How Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney Overcame ‘Lowest Personal Place’ in Friendship, Almost Disbanding

usmagazine.com:

After making music together for a decade, Dan Smyers and Shay Mooney were nearly ready to give it all up — until they turned a corner in their friendship.“When we stopped trying to force things, Dan and I got together and really [decided to rekindle] this friendship,” Mooney, 31, told Zane Lowe during a Friday, August 4, interview with Smyers, 35, on Apple Music 1. “And we decided, ‘Let’s get together two, three times a week and just hang out.’ And that really started the beginning of this album process, without us really meaning to.

We started getting together at Dan’s house or one of our buddies’ houses, and sitting down with an acoustic guitar and started writing songs.”Dan + Shay are set to release their latest (and self-proclaimed “best”) album, Bigger Houses, next month.

The record features plenty of songs that accurately depict their friendship journey.“You can feel the closeness of our relationship, I think, through every little fiber of what that song became, and I think this is the first time an entire record has truly felt like this is who we are as people and this is where we’re at in our lives, but this is also where we want to go,” Mooney added on Friday. “I feel like we believed every word that we were singing.

We’ve either been through it or going through it right now, and I just think that that came out through the recording process and the writing process.