Post by geezer on Mar 18, 2014 19:43:04 GMT -5
Let me introduce, Gurf Morlix
Partial Bio: For the whole story, please visit: www.gurfmorlix.com/bio
Partial Bio: For the whole story, please visit: www.gurfmorlix.com/bio
Music captured Morlix's imagination from a very early age growing up in Buffalo, New York, as he soaked up the many sounds to be found on the airwaves. On hearing the Everly Brothers singing "Cathy's Clown" for the first time, Morlix found his mission in life. "It was like, 'That's what I want to do!' It was earth-shattering music to me, really amazing." After seeing the Beatles make their U.S. debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show," his fate was sealed.
Starting out on bass and moving to guitar, Morlix was playing professionally by his mid-teens (his long-time friend Peter Case made his stage debut between sets by Morlix's band). Mastering new sounds and new instruments became a lifelong pursuit when he heard the steel guitar on Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" — he got himself one and then joined a country band to learn how to play it. The band members turned him on to country icons like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, who remain indelible influences. By the time Morlix finished high school and struck out to play music in such warmer climes as, first, Key West, and then in 1975, Austin, Texas, he had a rich musical vocabulary that included rock, country, blues, folk and R&B, and a growing yen to create music in a place where all of them met and intermingled.
During his first stint in Texas, dividing his time between Austin and Houston, Morlix played in a band with kindred souls Buddy and Julie Miller, toured with Stevenson (known for his hits "My Maria" and "Shambala"), worked with Texas cult legend Foley, and made his recorded debut playing bass on Eric Taylor's Shameless Love album. In
1981, he moved to Los Angeles and fell in with neo-country and roots artists like Dwight Yoakam, Lauderdale and the Millers, and also finally met Williams, who had played the same circuit as Morlix in Texas. He also toured with Zevon and Penn (and can be heard playing steel guitar on Penn's Free for All album), briefly reunited with Case as a member of The Plimsouls (and also sang on Case's solo debut), and recorded four tracks with Jerry Lee Lewis for the Great Balls of Fire soundtrack album.
In 1991 Morlix returned to Texas, settling into a house outside Austin where he installed his Rootball studio at the end of the 1990s. In addition to offering his production clients a comfortable place to make their records, having the home studio led Morlix to start making albums of his own.
He'd been writing songs for years, and holding his creations to the same high standards set by the songs of those he worked with. As the '90s came to a close he finally felt he had a strong enough set of songs to strike out on his own. "I had the studio, so everybody started asking me: Well, when are you going to make a record? Then Buddy Miller made his first record [on which Morlix played guitar, bass, sang and co-wrote a song], so I made one," he explains. In between sessions at Rootball with his clients on which he produces, engineers, masters and plays a range of instruments, Morlix cut his first solo release, Toad of Titicaca, in 2000. The Austin Chronicle hailed it as "a fine solo debut," and noted music journalist John Morthland greeted it as "an eclectic yet seamless set, full of pleasures and surprises both large and small" on Amazon.com.
With his debut and each album to follow, critics and listeners who had noted the quality and integrity of Morlix's work with other talents greeted his emergence with enthusiasm. Fishin' in the Muddy in 2002 was dubbed "a romper stomper" by the Austin Chronicle, while All Music Guide found it "hypnotic in its shambolic, loose-wound, grooving glory." Morlix's love for gutbucket C&W and honky-tonk informed his third release in 2004, Cut 'N Shoot, which All Music Guide praised as "a solid country record, stripped to the rag and bone shop of the heart, and full of broken love songs [with the] requisite irony, humour, and a gritty, honest approach that is sorely missing from almost all country records these days." Growing ever more secure with stepping out front as a writer and singer, he released the "splendid, moving collection" (Austin Chronicle) Diamonds To Dust in 2007, which led critic Richard Skanse to observe on CD Baby.com that "Morlix should henceforth be regarded as nothing less than one of the most compelling and formidable songwriters in his adopted home state of Texas, if not in all Americana music."
And now with Last Exit to Happy land, Morlix rightly feels he has come into his own as an artist, songwriter and performer. "I'm really enjoying writing songs, making my records, and going out and playing," he notes. His ever-expanding touring circuit has already taken him across North America and to Europe and Japan.
Morlix will of course continue to produce and play with others, but finally adding his own voice to the chorus of great American music is a welcome (if not long overdue) move. For as Skanse rightly notes on CD Baby, "more Morlix, as any Gurf connoisseur can tell you, can only be one thing: cool."
Starting out on bass and moving to guitar, Morlix was playing professionally by his mid-teens (his long-time friend Peter Case made his stage debut between sets by Morlix's band). Mastering new sounds and new instruments became a lifelong pursuit when he heard the steel guitar on Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay" — he got himself one and then joined a country band to learn how to play it. The band members turned him on to country icons like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, who remain indelible influences. By the time Morlix finished high school and struck out to play music in such warmer climes as, first, Key West, and then in 1975, Austin, Texas, he had a rich musical vocabulary that included rock, country, blues, folk and R&B, and a growing yen to create music in a place where all of them met and intermingled.
During his first stint in Texas, dividing his time between Austin and Houston, Morlix played in a band with kindred souls Buddy and Julie Miller, toured with Stevenson (known for his hits "My Maria" and "Shambala"), worked with Texas cult legend Foley, and made his recorded debut playing bass on Eric Taylor's Shameless Love album. In
1981, he moved to Los Angeles and fell in with neo-country and roots artists like Dwight Yoakam, Lauderdale and the Millers, and also finally met Williams, who had played the same circuit as Morlix in Texas. He also toured with Zevon and Penn (and can be heard playing steel guitar on Penn's Free for All album), briefly reunited with Case as a member of The Plimsouls (and also sang on Case's solo debut), and recorded four tracks with Jerry Lee Lewis for the Great Balls of Fire soundtrack album.
In 1991 Morlix returned to Texas, settling into a house outside Austin where he installed his Rootball studio at the end of the 1990s. In addition to offering his production clients a comfortable place to make their records, having the home studio led Morlix to start making albums of his own.
He'd been writing songs for years, and holding his creations to the same high standards set by the songs of those he worked with. As the '90s came to a close he finally felt he had a strong enough set of songs to strike out on his own. "I had the studio, so everybody started asking me: Well, when are you going to make a record? Then Buddy Miller made his first record [on which Morlix played guitar, bass, sang and co-wrote a song], so I made one," he explains. In between sessions at Rootball with his clients on which he produces, engineers, masters and plays a range of instruments, Morlix cut his first solo release, Toad of Titicaca, in 2000. The Austin Chronicle hailed it as "a fine solo debut," and noted music journalist John Morthland greeted it as "an eclectic yet seamless set, full of pleasures and surprises both large and small" on Amazon.com.
With his debut and each album to follow, critics and listeners who had noted the quality and integrity of Morlix's work with other talents greeted his emergence with enthusiasm. Fishin' in the Muddy in 2002 was dubbed "a romper stomper" by the Austin Chronicle, while All Music Guide found it "hypnotic in its shambolic, loose-wound, grooving glory." Morlix's love for gutbucket C&W and honky-tonk informed his third release in 2004, Cut 'N Shoot, which All Music Guide praised as "a solid country record, stripped to the rag and bone shop of the heart, and full of broken love songs [with the] requisite irony, humour, and a gritty, honest approach that is sorely missing from almost all country records these days." Growing ever more secure with stepping out front as a writer and singer, he released the "splendid, moving collection" (Austin Chronicle) Diamonds To Dust in 2007, which led critic Richard Skanse to observe on CD Baby.com that "Morlix should henceforth be regarded as nothing less than one of the most compelling and formidable songwriters in his adopted home state of Texas, if not in all Americana music."
And now with Last Exit to Happy land, Morlix rightly feels he has come into his own as an artist, songwriter and performer. "I'm really enjoying writing songs, making my records, and going out and playing," he notes. His ever-expanding touring circuit has already taken him across North America and to Europe and Japan.
Morlix will of course continue to produce and play with others, but finally adding his own voice to the chorus of great American music is a welcome (if not long overdue) move. For as Skanse rightly notes on CD Baby, "more Morlix, as any Gurf connoisseur can tell you, can only be one thing: cool."
