Singer/songwriter Maggie Thorn finds inspiration in laid back life on the farm

Maggie Thorn appears to have figured out the secrets of this life: Keep it simple.

The 23-year-old lives on a farm outside Puxico, Missouri, her house fronted by a county road and surrounded in every direction by fields of soybeans. The exception is behind her tin-roofed back porch where sits a large garden, one she loves to tend. It provides bushels of green beans and tomatoes she shares with friends, zucchini, butternut squash and a host of other vegetables she uses for family meals. She loves to cook everything homemade for her husband of one year, Logan Lowery, who helps farm the land.

Behind the garden is a newly installed coop, housing mature chickens that had yet to yield an egg. She jokes that they're still mad and don't like her. That in itself is hard to fathom. She's without pretense, with a natural way and warm spirit.

"I want them to be my friends," Thorn says with a smile, with a hint of hurt and a lot of Southeast Missouri drawl that finds its roots on a similar farm in Bloomfield, where she grew up. "I probably should have gotten babies."

Just yards away sits a still functional but weathered barn from another era, housing bales of hay and a cool place she plans to store vegetables from a soon-to-be greenhouse that will allow her to garden year-round. Its neighbor is a more contemporary shed that protects two combines belonging to Lowery's father and grandparents.

Maggie Thorn displays fresh green beans from the garden of her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

The single-level, white farmhouse with maroon shutters only has about 950 square feet of space and is where Lowery once lived until about age 8. The 100-plus-year-old structure's walls speak, with electric guitars he made hanging in one bedroom, pictures with his new bride along with other family members in the living room, and the refrigerator door covered with pictures of those dear. Nearby hangs a sign, "LOVE AND COOK WITH WILD ABANDON."

There are a lot of such signs, starting on the front of the house, where "THE BEST MEMORIES ARE MADE ON THE FARM" hangs.

Nearby, Lowery has hung a swing on the front porch for his bride, and there the woman who describes herself as old-fashioned, turns on the magic with guitar in hand.

"My music kind of comes out that way, too," Thorn says about her old-fashioned leaning.

It too seems to sprout from the soil of Stoddard County.

Maggie Thorn relaxes on the back porch, viewed through a spider's web, at her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

Words form, and soon become poetry in motion. Her country-strong voice effortlessly moves high and low, painting thick each syllable and word. In the serenity, even the birds seem to stop and listen.

It's a fertile song-writing environment, one without distractions that contributed to the third CD for the talented 2012 graduate of Bloomfield High School.

"Sometimes I'll sit and play until I come up with something, and sometimes I'll just play," Thorn says.

Her latest CD is "The Other Side," a collection of original country songs with the exception of a personalized rendition of a song by Dolly Parton, a traditional style Thorn prefers.

Lowery even helped construct the title-track song, providing a bluegrass frame with the hook: "We believe in the simple life because the grass ain't greener on the other side." Thorn filled in other parts of the fun, up-tempo song, their first co-write.

Maggie Thorn enjoys life on the farm near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

It's an album she's mostly written by herself after getting help from her father, Tony Thorn, and others on the previous two.

One of the songs, "Just Breathe," addresses anxiety and depression, and was written on the swing, where "a handful" of her new songs originated.

"Now that I think about it, I think that's why it has the rhythm that it does," Thorn says about the song and the gentle rocking motion that is a product of her toes barely touching the ground.

The songs on the CD are about the problems of others in her life from her viewpoint.

"They're not written directly necessarily about personal struggles that I went through," she says.

Maggie Thorn enjoys the back yard of her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

Not that she hasn't had problems, although her easy demeanor and talents might make one believe otherwise.

It's been two years, one collapsed lung, one month in a hospital, two surgeries and four chest tubes since her last CD, "Get Out of My Way," was released.

Two of the songs on "The Other Side" were written during five months of down time that followed after a small hole was discovered in one of her lungs in January of 2016.

It was an ordeal that temporarily throttled her voice and allowed her to realize what music truly meant to her.

She's been a natural all her life, singing in church since her youth, writing her first song in elementary school, belting "The Star-Spangled Banner" before sporting events during her high school days, winning talent contests, yodeling her way through a solo performance on national TV, and making paid appearances with her father, who plays lead guitar, since the day she turned 16, the age she recorded the title track of her first CD.

Maggie Thorn enjoys the view from the back porch of her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

"Singing and just picking up musical instruments has always kind of come natural for me," Thorn said. "I kind of thank God for that now. You don't think of it as a kid. It just comes natural to you. Looking back on it now, it has just always kind of been a part of who I was. My family is pretty musical, and that's probably why."

Thorn seems mature beyond her years, which might be because she's covered a lot of ground.

It's already been eight years since she won her age division at the Mid-South Fair Talent Competition in Memphis. The multi-level competition spanned a variety of contestants, about 3,000 in all. The bounty was $3,000, trophy and a trip to California, where she auditioned at CBS Studios. She impressed there, too, and was slotted for the closing spot on "The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson" where Thorn, then 16, faced America with nothing more than her voice and acoustic guitar. For someone who had just finished her sophomore year of high school, she looks calm and collected on the video that still gets views on YouTube.

"I was pretty nervous," Thorn says with a laugh. "I hardly ever get nervous anymore unless I have to sing the national anthem. At 16 I was pretty nervous to be out in California and on TV. It was so cool."

She says she dreamed about being the next Miranda Lambert, and the experience emboldened her to record, which she did with her first CD, "Gravel Road."

Maggie Thorn plays her guitar on the front porch of her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

"That experience gave me the confidence to pursue music, not just something I loved and did at home, but something I could actually make a living out of, whether I became famous or not," Thorn says. "It really gave me the push to go home and focus, and I wrote a lot of songs and we started singing them out, and it gave me that confidence boost I think I needed."

She still has the trophy and memory, but the TV appearance now seems like last year's harvest, nourishing and appreciated but also history.

"I've changed and grown so much since then," Thorn says. "Now music means a little more to me. It's a little bit deeper than that. Sure I would love for a song to go No. 1 and get to sing at the Grand Ole Opry and I still have those dreams ... My dreams were very self-focused, and now I look at music as a little bit deeper than that."

She attended Belmont for three years, had the health scare and married Lowery in 2016.

"I think I've evolved musically a lot as well as in my writing," Thorn says. "I've just been exposed to a lot more things."

Maggie Thorn plays her guitar on the front porch of her home near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

She's polished, but maintains a mom-and-pop operation.

In fact, she performs as a duo with her dad while her mom, Lara, is her booking agent and manager, with appearances set in January for the entire year. The venues often remain quaint, with festivals on the circuit, singing before crowds at Tunes at Twilight, Isle Casino and the SEMO District Fair in Cape Girardeau.

"We try to play big stuff, whenever we get invited," Thorn says, with a laugh.

She was recently invited to a big event -- the Josie Music Awards in Nashville, Tennessee, for top independent artists. She was escorted on the red carpet in a black dress and high heels by Lowery, who purchased a suit for the September occasion.

She was nominated in three major categories: Female Artist of the Year (Modern Country), Female Vocalist of the Year (Modern Country) and Song of the Year by a Female Artist for "Dreamin' South Carolina." While she did not win, it said much about the respect she has gained. It also was a reminder of the difficulty of making it big in the music industry. She realizes mainstream country music has change dramatically, but remains devoted to the traditional style.

Maggie Thorn shows the corn crib of the barn at her farm near Puxico, Missouri.Fred Lynch

"Diamond Rings and Little Things" also was a front-porch creation and is getting radio play around the country. It's a line her father gave her and she turned into a song about why time is more important than any material gift you can bestow.

It's a simple message from the simple life, one where baking bread, tending gardens, coaxing eggs from chickens and writing songs from the heart possess richness.

"My heart won't be crushed, and I won't be upset if nothing ever amounts from my music worldwide," Thorn says. "It won't upset me because I wrote the songs I thought needed to be heard and I sang them to a lot of people."