BLURT’S BEST KEPT SECRET #14: Drunken Prayer
Jan 28, 2011
Portland-powered Americana with a dark, soulful and - dare we say it - intoxicating twist on the genre.
BY FRED MILLS
Drunken Prayer, the latest pick in our long-running Blurt/Sonicbids "Best Kept Secret" series, is the brainchild of Morgan Christopher Geer, who first pinged the national radar while woodshedding on the fertile musical scene of Asheville. During the first half of the previous decade his group The Unholy Trio (featuring members of Freakwater and future members of Reigning Sound) terrorized club stages on a regular basis and that band also earned a degree of notoriety after appearing on Bloodshot Records' 5th Year Anniversary compilation with a twisted cover of Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise." Definitely ‘tweren't your mama's brand of Americana, that's for sure.
Geer subsequently relocated to the Northwest (following a temporary sojourn to Cali), where he started putting together a new combo, and by 2007 he'd released the Drunken Prayer album on the Deer Lodge label, followed in 2009 with the Drunken Prayer... with Sam Henry live EP (Early Grave). He performs under that moniker both solo and with a full band, having collaborated at various points with musicians having a collective resume that includes the Breeders, She & Him, the Wipers, Beck, Eels, John Lee Hooker and Elliot Smith - and his live appearances are by all account raucously anarchic displays of primal roots-rocking (with no shortage of punk-sired aplomb).
In fact, when Drunken Prayer initially came to the attention of yours truly, I was smitten enough by the band's self-titled debut to wax enthusiastically for Harp magazine:
Straight outta Portland, Ore., by way of purgatory and a few county jails is Morgan Geer, who with his lapsed Baptist cohorts fully lives up to the bandname. Geer gets right down to the genuflecting with "I'm Gonna Lay Down in Front of My Lord," a stately, horns-and-slide-guitar number that's one part the Band, one part Tonight's The Night and several parts sinner's remorse. Later, in the woozy, Bad Seeds-in-New Orleans noir waltz "What Made Me Kill," Geer tries to blame his misdeeds on the booze 'n' pills, and his flophouse braying almost makes you want to take pity on him. Almost. Because by the time the band plows into a twang-glam-punk, positively murderous, version of Leadbelly staple "Take This Hammer," you start to get the sense that Geer likes his sinnin' - a lot. Upright citizens, drop to your knees and utter a few prayers of your own if the band comes to town. This Geer boy, he's bad news.
So I was doubly excited to get the good news that Geer has been hard at work on a full-length, tentatively titled Into the Missionfield, that he plans to have out sometime this year - about time, considering the massive potential he's demonstrated thus far. As you'll read in the interview below, he's injecting his new material with a dose of upbeat soul - his arrangement for the oft-covered traditional number "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down," for example, is markedly different from most versions that people are familiar with - in a clear quest to broaden and elaborate upon his core sound. Of the new tunes he played for me, a lot of stylistic ground gets covered, with standouts including "Ain't No Grave," the Latin-flavored/accordion-powered "Never Tends to Forget," the riotous, Nuggets-worthy garage-rocker "A Neat and Tidy Grave" and a sassy, almost poppy (!) number called "You Walk as if You Have Somewhere to Go."
Keep your eyes peeled, then, for new Drunken Prayer, and meanwhile, check out his official website as well as his MySpace page and Facebook page for additional details, tour dates and song samples. (There's also a YouTube clip below, following the interview, featuring Geer and the band doing "Ain't No Grave.") He's one of the good ‘uns, trust us.
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BLURT: What were some of your early formative experiences and influences, from records to concerts to... ?
MORGAN GEER: My mom taught me how to play guitar. I used to listen to The Beatles Live at The Hollywood Bowl, The Stones' Get Your Ya-Ya's Out and 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong constantly and wanted to learn how to play for myself. I really wanted to play bass, but a guitar is what we had. Then I got a simple 4-track recorder and started experimenting. I was a latch-key kid, so the 4-track was my chief companion for a while. I've remained insulated ever since.
Later I would play drums at our house which was directly across from the student center. Guys would hear me practicing while they were outside hanging out, and I was eventually recruited to play in a few of the college bands. There were quite a few students from Athens, GA at the time when that scene was really getting interesting. Much of that vibe rubbed off on my high school self. I got to see some amazing underground, avant-garde rock and roll and performance art in a lot of dingy basements. That had an enormous effect on me.
Tell us a little about the pre-Drunken Prayer era.
The first serious group I joined was The Merle. We were loud and listened to a lot Black Sabbath, Butthole Surfers and all the Sub-Pop bands. We recorded a decent demo but never put anything down that matched our live show which could be pretty outrageous.
After that, I met bassist David Wayne Gay during a stint in a country group out of Asheville, NC, called White Heat. He in turn introduced me to drummer Lance Wille. The three of us formed a band called The Gold Coats. We were later dubbed "The Unholy Trio" by a local writer and that name stuck. Through Dave's band Freakwater, Bloodshot Records got a hold of a cover of Public Enemy's Bring the Noise we did and put it on a compilation. The song was a result of having a few leftover studio minutes to burn, I never expected anyone to hear it. We toured with Freakwater down to SXSW for a Bloodshot showcase on the back of the song. An Austin filmmaker put it in a hilariously creepy video. Dave and Lance are now the rhythm section for The Reigning Sound.
I play some of the songs from this period as Drunken Prayer too.
You started putting Drunken Prayer in California in 2006, right? How and when did you make the move to Portland?
After I moved out of Asheville, I started re-evaluating. Up till then, I'd been fairly passive artistically. Drunken Prayer is closer to my own voice.
I knew Northern California wasn't where I wanted to be. In the meantime a friend, another southern expat, from Athens, GA, invited me to come up and visit him in Portland. He thought I'd like it and I did and stayed. That weekend was the last time Mt St Helens erupted. I took that as a sign. Portland is a lot like Asheville so it's not really that much of a stretch. After I got here it wasn't that hard to then find musicians who were sympathetic to the sound. I fell in with crowd at The Deer Lodge recording studio.
How about the Drunken Prayer album in 2007? What went into that, and how was it received?
Within about a year I had the first CD done. I was listening to Amazing Grace by Spiritualized, Tom Waits' Mule Variations and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning, an album of duets with Ralph Stanley. "Pearls and Swine" was the first song I wrote when I moved to Portland. "Take This Hammer" was fun. I adapted the lyrics from the Leadbelly song to this heavy, galloping song I had. We did the same thing with "Ain't No Grave" on this new record.
One Contemporary Country leaning blog described my lyrics as "challenging" but I took that as a compliment so I can't really complain. I'm glad to have any kind of impact at all.
Then you released a live EP in 2009 with Sam Henry [drums] and Miss Audra [keyboards] - thoughts on that?
Audra and Sam Henry are two of the most gifted natural musicians I've worked with. They really raise the bar. The EP's a field recording of a show the three of us did in the parking lot of Centaur Guitars here in Portland. I'm not sure we knew the show was being recorded. Rich Peterson at Peregrine Sound does great remote recording and we played really well that day so we decided to put the thing out. We made the packaging ourselves, individually assembling woodblock covers that our friend Mike Lund did on recycled cardboard.
I understand that your live lineup can take very different forms with different musicians, and you also do solo shows under the Drunken Prayer name?
In the past few years I've gotten deeper into Eels, Will Oldham, Magnetic Fields, Mugison and others that are pretty unbound by traditional structural norms. You never know what you're going to get and as a fan that's pretty exciting. The folks who play in Drunken Prayer are collaborators. Whether it's just me and the pedal steel or a big six piece band it's still Drunken Prayer music.
What are your thoughts on Portland in general? It's got a reputation for having a highly competitive music scene - can a musician make a living there without having to take a day job?
Drunken Prayer doesn't fall neatly into any specific genres so we're able to play in a lot of different situations and circles. I think we stand out for that reason, at least amongst the musicians we do.
If you play bass or drums you can get a lot of work in Portland but that's probably true of most places. It'd be pretty tough to make a living just playing music here but there are a lot of close-nit neighborhoods and most have their own couple of music clubs, so you could make the rounds. It's really easy to get around in Portland without a car. The public transit system is exceptional and the town is beyond bike and pedestrian friendly. I think that adds to a healthy live music scene. You don't have to worry about driving.
What's next, then? You've got a new album in the works...
The new album features some crazy talent. There's more of a focus on rhythm on this album. I have three of my favorite drummers playing on it: Jose Medeles from The Breeders and Scott McPherson on loan from She & Him (they also jointly own Revival Drums in Portland), and the great all-around drummer Anders Bergstrom. They all mesh so well, it's hard to tell who's who if you don't already know which of them is on which track.
It's shaping up to be more of an upbeat soul record compared to the sound on the first one, which is ironic, 2010 wasn't the happiest year of my life. I'm the worst person to describe my own music but expect horns and fiddles and UFOs. I'm excited to get this one finished to start on the next. I'm going through kind of a prolific period.
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