Think
about Sade, the cool and exotic British chanteuse known for "Smooth
Operator." Now consider the "Texas Man" with an eye patch, Mike
Morgan, whom Guitar World
called "a genuine blues guitar hero" known for his incendiary
playing. Mike's got all Sade's records and loves her jazz band.
And on his next album, which is currently in pre-production, "I've got one song I could really hear her recording," he said in a recent phone interview.
That's in addition to Morgan-penned numbers such as a "radio-friendly rootsy-rock song" that he and his band the Crawl have tried out live, an Otis Redding-like ballad, a couple of R&B "Al Green-ish-type things," a Louisiana-style ballad, a few shuffles, some "funky things," and "a Marvin Gaye ‘What's Goin' On' thing - I've never recorded anything like that."
Obviously, Morgan is a study in contrasts. "I've got a deep traditional vein running through me, but I also get ideas from a lot of different places," he said. "I've got a pretty good traditional backdrop, but I've got an open mind to other things, too."
Mike Morgan & the Crawl will bring this eclectic brand of Texas roadhouse blues sautéed in Southern soul and dipped in Chicago sauce to the Redstone Room in Davenport tonight.
Like his live shows, the upcoming album is "a pretty good hodge-podge," Morgan said. And that variety shows up in his original songs. Listen to any one of Morgan & the Crawl's nine albums, and it's hard to distinguish the covers from the originals, a sure sign of a well-written song.
Mike said he's excited that one of his songs is being covered by George Thorogood: "I Got My Eyes on You," from the I like the Way You Work It album. "I pride myself on that more than playing guitar or performing. My talent is in songwriting - I was writing songs way back before I even really had a band."
The process is intuitive, with no set formula; Mike has a tendency to subconsciously reflect what he's been listening to in his songwriting. "Sometimes I get an idea on the guitar and just start singing something to fill the space," he explained, "and other times I'll sit down and write the words and then put an arrangement to them."
The songwriting emphasis is a bit ironic considering that Morgan is generally lauded for his guitar-playing and his live performances. Blues Beat said Morgan is "a musician of many dimensions. He coolly blasts through the entire repertoire of guitar licks from the furious slide of Elmore James to the tasteful notations of T-Bone Walker or the soulful slashes of Magic Sam."
Don O, a Dallas DJ who wrote the liner notes for Morgan's Looky Here! album, has noted that Mike is "a very soft-spoken, almost shy young man, except when he has a guitar in his hand. Then, look out! That instrument will make him stomp on bars, jump up and dance on rickety tables, slide down banisters, ride around on folks' shoulders, play slide with ladies' beer bottles ... ."
Steve Brundies, chair of the Mississippi Valley Blues Society Events Committee responsible for bringing Morgan to the Redstone Room tonight, said of Mike's playing: "Sometimes it sounds like two guitars at once. And the shows are upbeat, up-tempo, a lot of fun." This is the second time this year that the blues society has brought Morgan to town.
"We gotta lot of energy," Mike said of his live shows. "It's fun - good songs and a good time." Yet he acknowledged that "songwriting always came easier" than playing or singing: "Guitar-playing I always had to work at."
Born in 1959 but not into a musical family, and growing up in a little Texas town where there was virtually no one to share his musical ideas with, Mike "fiddled with guitar since I was a kid. ... I picked it up ... by listening more so than learning." He played along to the Beatles, Sam & Dave, Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett on the radio. Mike claims he didn't get really serious about playing guitar until he started his first band in 1985 or '86.
"I didn't have a lot of direction," he said. "I didn't really start learning 'til I started this band. What got me the most inspiration was, around 1985, this musician in my hometown told me I had to listen to this record; it was Stevie's first record" - Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood - "and it moved me. I wasn't the only guy who felt that way. There was something real inspirational about what he did - but I never tried to be a clone. Probably his biggest inspiration was lighting a fire."
Another lifelong flame was lit by Darrel Nulisch, one of the first vocalists for the Crawl (and recently at the Mississippi Valley Blues Festival as vocalist for the James Cotton Blues Band). "Darrell turned me on to the cool stuff," said Mike - the older blues, Chicago blues, music by Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Milton, Slim Harpo, Lazy Lester, Magic Sam, Otis Rush, Hound Dog Taylor, Little Walter - "all these guys, I didn't know who they were."
Mike's contemporary influences similarly led him along a path where "you kind of go backwards." After listening to musicians such as Kim Wilson and The Fabulous Thunderbirds, guitar great Ronnie Earl, and fellow Texas guitarists Jimmy Vaughan and Anson Funderburgh, he traced their steps to see who had influenced them. "I learned who they listened to, and then I found out who they learned it from. Stevie was the same way. He listened to Howlin' Wolf, and he got a lot of stuff from Albert King." In blues circles, this going back to absorb the sounds of the elders is called "doing your homework." And Mike Morgan was an excellent student.
In 1990, after making a name for themselves through extensive touring - besides being known as one of the best contemporary blues bands in Texas - Mike Morgan & the Crawl (the group is named after a Lonnie Brooks tune) found a national audience with the release of Raw & Ready. This was followed by six more albums on the Black Top label. The band also saw three different lead vocalists during those first 15 years: Nulisch, then Lee McBee and Chris Whynaught.
The new decade saw another change: Morgan himself became the lead vocalist on 2000's Texas Man and 2004's Live in Dallas, both on the Severn label.
"I've always felt strongly about having a good singer," Mike said, even while acknowledging that singing is not his forte. "But what happens, people get used to a certain singer, and then when he's gone it's an issue, [But] as long as it's my band, I'm not going anywhere."
Mike Morgan & the Crawl will perform at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, July 26. Admission is $8 for the general public, and $6 for Mississippi Valley Blues Society members.
To listen to the Reader's interview with Mike Morgan, visit (http://www.rcreader.com) or (http://www.qcspan.com).
