A Conversation with Morgan James – HuffPost 6.10.14

Mike Ragogna: Morgan, how did your latest album Hunter come into being? At what point did you decide you wanted to do a solo project?

Morgan James: I did four original companies on Broadway, so basically I was on Broadway for about five years straight, and all along I was singing on my nights off with various bands; I was kind of forming what was to become my band. And I didn’t really know what I was doing as I was trying to find my sound, but I knew ultimately I wanted a solo project. When I was signed to Epic two years ago, basically Hunter has been in the works the entire time, I’ve been writing it for about a year and a half, I’ve been trying out the material in front of live audiences, which was a really great way to find out what worked and what didn’t work, and L.A. Reid and Doug Morris at Epic and Sony really kind of gave me the opportunity and the time and space to find my sound. I would bring in music, I would try out music; the cream rises to the top and we eventually discovered the songs that were going to make the record.

MR: So you over-wrote and over-recorded, as most artists do these days.

MJ: absolutely. We over-wrote for sure; we tried out lots of different songs, and if you’d asked me eight months ago what I thought would make it, it was probably a different selection of songs, but the right songs come together, and you look at them and you know that’s the only combination there could have been. The production of many of them started to come together. The song that I wrote with Robert Glasper was the very last song we wrote and added to the record, and it seems fitting that it’s the last song on the record; it really ties everything together.

MR: Nice. What about the theme of this record? What was going on in your personal life that lent to the overarching theme?

MJ: Being a songwriter is a new title for me; I look up to songwriters, I put them on a pedestal, and for a long time it hard for me to even describe myself as a writer, because I think of myself as a singer first. I’m blessed with these great collaborators who’ve come into my life, and they all, pretty much to a person, said, “No, you’re a writer, you have to call yourself a writer. Dig deep into your journal and to your diary and to your heart and be honest, truthful and courageous.” You have to have a lot of courage to be a writer. So digging into some of these things, all these songs come from my life and from my personal experience and I think the overwhelming theme of the record would be catharsis; there’s a lot of raw material, a lot of passion, that’s coming out of this album. There’s also a lot of love, but all of that has come clearing, and I think that I tried to really trim away the fat.

MR: When you were coming up with the finished album, your debut album, what did it feel like? This was sort of the culmination of everything, wasn’t it?

MJ: It’s so funny because everyone in the music industry always jokes that it take your whole life to come up with your first record, and then of course everybody expects your second record a year later and you say to yourself, “Well I’ve only had a year for the next record.” I’ve had my whole life to make this record, and it is a culmination of everything. I’ve also been given a gift in that L.A. Reid and Doug Morris and everybody involved in this record have allowed me a lot of creative freedom. I got to have creative control and that’s so in a first, or in any, record, for an artist. So I’m very thankful for that, and as a result I’m so proud of the record. And like you said, it is a culmination of a lot of things. I have some multiple personality stuff going on the record. For instance, I sing all my own backup, and every single song has multiple choirs, and within those choirs are all these different personalities. In fact, when I’m in the studio, I name all these different voices. I think being in the studio with me is like being in an asylum.

MR: But then again, why is that so different from what you’d do on Broadway? With the roles that you’ve had on Broadway, I imagine you’d end up adopting various aspects of your personality.

MJ: Oh completely, and it’s interesting because on Broadway, you do the same thing every night, which is part of what makes it such a great training ground, but when I would do the same show eight days a week, which I admire so much because the ability to do the same thing eight days a week with the same level of quality is just a completely high art. However, when Monday would come, I would want to do everything differently, and I’d want every other aspect of my personality to come out. A lot of times people ask me how I keep my voice in shape, and I keep my voice in shape by singing every single frickin’ day. You just become a marathon runner, and nothing trains you like a Broadway schedule.

MR: Were there any revelations when you were recording the material?

MJ: I had so many of those kinds of moments. There were songs that started out in different keys and different tempos with completely different styles, and all the sudden we’d get in the studio, and we made a lot of revelations and discoveries when we were recording, and especially when we were mixing. “The Sweetest Sound” in particular has 32 instrumental tracks and 35 vocal tracks, and trying to put that into a space that can be heard by ears is pretty remarkable. So when we starting mixing and mastering, all the sudden all these different palettes of paint became a painting that was viewable. It’s a pretty remarkable experience. And I learned so much about making a record because of course until you make one, you have no idea how to make one. I knew how to make a Broadway show–I’ve seen that come to fruition several times over–but this was such a learning experience for me, and it’s pretty much been my full-time eating/sleeping/breathing for the past eight months. I’d love for every artist to be able to be this vested in a project. I feel like I’ve had a baby, basically is what I’m saying.

MR: What do you think as far as performing live versus recording? Is it equal parts joy for you?

MJ: For me they’re equal parts; they’re completely different; performing live is going to be part of my life forever. It’s what I’m going to probably spend the majority of my life doing. Now recording, you spend a concentrated period of time obsessing over the minutia and the detail and the perfecting. When you perform live, you have your one shot; you can’t go back and fix anything, and there is something so visceral and passionate. I feel like I just close my eyes and channel and I’m doing what I’m meant to be doing. I think that performing live is what I’m meant to do with my life. They’re so different. I try to capture aspects of the record, but I understand that everyone in a given audience is there to have a live experience, a one-night-only experience. I never do the same thing twice, I never sing the same set twice. I love them both so much, but when you think about an artist’s career, even if somebody does ten or twelve albums over the course of their life, that’s still only however many days recording. When you think about a live experience, you may spend 200 days a year singing live and sharing those experiences with audiences. They’re two completely different arts.

MR: Do you have some favorite “one-shot-in-time” memories as far as performances go?

MJ: Absolutely. There are moments performing that change the course of your life, and sometimes you know it at the time and think, “Wow, my life’s about to change,” even if it doesn’t change for anybody else. And there are moments where you look back and say, “Wow, I had no idea that that was so influential.” For instance, the night that Berry Gordy showed up at one of my gigs down at Rockwood. I didn’t know that was going to change the course of my life. He showed up; maybe there were 40 other people in the audience; and it was a rag-tag gig, it wasn’t even some shiny gig that I did. And it stuck out in his mind and he made it a point to make sure I got a record deal. A year ago Stephen Holden came to one of my gigs, and I remember there were 30 people in the audience, and again I tried out an entire set of new material, and he wrote an article singling me out. Those moments that somebody singles you out are very special, but you can’t really predict them. There are times that you feel like you nailed it, and then there are gigs that you don’t, and those are the gigs that you have to learn how to be a better version of the band, of yourself. You can’t hit out of the park every time.

MR: What advice do you have for new artists?

MJ: I think that there are so many artists that come up through the music business that want to be famous, and that want someone else to have the answers for them. I think we’re a generation of people that think they’re owed fame. It’s so hard to be a working singer and a working artist. I think if you have a vision of what you know you’re supposed to do with your life, and what you’re supposed to say to the world, you have to hold onto it and not compromise. I don’t believe in compromise. I believe it can either be your opinion, or it can be my opinion. Your vision or my vision, but it cannot be a combination of both because a combination of vision means mediocrity. I have an unyielding view of what it is to make something happen. If it’s going to be someone else’s vision, it needs to be theirs all the way. Even when you’re a young artist and you don’t have a support system yet, you still need to hold onto that shred of what you know to be true, and for people who want to just get famous, I don’t know how to advise on that because that’s never really been my goal. But I do know one other thing, you can’t stop learning. You can’t ignore everybody that came before you, you can’t stop taking lessons and rehearsing, because that’s the only thing that’s going to hold us to the memory of “Back in the day” or it will be gone forever.

MR: I think a lot of people don’t go there because it’s like “Oh, do your own thing because that’s what genius is all about.” Some people seem to like to jettison the basics, but my feeling is even Einstein had to learn a little math before he was able to come up with his theories.

MJ: Well of course, and Picasso, before he could make the genius things he made, he could still paint a stilllife. I’m old-school, I come from a classical music degree and studying jazz and blues and the roots of all of it, so I’m never going to come before anybody and say, “Well what I do is different from every single other person.” No, what I do is my own version of everything I learned, and I’ll never be a person that shuns everything that came before me. I’m still in voice lessons today. If anyone comes and criticizes anything I do, it can’t hurt me because I’ve already thought of it myself. I think for young kids, it’s harder to practice, to work, than it is to just try the easy route.

MR: Beautifully said. How often do you think of calling it a day and going back to Idaho?

MJ: [laughs] I could use a little vacation to Idaho right about now. I haven’t been back in a long time; I moved from Idaho to California when I was about twelve. I lived in California for a few years and then I moved here. I hardly ever get to go back to Idaho. All my relatives back there are so supportive and they think that my life is so strange, what I do, but they’re so supportive and loving. Who knows, maybe I’ll have a little vacation in Sun Valley.

MR: [laughs] Thanks, Morgan, I appreciate the time.

MJ: Thank you so much for speaking to me today!

Transcribed by Emily Fotis