MORRISSEY

The Worcester Phoenix
April 5 - 11, 2001

[On The Rocks]

New England soul

Songwriter/author Bill Morrissey at the Green Rooster

by Don Fluckinger
In Bill Morrissey's songs, some of his characters drink. Heavily. Is that part of the New England psyche -- which, as a folk songwriter, Morrissey has nailed in Faulknerian detail
-- or is it just that people who drink whiskey and beer to excess provide more provocative subject matter?
"They're outsiders, by themselves -- it's the only way they can get through the day." says Morrissey, who celebrates the release of Something I Saw or Thought I Saw with a gig at the Green Rooster Cafe Saturday night, his first album of new songs in five years. "A lot of times, it's just their own self-defense mechanism."
Morrissey's sparse lyrical vignettes feature people we've all met: the older bar patron who doesn't quite get the young fellows in the band playing loud music across the room ("That ain't rock and roll/That's just vaudeville plugging in," he says to the barmaid after observing the drummer lighting one of his sticks on fire); the married couple who call it quits, and on moving day surveys the empty house in which they've spent so many years together; and the man whose drunken friend phones a little too frequently to wax nostalgic about the same old times.
Bill Morrissey's voice is truly singular, combining the gravelly texture of Tom Waits with the inflectional range of Lou Reed. His acoustic guitar technique is also unique, having been modeled after that of early bluesman John Hurt, to whom he devoted an entire album, 1999's Songs of Mississippi John Hurt.
These days, Morrissey divides his time between writing and performing songs and writing novels. His first novel, Edson (Knopf, 1996) was about a folk singer living in a hard-scrabble town in New Hampshire, where Morrissey makes his home. While Morrissey the musician will be busy touring for a good share of April and May, his literary agent will be busy furthering the career of Morrissey the author, shopping a second manuscript to publishers.
The new book tells the story of a man's family life, which "isn't going well," as Morrissey puts it, alternating chapters set in the main character's New Jersey home and ones in which he's driving on Interstate 80, headed through Pennsylvania. "The novel really is about what happens to him on this trip and at home, and how that affects and changes him," Morrissey explains. "He realizes things about himself on the way."
An author is the ultimate stage manager, setting scenes and marching the characters toward their final epiphanies at the pace he chooses. Morrissey takes a similar role when it comes to recording his music. On Something I Saw, he wrote, arranged, and produced each number, and recruited a group of excellent players to accompany him -- including Marc Elbaum (tenor sax and clarinet), Cormac McCarthy (harmonica), and Johnny Cunningham (violin).
Rarely do the songs sound as if they were performed by a full band; no drums are in the mix. The solo instrumental lines are sprinkled conservatively throughout the recording, helping set the mood of each song without drawing focus away from Morrissey's voice. The arrangements came together long before Morrissey booked the studio time. "I pretty much knew what I wanted once the [songs were] written, as far as instrumentation, but nothing's etched in stone," Morrissey says, "so when you get a legendary fiddle player like Johnny Cunningham, he'll do things you didn't anticipate and you'll go `OK, I like that better.' But I can hear the texture of a bass and fiddle--or bass and harmonica -- in my head before I go in."
Decades ago, when Morrissey was musically coming of age ("in the pre-Windham Hill days," he calls it), he went to see blues players like John Hurt, Skip James, and the Rev. Gary Davis. While he devotes his live show to mostly his own songs, the blues remains a large presence in his life. "I don't consider myself a blues musician, but there's blues in my music," says Morrissey, who occasionally adapts a blues tune written by Tampa Red, Robert Johnson, or Hurt for his solo performances -- old blues songs that have stood up to decades of adaptation by musicians from quiet acoustic players like Morrissey to blaring rock trios like Cream.
"These guys were wonderful all-around musicians, they were working musicians, and their songs were that good -- they can't be killed."

Bill Morrissey plays at 8 p.m. on February 7 at the Green Rooster Coffeehouse with Rob Adams. Tickets are $15. Call 798-3010.