How a Bathroom Recording Became Ian Munsick's Triple Tigers Debut

Sometimes the best ideas arrive when you’re not chasing them. For Ian Munsick, that moment came during a December 2024 holiday break when he picked up his guitar with no agenda in mind — just an itch to create. What tumbled out was a riff that wouldn’t let go, one that eventually became“Love is Blind,”his debut single with Triple Tigers, now climbing the Country Airplay chart at No. 59 as of May 23.

The story of how this song came together reveals something essential about Munsick’s creative process: he builds from melody first, lyrics second.“I’m an extremely musically inspired writer, more than lyrically inspired,”he explains. That opening riff was so compelling that the verses and chorus seemed to write themselves, the instrumental foundation pulling words out of him almost involuntarily. The concept — a cheater leaving him feeling manipulated,“right in the middle of a bow and a fiddle”— clicked into place naturally. Over the next couple weeks, he kept returning to it, refining and questioning, until he had something worth developing further.

In January 2025, Munsick brought that early version into a virtual writing session with Ryan Tyndell (“Springsteen,”“Everything She Ain’t”) and Jeremy Spillman (“Hell on the Heart,”“What Kinda Man”). What started as a raw musical idea got sharpened through collaborative tweaking: layering in Wyoming references (because, as Munsick says,“Anytime I can get the word‘Wyoming’in a song, I’m gonna do it”), borrowing an R&B/pop sensibility by repeating the pre-chorus before the second verse, and even weaving in a B.J. Thomas tribute. When they landed on the title“Love is Blind,”the wordplay clicked into place — the kind of subtle cleverness that reveals itself on the second and third listen.

What makes this track stand out isn’t just the song itself, but how it was assembled. Munsick recorded his original vocal on a work tape in a bathroom — better acoustics, limited resources, authentic capture — and held onto it for months. When Triple Tigers co-presidents Kevin Herring and Annie Ortmeier heard that rough version, they heard radio potential immediately.“That’s when I knew that they were the right team for us,”Munsick recalls,“because they could hear that through a work tape, and they weren’t afraid to commit to telling me that that song was going to be a hit.”

In the studio with co-producers Jeremy Spillman and Mike Robinson at The Fishbowl, the song underwent careful, intentional expansion. Robinson played a filtered mandolin part over the signature riff, duplicated and layered with different effects. Fiddle player Ross Holmes crafted a solo based on the chorus melody, handing off to steel guitarist Justin Schipper for the back half. Drummer Aaron Sterling replaced programmed beats with real percussion. Every addition served the core vocal, never stepping on what Munsick was singing. As Spillman notes, part of his role was keeping Munsick from chasing endless perfection — telling him when a take was already great and it was time to move forward.

The result is a track that feels distinctly his own, which is exactly the point.“That is my biggest M.O. as an artist,”Munsick says,“to make it feel like me.”Early supporters at KSON San Diego, KSCS Dallas, and WDRM Huntsville, Alabama are already getting behind it. Not bad for a song that started in a bathroom, lived in rough form for a year, and only found its final shape when the right team believed in what they heard.