Gretchen Peters has a very personal new album out, The Show: Live From the UK. The 18-track project was recorded while Peters was performing in venues throughout the United Kingdom.

“I think the motivation initially was the fact that we were doing this tour with my band, but also with a string quartet,” Peters tells Everything Nash. “It’s such a rare and special opportunity to get to play with strings that honestly, I just thought that we have to document this, because it may never happen again. It’s just not something you do every day. It made me rediscover and reconnect with old songs all over again, which, that’s one of the main struggles of doing a song over and over again for 20, 25, 30 years. How can you stay connected with it? And so that was another thing that I think I just knew that would happen. Having had the experience of playing with strings in this kind of configuration before, I really wanted to document it, and I’m so glad I did.”

Peters, known for writing hit songs like Trisha Yearwood‘s “On A Bus to St. Cloud,” Martina McBride‘s “Independence Day” and more, is also a seasoned performer, who has traveled the world headlining her own shows. But she admits that the task of recording a live record was not an easy one, even for someone who has spent much of their adult life on stage.

“It’s nerve-wracking. There’s no question that it’s nerve-wracking,” Peters concedes. “We had something like eight or nine or maybe ten shows in the tour. And we had to pick, because of budget and other constraints, because we were taking a mobile recording team with us for the shows that we recorded, we really had to limit it to a handful of shows. So we had to look at the tour,  figure out where will we be musically really hitting our stride and feeling very comfortable, but not too tired out because at the end of the tour, sometimes you’re just wiped out. And also, which rooms will be the best, which ones will sound the best, and take all that into consideration.”

Ahead of the release of The Show: Live From the UK, Peters released “Love That Makes a Cup of Tea,” inspired by the loss of her own mother.

“In 2016, in December, my mom passed away,” Peters recalls. “It was obviously a very tumultuous time anyway, in the world and then personally for me also. I had a dream about her one night. I was upset about things. I was upset about the world. I was upset about whatever I was upset about in real life. And in the dream, she came to me and she sort of patted my hand, like she really did in real life. And she said, ‘Oh honey,  it’s okay. There’s love that makes a cup of tea.’ And it didn’t actually make grammatical sense, but my brain was engaged enough to go, ‘That’s something. I don’t know what it is, but I need to remember that.’ I woke up and wrote it down. And then the song pretty much fell out the next day.”

Peters has accomplished so much in her career already, including numerous No. 1 songs, and an induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. But there’s still more she wants to do — a lot more — including an album by one of the biggest pop stars, written entirely by her.

“I want Miley Cyrus to cut a whole album of my songs,” Peters says with a laugh. “That’s gonna sound weird, but I’m putting it out there because when I released the Hello Cruel World album, she tweeted about two of the songs on the album, and how much she loved them. And I was like, ‘Yes, I love her.’ So I’m half joking, but I’m not. Miley. If you’re thinking about a project, I’ve got the songs for you. It was an amazing experience because all of a sudden, for like a month, our audience got so much younger. There were all these young girls coming to my shows. We were touring in Europe somewhere at the time. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is the Miley effect.’ It was pretty awesome.”

See a track list for The Show: Live From the UK below. Find music and tour dates at GretchenPeters.com.

The Show: Live From the UK Track List:

Arguing With Ghosts
Hello Cruel World
The Secret Of Life
Revival
Love That Makes A Cup Of Tea
Blackbirds
When You Love Someone
On A Bus To St. Cloud
To Say Goodbye
When You Are Old
When All You Got Is A Hammer
Disappearing Act
Wichita
Say Grace
Everything Falls Away
The Matador
Five Minutes
Idlewild