Stephanie Quayle recently released her brand-new album, The Seeker. The project marks her first full-length body of work since 2022. But the 10-track project wasn’t necessarily years in the making. In fact, it came at a time when Quayle wasn’t sure she would continue pursuing music at all.
One person changed everything. That person was Dolly Parton.
Before Quayle set out to create The Seeker, which arrived on Aug. 28, she had already built a strong career as an independent artist. Her music had amassed millions of streams; she had performed multiple times at the Grand Ole Opry, and, among other successes, she had earned recognition as one of Rolling Stone Country’s “Artists You Need to Know.”
However, Quayle found herself at a crossroads after being baptized in January 2024. Rather than feeling certain about what her future in music would look like, she found herself searching for direction.
So she prayed. And those prayers were answered.
“… I was really questioning, ‘Am I supposed to be in music? Am I supposed to be in the entertainment industry? Is this what I’m supposed to do?” Quayle recalled in an interview with Music Mayhem. “I cried out in prayer over that. And when I asked those questions to myself a couple of years ago was the same day that I got that phone call.”
That phone call? An invitation to interview her lifelong hero, Dolly Parton, for Walmart.
Quayle had never met Parton before. During their conversation, she told the country icon about her life and her music. Parton responded by speaking the words of her song “The Seeker” over Quayle and encouraging her to follow what God had placed in her heart.
Quayle took Parton’s actions and words to heart, returned home to Montana, and started writing what is now The Seeker.
Produced by Lukas Bracewell, the album fittingly opens with a version of Parton’s “The Seeker,” a faith-filled song that plays out like a request for guidance.
“‘The Seeker,’ for me, the song, the conversation has such tremendous depth,” Quayle shared of the tune. “And, to have The Seeker as the title of the album and the title track, the first song that we share is how this whole album came about.”
“The Seeker” suddenly carried even more weight when Parton passed away on Aug. 25 at age 80, just one day before Quayle spoke with us.
“To know that we were performing her song, ‘The Seeker,’ yesterday morning, just hours before getting the news, to say it was surreal is the greatest understatement,” Quayle shared through tears. “I’m probably gonna cry, sorry. To know we had that conversation, she chose to speak such life over me. And I feel that responsibility, and that’s what I want to carry forward.”
While the album opens with “The Seeker,” the song that inspired the album’s title and became the catalyst for its creation, the project comes full circle with its closer, “Drinking With Dolly,” a special 10th-anniversary version of the song Quayle originally released a decade ago.
“I’ve really made Jesus the center of my music and everything that I do, and I want to share these songs through these slices of life that can be as fun and silly as moments on a travel vlog, a song called ‘Old San Juan’ with my sweet husband to the depth of a conversation I had with my dad,” she says. “Or ‘Hard Line,’ where I think sometimes we think we have to be loud to be heard, but that song is soft for a reason because the words, the lyrics are the teeth, so to speak. They’re what is loud.”
As for “He Taught Me How to Pray,” Quayle’s father encouraged her to enlist a Gospel choir for the song, something she’s glad he did.
“He was right, and it just brought so much dynamic to the song,” she shares.
Her father also appears in the music video, a decision that now carries even greater emotional significance for Quayle.
“One thing I’ve learned about my dad is that if I don’t hand him over the lyrics, he will rewrite my songs. So first things first, I made sure I had a print of the lyrics when I played it for him on his birthday…” Quayle joked. “Just being able to share that with him, a gift that is not monetary, a gift that is not something someone could just discard. I think that being able to have something that lives beyond both of us and is such a testimony to our faith, I was like, ‘That is the greatest gift I feel I could give him.’”
“Having him in the video, I mean, I’ll never forget the day the song came out… I wasn’t sure he would be here for that,” she continued. “To have him in the video just was able to memorialize it and know that we’ll have that beyond us.”
Faith is undoubtedly the album’s emotional through-line, but Quayle isn’t interested in telling anyone else how to live.
“I’m unapologetic about my faith,” she says. “I’ve really made Jesus the center of my music and everything that I do… I think that I’m not telling anyone how to live. I’m just sharing how I live. I’m sharing my stories through my songs.”
But on The Seeker, Quayle still makes room for humor, romance, family, Western tradition, and the messy, ordinary moments that make up a life.
“Cowboy Phase” is inspired by Quayle’s husband, whom she describes, without hesitation, as her “smoking-hot husband.”
But the joke quickly gives way to a more meaningful confession.
“The most attractive part about him is his faith,” she says.
The song plays with the familiar imagery of the cowboy—the hat, boots, and jeans—while asking listeners to look beyond the costume. Does he check every fence in every field? Does he know every inch of the land? Does he thank God for the yield? Does he say grace over every meal?
Those details come naturally to Quayle, who grew up in Montana surrounded by the traditions of ranching and the American West.
While writing the bridge, she was driving toward the home of her stepson and his wife, who are ranchers raising a family and working with cattle and horses. She was on a stretch of road where two county lines meet when the song’s final section came together.
“I make little mini movies in my brain when I’m writing songs,” Quayle says. “And this was one of those that just had a sweetness about it.”
A sense of permission runs throughout The Seeker: permission to slow down, to trust her instincts, to create without chasing validation, and to make music from a place of authenticity rather than expectation.
Along with that, the album’s connection to Parton makes its release even more profound. So much so that Quayle listened to the interview they had done together repeatedly after hearing the news of Parton’s passing.
“I listened to our interview three times yesterday, maybe four,” Quayle says. “And I just listened to the words over and over that she shared with me. She spoke over me.”
What she remembers most is Parton’s ability to make people feel seen.
“For being the busiest woman on the planet, she always made time in those moments,” Quayle shares. “No matter how busy I am, I never want to be too busy to not be able to speak life over the person I’m sharing a moment with.”
Quayle hopes to carry that same sense of connection into her own performances.
“I very much can’t wait to take these songs to the stage…. There’s nothing like it. That’s the most beautiful part, I think, is that we have the opportunity to go see live music and, as artists, be a part of that exchange,” she says. “We might never know all the people in the audience, but there’s this connection that is irrefutable, and it just links us in a way that is so special and so beautiful.”
Quayle has plenty of traditional career milestones left to chase, but she no longer defines success by them.
“I think my definition of success has nothing to do with me, whereas it had everything to do with me before,” she shares. “The only way that I can continue making music is not having it be about fame.”
Now she asks a different question: Is she speaking life into other people? “Am I speaking life and singing life over others?” she says. “Is that bringing them to a place where they get curious about just wanting to know more of my why?”
She remains ambitious, but her ambitions have changed.
“I am very driven and ambitious, but that’s really more to help others than to help myself,” she says. “And I just want to serve through music and just make people feel seen and heard because I think that’s really what sometimes gets missed, and I don’t ever want to miss that again.”
Quayle has also refrained from sharing every goal publicly.
“I believe in earning it and working hard for it,” she says, “and also knowing that preparation is the greatest part of luck, and just trusting God for the process.”
While Quayle intends to take The Seeker to stages, colleges, and universities as her new chapter unfolds, above all, she wants listeners to leave with one thing.
“Hope,” she says. “I hope they take away hope from the album, as layered as that word is for me. It’s about perseverance. You can walk a marathon and still finish it….I think hope and faith are such ribbons throughout the album.”
After four years between albums, a career crossroads, and a profound spiritual reset, Quayle knows something about finishing. She also knows something about starting over.
“I’ve put out a lot of music, and then there’s a part of me that feels like this is my very first album,” she explains. “… So I’m comfortable with the uncomfortable.”
“I’m just really grateful to feel free within a space that can feel very restrictive,” she adds. “I’ve sometimes felt like I couldn’t be 100% me. This is as me as it gets. To be aligned and to have that alignment and that authenticity and just be okay if nobody likes it and if nobody shares it. That I am 100% good with the work I’ve done.”
For more information on Stephanie Quayle’s new album, visit her official website.
