Morgan James – HuffPost 6.10.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Morgan James: 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.