Teddy Morgan
guitar, vocals
born: in Minneapolis, Minnesota
Teddy Morgan is a changed man. The blazing blues guitar slinger of his early career has given way to the raggedly pensive vocalist and songwriter we glimpsed first on his critically acclaimed 1999 HighTone release, Lost Love and Highways. With his self produced DIY CD, Crashing Down, Morgan has yielded utterly to the complex influences of the Southwest, including its songwriting tradition, rooted in a shambling but cohesive blend of jarring rock and gutwrenching balladry.
Morgan isn't sure what it is about the desert that's opened up his songwriting. Broad spaces in west Texas almost routinely smack him with inspiration on his way home from a tour. And there are spaces in his heart and soul that seem wide open to him now that he's found a place to come home to. After three years living on the road and with assorted friends, there's now a Tucson cottage and a loving bride, with whom he's just celebrated a first anniversary.
In fact it was on his honeymoon that he started the song that's, for the moment, his favorite. The song is "Moon So High," a lost love rocker that oddly rose from a contented evening strumming acoustic guitar outside a rustic cabin just over Mt. Lemmon from Tucson. The song exemplifies the kind of paradox that pervades Crashing Down. That paradox is most evident on the dark, swamp-rock "Can't Be Found," inspired one night in the Texas desert. Morgan discovered then he had no fear revisiting with lyrics an emotional depth his current happiness keeps at a safe distance. The song is devastating in its emotional impact.
Whatever the source of his inspiration explosion, its timing is ideal. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Morgan later moved to Austin where he made two records (Ridin' In Style, 1994, and Louisiana Rain, 1996) for Antone's mostly blues label. At the time he was obsessed with blues and soul, to the exclusion of all else, and had little interest in writing songs. But Austin pal Gurf Morlix introduced him, pivotally, to the music of Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle. To Morgan, their music was a logical extension of his soul fixation, but it also stirred memories of his music-fan mother's Bob Dylan records that he'd loved as a teenager.
Enter a Tucson connection. As he'd visited periodically touring with bluesman James Harman and his own band, Morgan had become friendly with Jeb Schoonover who runs the Tucson concert venue, The Rialto. After listening to Morgan's raving about Earle and Williams, Schoonover made him three tapes of song-driven rock bands Morgan had never heard, including Wilco, Son Volt, Joe Ely, Dave Alvin and a host of others. Soon Morgan was flooded with a passion for songwriting as powerful as a desert monsoon.
Lost Love and Highways, released while Morgan was still living in Austin, won songwriting raves by distinguished critics from The Washington Post, The Village Voice and the Philadelphia Inquirer, among others. Greil Marcus included it in his Real Life Rock Top 10, and Ken Tucker of NPR's Fresh Air had it in his top ten CDs of 1999, along with Steve Earle's Mountain.
With Crashing Down, Morgan's songs have matured, still churning with rootsy rhythms and crunching with all the trash in the garage. But lyrically they're deepening and broadening like sun-baked cracks in a dry riverbed, under an endless western sky.
Albums:
- Ridin' In Style [Antones, November 1994]
- Louisiana Rain [Antones, September 1996] with
Gurf Morlix, Gene Taylor, Kim Wilson
- Lost Love and Highways [HighTone, November
1999] with Lazy
Lester
- Live Lo-Fi Solo [2001]
- Live at 7 Black Cats [2001]
- Crashing Down [2001]
- Freight [Sonic Rendezvous, April 2003]
R.J. Mischo & the Teddy Morgan Blues Band:
- Ready to Go! [Atomic Theory 1126, February
1997] with Percy Strother
He appears on the following albums:
James Harman - Two Sides to Every Story [Black Top 1091,
June 1993]
Big Al Dupree - Big Al Dupree Swings the Blues [Dallas Blues
Sociey 8902, October 1995]
Various Artists - Antone's 20th Anniversary [Discovery 74703,
July 1996] 2 CD set
Rick
Holmstrom - Gonna Get Wild [Tone-Cool 1176, March 2000]
Randy Weeks - Madeline [HighTone, March 2000]
Various Artists - Young Guitar Slingers: Texas Blues Evolution
[Antone's 49, April 2001]
Kelly Pardekooper - House of Mud [Trailer, August 2002]
Various Artists - Eaglesmith: The Songs of Fred Eaglesmith - A
Tribute [Twangoff, May 2003]
Cathy Rivers - Bleached [Horsethief, 2003]
The Carnivaleros - Step Right Up [November 2003]
Chief Schabutti Gilliame - Snakes Crawls at Night [Random Chance 17,
March 2004]
Various Artists - American Music: The Hightone Records Story
[Hightone 8195, September 2006] 4 CD Box set
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