Sara Evans Gets Personal on ‘Unbroke’—”If You Really Look Into the Song Lyrics, You Can See What Was Happening”

Sara Evans looked down at the text on her phone and saw her husband’s name. They were separated and hadn’t spoken in six months. Evans and Jay Barker were married for more than a decade before their very public split. Now, he wanted her back and would do anything to make it happen. The singer didn’t want a divorce. 

“He pushed me to that place,” Evans tells American Songwriter. “Otherwise, we have an amazing marriage. It’s like the scales came off of his eyes, and he could see it.”

Evans chronicles the couple’s arc from breakdown to breakthrough on her new album, Unbroke. She co-wrote 10 of the 11 songs in the collection, including its lead single, “Pride,” and the overall focus track, “21 Days.”

“Essentially, that’s what the album is,” Evans says. “I filed for divorce, and then there was a coming back of, ‘Maybe we can make it work,’ that started with his text. If you really look into the song lyrics, you can see what was happening.”

[RELATED: Sara Evans Earns Opry Invitation, Celebrates 20 Years of ‘Restless’]

Unbroke explores abuse, deceit, the inability to move on, forgiveness, and the bliss that sometimes accompanies reconciliation. The album opens with “Pride,” a song she wrote with Madi Diaz and Sean McConnell. 

You left a mark / On my face / And brought a dozen red flags / In a vase.

Barker told Evans he feels “Pride” is her strongest work. While the song details many kinds of abuse, Evans believes the lyric is genuinely about the danger of pride.

“The Bible says pride goes before the fall,” she says. “It’s basically demonic.”

In “21 Days,” the second song on Unbroke, she sings: I’ve never quit on anything / When things are tough, I always stay / And never walk away.

“I was getting happier and happier and happier,” she says, remembering writing the upbeat “21 Days.” “You’ll feel every emotion available to the human heart when you listen to this record.”

Evans allows that Unbroke has many autobiographical moments but cautions that not every word was culled from her personal experience. She collaborated with multiple co-writers on the project who brought their own life stories for inspiration. She prefers songwriting with a male and a female to get each perspective and often asks the other woman to create the melody. 

Evans describes herself as “mostly a lyricist,” and believes Unbroke features all of the elements fans expect from her—and some they don’t. She’s enamored by the album’s soaring electric guitar solos and its drum and bass sounds. Evans was in the recording studio when the musicians were tracking so she could arrange the songs in her particular way. She likens not having input during tracking sessions to blindly letting a decorator take over one’s house.

“It’s not something that I would be able to do,” she says. “I’m kind of a control freak about that, but it’s my name on the music.”

The album’s title track is the one she’s most proud of. Evans penned “Unbroke” with Ryan Beaver and Adam Hambrick, and calls it the best song she’s ever written. The idea was born as she pumped gas on the way to her songwriting appointment. She called her daughter, Olivia, to ensure the concept was sound before presenting it to her co-writers.

“I wanted to talk about divorce as a whole, but also individual behaviors,” Evans says, explaining she wanted to highlight how no one escapes such situations unscathed. “I’m broke. I’m using two sides of the coin. We are all unbroke now. We’re mended, but we’ll be in therapy for the rest of our lives.”

Even though she and Barker weathered extensive counseling, Evans was still nervous to publicly share news of their reconciliation. Even some of her close friends didn’t know about it until recently. But when Evans thanked her husband after she was asked to join the Grand Ole Opry, she thrust their relationship back into the spotlight. 

“I was so nervous, but I am still nervous talking about it,” she says. “We’ve been married for 15 years. I’ve made a lot of music, and he’s been right there with me.”

Evans would have thanked Barker even if they had divorced. She hopes people won’t judge her, but acknowledges the reunion makes people angry either way; sometimes she feels like she can’t win. “The world is such that you don’t even want to say anything,” she says.

But Evans says a lot of things anyway, about both her personal life and her career. Earlier this year, she launched the podcast Diving in Deep With Sara Evans. The first episode is a no-holds-barred account of her rocky-turned-revived relationship with Barker. Throughout the series, she delves into her time on Dancing With the Stars, her first divorce, trauma bonding, and a life-threatening childhood accident. She chats with famous friends, and covers her journey from her Missouri hometown to the top of country music.

Before she made headlines with her tumultuous personal life, Evans cemented herself as one of country music’s most enduring stars. The mother of three and new Opry member was the fifth-most-played female on country radio over the last two decades. She’s had five No. 1 hits: “No Place That Far,” “Suds in the Bucket, “A Real Fine Place to Start,” “Born to Fly,” and “A Little Bit Stronger.” The multi-platinum-selling artist still plays more than 100 shows a year, although the last song on Unbroke, “Gypsy Ways,” hints at perhaps slowing down:

My traveling days / Are getting in the way of waking up with you, and it’s all I want to do / Because I’m always saying goodbye.

“That’s one of my favorite songs because that was when we were falling madly in love again,” Evans says. “I was thinking, ‘I’m tired of traveling so much and working so much, and now I just want to be home more.’ I love how the end of that song is, My gypsy ways are about to change. That’s kind of leaving people guessing.”

An Unexpected Request:

Sara Evans was on the West Coast playing a radio showcase and private show in April when she fielded an unexpected request. Post Malone wanted her to join him on stage to sing her hit “Suds in the Bucket” at the Stagecoach Festival that weekend. 

She immediately Facetimed her three adult children, Avery, Olivia, and Audrey with the news. “We were like, ‘Guess what?’” Evans says. “And they were screaming, and that was amazing. We love Post Malone.”

Malone has had one foot in country music for years, often collaborating with and covering country artists, including Sturgill Simpson, Morgan Wallen, HARDY, Brad Paisley, Dwight Yoakam, and more. When he played Stagecoach that late April weekend, he invited Evans, Paisley, and Yoakam to join him on stage. 

It wasn’t a random request; Malone’s first concert was Paisley’s and Evans’ Muds and Suds co-headlining tour in 2005. 

Evans says there was no soundcheck or rehearsal for their joint Stagecoach performance. But they didn’t need one. She credited Malone for tapping critically acclaimed session guitarist Derek Wells as musical director and assembling an amazing band. She watched as Malone played and sang every word of her song. 

“He really knows this song,” Evans says. “It’s not like he’s just pretending to know it or he just learned it yesterday.”

She calls Malone “so nice and genuine” and thinks he’s a country singer at heart. She also hopes they can collaborate in the future because their voices are so similar.

“He has a fast vibrato, and I do, too,” she says. “I just love his singing voice. It’s amazing. But I also love his other songs, too.”

Evans calls the Stagecoach collaboration one of the highlights of her career. “It just happened, and I got to meet so many people,” she says. “It was very fun.”

Getting Inked

Sara Evans celebrates the two things she loves most with her tattoos: Jesus and her kids. Now she’s hooked on ink. 

Evans remembers she was on tour in Idaho and had the day off when two of her children, Avery and Olivia, wanted to get tattoos. Olivia persuaded her mom to get one, too.

“We went to this tattoo parlor, and the very first one I got was this one,” Evans says, pulling up her sleeve a bit. “It says ‘Jesus,’ and I felt so cool.”

The next time she played a show, she kept trying to surreptitiously show the crowd her new ink. Then Olivia talked her into getting a tattoo of all three of her kids’ names: Olivia, Avery, and Audrey. Evans also got a tattoo above her C-section scar that says “Life,” because that’s where she gave life. 

“You do kind of get addicted to them,” she says of the tattoos.

Photos by Andy Baxter