fe/Sip a coffee to a Montana sunrise/Saygoodnight to the Colorado rain”). “It’s about finding somebody who makes it seem likeeven your entire lifetime isn’t long enough to spend with them,” McNown explains. “It’ssaying, ‘Let’s love each other to the best of our abilities and take advantage of everysingle day, because we know the next day is never promised.’” Meanwhile, on the heavy-hearted but exquisitely catchy “Same Questions,” McNown writes from an outside pointof view and explores everything that’s lost when a love story ends. “It’s about goingthrough a breakup and not wanting to deal with the process of going back to square oneand getting to know a new person,” he says. “That’s a brutal but relatable experience,and I liked the idea of writing something sad but putting it to a happy folk melody.”In August 2022, McNown headed for Southern California and crashed with his aunt anduncle in San Clemente, where he soon learned to play his dad’s guitar (a gift handed offjust as he was leaving home) and showed a friend a song he’d penned in high school. “Ididn’t have a lot of faith in myself, but my friend encouraged me to go down to the SanClemente Pier and play that song and see what happened,” he says. “That night I made93 bucks, and also got a free taco and a girl’s phone number folded into a $5 bill.” As hegained greater confidence in his guitar and vocal skills, McNown started posting coversonline and quickly amassed a devoted following while building up a stash of originalsongs. Released in April 2023, his first official song “Freezing in November” surpassed amillion streams in just a few months, paving the way for his signing with FugitiveRecordings. Along with delivering his debut EP A Lot More Free that August, McNownturned out a series of rapturously received singles—racking up 80 million streams in hisvery first year of releasing music. The following April, he released Wandering and earnedcritical praise from the likes of People and Holler, with the LP later landing on WhiskeyRiff’s list of the year’s best debut albums.Since the arrival of Wandering, Willfully Blind, and Night Diving, McNown has fully claimedhis place in the music spotlight. To that end, Kelly Clarkson covered “A Lot More Free”on her show just a month before inviting him on to perform “Better Me For You (BrownEyes).” Over the past couple of years alone, he’s also shared bills with Wynonna Judd,Wyatt Flores, Michael Marcagi, Sam Barber, Billy Currington, Trampled by Turtles,JOSEPH, and more; toured with Briscoe and Blake Rose; traveled overseas to performat the C2C: Country to Country festival; and made his debut at the legendary Grand OleOpry. With his 2025 schedule including his debut headline tour (a massive soldout runwith stops across the U.S. and in Europe, the UK, and Australia)—as well as spots onmajor festivals like Lollapalooza, Boston Calling, and CMA Fest—McNown hasundoubtedly cemented his reputation as a captivating live act. “I feel like I’ve found myselfas a performer and gained the courage to enjoy the moment,” he says. “One of the biggesthighlights was going to C2C and playing for upwards of 15,000 people and hearing themsing along to ‘A Lot More Free.’ It always takes my breath away to look out and see thecrowd belting that song at the top of their lungs.”Looking back on Night Diving (The Cost of Growing Up), McNown notes that the newlyadded batch of songs embody a far more hopeful mood compared with the album’soriginal tracklist. “Even on ‘The Cost of Growing Up,’ which is one of the saddest songs,there’s an undertone of optimism and a clear silver lining,” he says. And while thatoptimism was entirely intentional on McNown’s part, he’s highly aware that his musictends to stir up incredibly complex emotions in listeners. “I’ve heard some heavy storiesfrom fans, including someone nearing suicide and feeling as though they were saved by‘It’s Not Your Fault,’” he says, referring to a particularly poignant track from Night Diving.“It’s amazing how a song can be written about a specific experience, and then you canbe told a hundred different stories about the experiences that other people hear in thatsame song. But I’d never invalidate anyone’s story—the important thing is that peoplerelate to the song and feel heard and less alone. That’s exactly what I’m doing all this for.