The Morning Pages – Rising Rain
The other day my buddy Joey sent me an email about a band his buddy is in. He described them saying ”They fuse a kind of bluesy country Americana sound with an urban city classic rock. You can hear flavors of Dylan, Gram Parsons, The Band, Neil Young, Wilco, Will Oldham, The Allman Bros, Leon Russel throughout.” Naturally, I got a boner. And not one of those “Interesting…” boners either. This was a full-on “I gotta check this out immediately!” boner. Maybe I’m talking too much about boners, but you can see I was pretty damn excited. Turns out, it was totally justified. The band, named The Morning Pages absolutely rocked.
So these guys are from Brooklyn and after my first listen, I immediately thought they sounded a whole lot like another Brooklyn act, The Weight. The Morning Pages are straight out of the 70′s, so much so that if I gave my dad their record he would probably be all “Oh man, I remember seeing these guys in ’75 at The Fillmore!” Of course, then I’d have to tell him he was mistaken and he would call me a “Smartass”. Anyway, the point is that these guys take a lot of their sound from The Band and Gram Parsons. That makes me happy as hell. Throw in a little Waylon Jennings and now I’m swimming in my own filth. Such evidence of this “pig in shit” scenario can be heard on standout tracks like “This City Keeps Me Down” which is a boogie-stomp of Country Rock and Roll which features a guitar solo that makes me want to throw myself against a concrete wall repeatedly. My favorite track at the moment is the breezy “Move to the Country” which sounds like a sped-up CSNY song influences by the great Levon Helm. The vocals of frontman Grant Maxwell and backup vocalist Kendra MacDevitt really shine through on this ballad about leaving the city behind for a simpler life out in the country. I’m also a big fan of gospel music and the leadoff track “With the Lord” sounds like something you’d hear at a Felice Brothers concert. The song, seems to be about blind faith and has a killer hook to really grab you in. Awesome stuff.
So yeah, I think what I really like about these guys is the sophistication in their music. Brain spoke yesterday about how the Kingsly Flood writes stuff he can relate to, and I think The Morning Pages are the same type of band. The Porch is in the middle of a metropolitan city so sometimes we can’t really relate to Moonshiners and Mountain Men. The Morning Pages write country music handcrafted in a city and the results are pretty goshdarn great. I urge everybody to check out this record as I haven’t stopped playing it for the last week. I cant wait to see these guys out West soon. Going to be awesome…
Sorry about the boner,
Skeeter
http://www.myspace.com/themorningpages
“With The Lord”
“Move to the Country”
“Stumble Towards the light”
Check out this AWESOME video of them doing Bob Dylan’s “You Aint Going Nowhere”
