![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/morgan_geer.jpg\")
Morgan Geer is into a lot of things, musically speaking. He\u2019s toured and recorded with Freakwater, the Handsome Family and other acts that exist on the edgy fringes of Americana. And since 2006, he\u2019s also been releasing albums and performing as Drunken Prayer. Six albums in, Drunken Prayer has made its most diverse \u2013 and quite likely its very best \u2013 album, Cordelia Elsewhere<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Throughout his musical journey, Geer has adopted different approaches for each successive Drunken Prayer release. In addition to the basic guitar-bass-drums lineup, Drunken Prayer\u2019s 2012 release, Into the Missionfield<\/i> features fiddles, cornets, flugelhorns, saxophone, Hammond B3 organ and other instruments plus multiple vocalists. 2013\u2019s House of Morgan<\/i>, by contrast, is a one-man effort that\u2019s as much noisy punk as Americana or outlaw country, but \u2013 somewhat uncharacteristically \u2013 there are synthesizers all over the tracks. \u201cI love [all my albums] for different reasons,\u201d Geer says with a laugh. \u201cBut it\u2019s always interesting to me what other people gravitate toward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listeners have a lot of choices where Drunken Prayer is concerned. And anyone who was confused by Geer\u2019s constant change-ups on his first few releases would soon learn that he was just getting started.
\nI Intend to Comprehend the Devil & the Blues (2015)<\/i> displays a traditional honky-tonk style, with a core roster of players that includes an Asheville rhythm section of Dave Gay and Lance Wille. Shifting gears yet again, 2018\u2019s Morgan Geer\u2019s Drunken Prayer<\/i> is an unadorned acoustic solo record. \u201cI\u2019ve noticed that that\u2019s become a pattern,\u201d Geer admits. \u201cThere will be an album that\u2019s more traditionally structured, and then the next one is inevitably just a little more off the wall.\u201d<\/p>\n
The artist readily concedes that he gets restless. \u201cI\u2019ll be into one thing, and then start to miss the other,\u201d he says. \u201cI try to keep it interesting for me, first and foremost, with the idea that I am<\/i> asking people to pay for these things. I don\u2019t live in just a bubble of whatever I happen to want to do; I want it to be enjoyable for other people, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
He succeeds on that score with his latest release. With the benefit of hindsight, each of Drunken Prayer\u2019s previous albums seems like a step on the road to making Cordelia Elsewhere<\/i>; the record adds up to a showcase of Geer\u2019s unique set of talents and skills. Mixed by famed producer-engineer Mitch Easter, the album features like-minded players including Asheville multi-instrumentalist and producer Brian Landrum and bassist Erich Hubner. Cordelia Elsewhere<\/i> blurs any perceived boundaries between Americana, folk, punk, rock and the singer-songwriter tradition.<\/p>\n
Most of the album\u2019s music was written several years ago, but Geer didn\u2019t initially have much in the way of words. That would change suddenly. \u201cWe were driving across country \u2013 from the South back to Oregon \u2013 the day of the 2016 presidential election,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThat gave me something to write about. All of a sudden, I had intense feelings about something. And I do my best writing when it\u2019s almost therapeutic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, Cordelia Elsewhere <\/i>isn’t an overtly political album. \u201cI felt a real sense of urgency, because I knew this time was going to pass,\u201d Geer says. \u201cI\u2019ve got a son, and [for him] I wanted this album to reflect the world through my eyes in 40 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he made a point of doing so without being too specific. \u201cI don\u2019t like to get too topical,\u201d Geer says. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t age well, and it doesn\u2019t really scan well for someone who\u2019s not walking in my shoes. I don\u2019t like to read someone else\u2019s diary. Like I said, you\u2019re still asking people to buy the thing.\u201d A representative example of Geer\u2019s approach is \u201cIt Happens All the Time,\u201d a tune that expresses unease wrapped up in an impossibly catchy, highly charged melody. \u201cFour Leaf Clover\u201d is an out-of-love vintage rocker that\u2019s bouncy and fun, with a viciously funny chorus.<\/p>\n
Geer \u2013 who shuttles between Oregon and North Carolina, but currently resides just outside Asheville in Emma \u2013 lives a life in music that\u2019s in keeping with the family tradition. \u201cThe family business has been music since anyone can remember,\u201d he says. \u201cMy grandfather had a big jazz band until the day he died, his father was a conductor, his mother was in the opera, and their parents were musicians coming over from Ireland.\u201d<\/p>\n
And although he writes to please himself, performing and crowd-pleasing is in Morgan Geer\u2019s blood. His earliest memory is of being on TV. \u201cI was sitting at my mother\u2019s feet while she played acoustic guitar on Louisiana Public Television,\u201d he says with a smile. \u201cIn my family, it\u2019s always been an honorable pursuit to be a musician.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Morgan Geer is into a lot of things, musically speaking. He\u2019s toured and recorded with Freakwater, the Handsome Family and other acts that exist on the edgy fringes of Americana. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16382,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,41,49,62],"tags":[725,3777],"class_list":["post-16381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alt-country","category-americana","category-interview","category-new-release","category-rawk","tag-drunken-prayer","tag-morgan-geer","cat-4-id","cat-6-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16381"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16602,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16381\/revisions\/16602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}