Putting his stomp on the Boston club scene
"Stomp" is a word Frank Morey uses often when talking about the active ingredient that propels his barroom-ready roots music. Catch him at any of his gigs around town -- make that towns; he currently holds down residencies in Cambridge, Boston, and New York City -- and you'll realize it's something he likes doing even more than he likes talking about it.
"As a writer and performer playing bar rooms, you kind of have to put a 'stomp' to everything," says Morey over the phone from his home in Lowell, where a snowstorm is threatening his plan to play a one-off gig in Somerville. "In a loud bar, a beautiful song can go over [listeners'] heads or float under their glasses. If you want to get the song and the story out there, you've got to have a beat that people are going to pay attention to."
Increasing numbers of people have been paying attention to Morey since he emerged in 2000 with "Father John's Medicine," a CD that sounded far older and wiser than his then 27 years, and a rollicking live show that hurtled like a freight train on a mainline back to the boweries, factories, and back alleys of the early part of the century -- the 20th century .
Morey's music, a ramshackle Salvation Army racket of junkyard blues, rusty folk, and hard-bitten country sung in a tar-and-turpentine voice that recalls Howlin' Wolf and Tom Waits , refreshingly bypasses fleeting fads or fashion statements. In fact, his material seems to ignore the last 40 years or so of pop, punk, and most every trend in between. Morey cites Ray Charles and Roy Orbison as primary musical inspirations and readily admits that his taste pretty much tops out around the 1950s.
No wonder his fourth and latest CD, "Made in U S A ," with its assortment of tracks with titles such as "This Ol' Life (Seems to Be Taking Forever)" and "Lord Have Mercy (When I Lay My Burden Down)," sounds as if it was made by someone born not during the 1970s -- Frank got here in '72 -- but closer to the 1870s.
"Mostly," Morey says , "it's a primal sound that seems to have been bred in Americans since slavery, really, that came out of field hollers. Rock 'n' roll, blues, jazz, and everything else came out of that. I just skipped the '60s" -- when lengthy guitar solos and improvisational jamming became cornerstones of rock and a blues renaissance -- "and just stayed with the root of the song." Morey says he prefers to build the body of his tunes with voice and guitar, while his band -- ex-Shods drummer Scott Pittman on a prewar trap drum kit and Andrew Bergmann manning an upright bass -- fleshes out the contours, adding texture, coloring, and dynamics.
Make no mistake: "Made in U S A " is not some ossified relic that's been left to molder in a dusty attic or dank basement. It is rife with throbbing life, the deep beat and ache of the human heart, and it holds more than its fair share of good humor that winks and grins back at you, like a drinking buddy telling you a story on Saturday night. One of the disc's highlights, for instance, is the bawdy, brass-blasted "Standing on a Corner," whose opening line begins: "I was standing on a corner with a dealer and a whore and I was as drunk as I could be." The track's parenthetical title bills it as "a love song."
Morey's apprenticeship with the music scene in and around Boston began a decade before he ever put out an album. Growing up north of Boston, Morey moved to Lowell during his teenage years, picked up the guitar, and began hanging around the clubs and bars in Lowell and Cambridge, hoping to catch a show by local roots luminaries like Dennis Brennan or the Tarbox Ramblers . "Skipping high school classes and staying in the city and writing songs just came kind of natural," Morey recalls. "I was a terrible student, but I did get through and graduate. I think there was some begging involved."
On "Made in U S A ," the depth and reach of Morey's musical education could not be clearer. Delta blues sit along Appalachian country, and rural gospel mingles with urban folk. As for the racial lines that have historically marked and separated these idioms, Morey says he never gave much thought to those divisions. Instead, he's always seen music as a bridge .
"Listening to music growing up, Charley Pride sounded like Hank Williams and George Jones put together, and here was this black dude singing country and western songs," says Morey. "And rock 'n' roll? It was white kids trying to play blues. A lot of people say, 'So-and-so stole from so and so,' and that's not how it is. I look at it like it's all a progression of a feeling, of a song, of a story passed along. I don't think any musician ever thought up the idea of separating a black and white style of music."
BITS & PIECES Tonight Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3 headline T.T. the Bear's. The Cold War Kids are downstairs at the Middle East. The Information is at Great Scott. The Ray Mason Band hosts a CD-release party at the Lizard Lounge. Tomorrow The Lyres headline the Abbey Lounge . Andrea Gillis is at the Plough and Stars. Sunday The Real Kids are at Great Scott. Monday Winterpills are at the Middle East Upstairs. Tuesday Session Americana is at the Lizard Lounge. Thursday A benefit celebrating Boston musician Jon Erik Johnson, who died unexpectedly at age 40 in January, gets underway at T.T. the Bear's with the Bourbonaires, Raging Teens, Death & Taxes, and Honey Badger .
