Christopher Crosby Morris
United States, Massachusetts, Centerville
Thank you, all. I have always wanted to be authentic and I think that comes through and that at this time in history people want to connect with things that are genuine amidst so much else. I've been at it a long time so there's other work of mine in various places - link has the MCA album from '77 and Amazon Music has a collection of mine titled 'Everybody Knows' that has my first self-produced tracks which have held up pretty well. If I could afford it I'd be in a studio doing my new songs with an engineer because I've never been good at being a musician and technician at the same time. Maybe that'll happen. I really appreciate your willingness to 'purchase' my songs but I've never seen a cent from N1M and sometimes suspect it's a hustle to keep obscure artists paying yearly dues; that's not why I make music anyway, I do it because I keep getting better and I'm obsessed with how it keeps unwinding and revealing new levels of itself. It's leading me home.
Good luck.
C
Today I posted another tune of mine, KEEP PUSHIN', for you. I hear my tunes in multiple idioms and like to present them accordingly. This version of KEEP PUSHIN' is dancey/bluesy/funky until the last part, when it goes to church; I hope you'll listen all the way through at least once to hear what I mean. I have a more gospel version in the works. I don't have a favorite, for me the fun is sincerely to put it across no matter how it's dressed.
Read moreKEEP PUSHIN' 107:14
Lordy!
Thanks to you all for pushing NO MAN'S LAND to the top of the hill. It was you and only you who who did it. I am clueless about how the N1M 'blincoin' thing works so only your continued plays and shares got us here. Hallelujah! Pat yourself on the back and then back to the wheel to get the rest of these tunes into orbit PLEASE.
Make a joyful noise with me.
Chris
Sorry to all who've been trying to find CAN'T TURN AWAY. I thought I'd posted it but FIRST LONG DAY came and took its slot somehow, so here it is. And it's special. Thanks to you, we're now at 4029 subscribers and that is worth celebrating with something special. CAN'T TURN AWAY was my declaration of freedom from the music biz and freedom to give you what you find here, true songs from true life. I suggest you listen to this one a few times at different volumes because there's more here than one listen or one hundred listens will reveal. CTA is a 3D stereo track, the kind you can walk around behind and hear from different viewpoints, it's primitive and majestic at the same time, it's high minded and urgent at the same time, it's fire and water.
Join me.
Fight hate.
Something I've proven to myself from posting tunes on N1M is that musical genres are dead. A bunch of my songs are considered jazz, americana, fusion, classic rock, RnB, all at once! I've always known that labeling music only has to do with the listener, not the performance. That said, I'll often re-do a song in another style to hear it with a new palate of colors but moreover to follow it through its own evolution as a central theme changing from time to time the way people do.
Thanks to all my new- and old-timers for checking us out. Recommend us to others please. We can't wait to see what happens next.
We belong to the band and you are welcome to join us.
Chris
I've never made a living in music, yet music has been a deciding factor in every major decision I've ever made. Much more than a pastime, music is how I keep track of the person I want to become and the one I am becoming and how true I'm being to what my heart would tell me if it could speak: "Go here, not there"; "This is a good person, this is not"; "You belong here, you do not belong here". Music you love should 'ring true' to you, confirm your place in the world, call you to go forward. Money or not, that's worth spending a lifetime on. Bless you all.
Read moreI thought if I posted here on N1M you might check me out elsewhere but no, that hasn't happened. Some of you have also asked where you could buy these tracks and stupidly I hadn't realized you can do that here so now I'm authorizing downloads as well. The new track today is CAN'T TURN AWAY. There's more guitar on this track than on any I've ever heard. Hope you like and download CAN'T TURN AWAY.
Read morePosted a new track from our album in progress today. It's called FIRST LONG DAY and is a way of saying thanks to all of you for being patient as we all undergo transformation to a new kind of living together. Everything worthwhile in life takes the time it takes and there's no use rushing it. When I wrote this I wanted to say that in a sense our lifetimes are like one long day, and only the first of many, if you plan to go on after this life. Love you. Stay safe and well.
Chris
I've always worked on music at home by myself so isolation is an old friend. What's different now is that all musicians are in the same boat. The song on the screen is for a new album I think you'll like and is like nothing you -- or I -- have heard before, which is what I always wind up doing no matter how hard I try to sound "current". What comes out is just me. So here's a picture of my little corner of heaven. Love you guys. Write. I'll answer you.
Read moreAbout Christopher Crosby Morris
Being musical is as close as I come to putting ego in service to sharing a meaningful moment. I want my music to pull us together, into a better place. Often it does.
Music is my doorway to the Mystery—our human condition. While music is changeable, expansive, invisible—feelings arising as sounds from our experience of this life—at the same time music is an ordering and organizing force that strengthens with exposure and reassures that there is a balancing principle at work in our vibrating world.
We all breathe, expand and contract in time with the beat of our hearts, so we are all musicians, from beginning to end. The point of musical life is harmony—finding your voice, listening to it, accepting it, strengthening it and the soul from which it springs, then adding that voice to others and others to it. Life is our turn to sing.
About me.
Ray Charles once remarked, “For every big name you know [in music] there are ten more back home who can put that big name’s stuff in the street.”
He said it a little differently.
I am not a big name in music. I am one of the ten back home.
I am fortunate to have been in many right places at many right times, to meet, get to know and be inspired by exceptional artists. Very fortunate was my 'adoption', as a teen, by Toshi Seeger (Pete Seeger’s wife) into America’s first family of folk music, the places they took me and the music I heard because of Toshi’s lifesaving gift of belonging to a lost boy—places like Newport Folk Festival and Carnegie Hall, where home made musicians like John Lee Hooker, John Hurt, Skip James, Gary Davis, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Clarence White, Doc Watson, the Chambers Brothers, Bessie Jones and her Sea Island Singers, Roebuck Staples and his children, Johnny and June Carter Cash, Mother Maybelle Carter, Bill Keith, Jesse Fuller, Bill Monroe, Jean Ritchie and so many others played and sang—far from their origins, music their traveling home, their doors always open.
After the folk boom, and in its late-sixties heyday, I was a night manager at Record Plant NY on 44th Street, where Hendrix was recording “Electric Ladyland” in Studio A, John and Yoko mixed and remixed the “Imagine” album in the Plant's plush penthouse studio and the Woodstock album took shape. There I was tapped to add rhythm guitar on Aretha’s first Coke commercial, received some sage advice from King Curtis a few days before he was stabbed to death on a sidewalk uptown, marveled to hear Bill Salter, Chuck Rainey, Jerry Jemmot and Larry Graham bring gospel to pop bass, watched rock stars of all stripes come and go . . . and spent every night for two solid weeks downtown at Richie Havens’ Salvation Discotheque on 8th Street just off 6th Avenue entranced by a then-unknown Sly and the Family Stone readying their spaceship, fusing back beat horns, gospel and blues into pop funk rocket fuel.
Before I was ready I was ‘discovered’ and produced for MCA Records by Al Kooper and had a narcotic taste of pop fame; looking back, thankfully not enough to derail my sanity or musical growth. I’ve lost friends to the road but lost more to the record business demand that artists endlessly recreate their first success in order to retain their market identity. I am forever grateful to Al for hearing, believing, and putting me front-and-center for the first time.
Before we made the 'Christopher Morris Band' album (MCA 2282 - eight of my songs plus one by Otis Redding), Kooper had me put together a thirteen-piece ensemble to tour by bus coast-to-coast in support of his new album. Little compares to kicking a big band into gear beneath the lights of a packed house in the middle of somewhere any night of the week.
The MCA album was an FM AOR (Album Oriented Radio) hit on a major label. I opened for BB King for a week at Paul’s Mall in Boston, while next door at the Jazz Workshop Mose Allison was holding down the same dates. From BB I watched how a leader remains the stable center of a band; from Mose, how to stay true to your musical self.
The artists I love are ordinary people who’ve studied and refined things only they can do. They bring their gifts into focus, within reach of all, and inspire others to develop their gifts. A great sound begins with one person who by him- or herself can walk into a room or onto a stage and take you 'there'. To such a person musical detail can be added or subtracted and their performance will still roll right up the middle. I have never aspired to being more than such an artist. Once upon the path I have never looked back.
I practice every day. I am still developing, still writing, increasing my emotional range and vocal scope; my musical person is a 'better self' in-the-making, and what time I have left I will spend growing it.
I love to play where people come to listen. I want to take everybody with me. I hope to take you.
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Past Events
Sat
Mar 07
5:30 AM
All Ages
Wild Winter's Night
United States, Massachusetts, Eastham, 10 Mckoy Road, 02642
Thu
Jul 07
9:00 PM
All Ages
Sundancer's
United States, Massachusetts, Dennis, 116 Main St, West Dennis, MA , 02670
