Stephanie Quayle is sharing a tragic part of her past — one she had never shared before — in her new album, On the Edge. The eight-track record, which includes her poignant single, “The Lost Years,” uncovers one of the darkest times in her life, one she had never shared publicly, until now.

13 years ago, in 2009, a man she had been dating for four years was tragically killed in an airplane crash. Mere days after his death, Quayle found out that the man she loved had been unfaithful throughout their relationship.

“It was the most excruciating pain,” Quayle tells Everything Nash, recalling the news of the plane crash. “I had picked up his daughter from school. We went to our house. She was doing her homework. I went for a run. I had a show that night. And I always run before my shows, and I plot and plan them out in my brain. I came back, I started cooking us dinner, and one of my friends called and said, ‘There’s been an accident.’ He didn’t tell me that he was dead, He just told me there had been an accident. So I grabbed his daughter, jumped in the car and drove like a bat out of hell.”

Quayle hoped his daughter would have a chance to see her father alive one more time, which was unfortunately not the case. It wasn’t until the funeral that Quayle realized something was amiss, and the man she was in love with had been living a lie. It took a lot of years before Quayle was able to dig deep into the pain and trauma of that experience, which comes out in all of the brutally honest songs on On the Edge.

“It’s such a wild experience to be sharing it now, and not reliving the emotions of it, because I’m in such a healed state of mind,” Quayle acknowledges. “I’ve been able to put it into the songs. The songs have healed me in ways I never saw coming. I didn’t know that I still needed healing. Right. This is a whole new world.”

It wasn’t until her ex’s daughter, now an adult, began processing her own grief through painting that Quayle felt the freedom to explore her own pain as well.

“She’s an artist, an extraordinary painter,” Quayle boasts. “She was painting her way through her healing. And she started painting about his indiscretions and how she’s navigating loving her dad, but hating what he did. And that kind of gave me this crazy breath. I remember my shoulders just coming down, and just feeling the weight of it, that I didn’t have to protect her anymore. She’s a grown woman. She’s 26 and is capable of taking care of herself. But I think in my mind, I always had her as this little lady that I had to protect. It’s about her, and I have to protect her. And if I take this to my grave and no one ever knows, that’s my choice in that burden because I won’t let anything happen to this little girl. And so when she shared that with me, the words and the melodies just started — 12 years of repressed stuff started flooding my mind.”

The Montana native admits she has a mixture of emotions that she is now sharing one of the darkest, most painful seasons of her life with the world. Still, for all of the heartache she has been through, the release of On the Edge is also the beginning of a new chapter for Quayle, who realized how brazenly honest she can be with her fans.

“I had a total panic last week,” Quayle says with a laugh. “Like, this is really happening. Uh, I think what I’ve been blown away by is that ‘The Lost Years’ has been out now for a few weeks. And to see the response of the women and the men, and their own stories from Covid years lost years, losing a loved one, lost years being betrayed. That song I just wrote from my guts and my heart. I just was getting music out of me. And to see it resonate and give others a song that fits what they’re feeling, that’s really wild for me. Really wild. I’m excited for people to hear the whole body, because it’s my prequel and I’m still here.”

Quayle will perform on Tuesday night, November 8, as part of CMT Next Women of Country — Celebrating the Music of Loretta Lynn. The show will take place at City Winery in Nashville. A limited number of tickets are available here.

Find On the Edge and all of Quayle’s music at StephanieQuayle.com.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of True Public Relations / Nate Griffin