Bt the time this story runs, Kevin Morby will be a father. His girlfriend, Katie Crutchfield, aka Waxahatchee, was seven months along when I met Morby in his Detroit hotel room in early June.
Relaxing on a day off in his black Hoka slide sandals – a far cry from the brown leather cowboy boots he wears on stage the following evening at St. Andrew’s Hall – the Americana singer/songwriter is eager to share in the excitement of becoming a dad.
“It seems psychedelic. I’m really excited for the human experience of it all,” he says. “For the longest time, it was this question of ‘Am I ever gonna do this?’ Maybe not. It also feels really good to have just made the choice. I’ve toured so much. I’ve been to so many places and I’ve had all these great experiences, and this feels like the actual next adventure.”
As Crutchfield’s due date looms, Morby sought some Southern California wisdom from his old friend, Ty Segall, who has a daughter of his own.
“He said that it’s humanity – it’s the whole point,” he says. “That really resonated with me. We only get one shot on this earth, and it seems kind of like this beautiful thing to continue the species. Also, in the age of AI, there’s something sort of beautiful about humanity.”
Humanity, as a theme, permeates Morby’s latest record, Little Wide Open. The cast of characters on the record are exactly the ones you can find anywhere in America’s heartland.For example, on 100,000 Morby examines the archetypal good ol’ boys that blast records like Master of Puppets from their muscle cars. These are the same guys who would likely leave an internet comment telling Hetfield himself to stick to the music if they ever read the lyrics to Disposable Heroes or Leper Messiah.
“I think a lot of people, especially Americans, take things just at face value,” he says. “They hear Bruce Springsteen sing Born in the USA and they’re not going to look any further than that. They’re just going to extract that message from it, like, ‘I was also born in the USA,’ rather than look at what’s happening in between the choruses.”
From the couch in Morby’s Detroit suite, he finds the silver lining of growing up in a place where popular culture was more or less beamed into living rooms or transmitted over radio waves.
“We moved to Kansas City when I was 10, and that’s where I spent my formative years,” Morby says. “My access to culture was through the radio, hearing bands like Green Day or Blink-182. You start researching where they’re from, and you’re like, ‘California seems amazing. People just skateboard and eat burritos and play pop-punk.’”
Morby calls Green Day the greatest gateway drug, for the music they exposed him to after seeing them live and for inspiring him to pick up the electric guitar.
“You go see them live, and they cover the Ramones, they cover Operation Ivy, and they cover the Replacements,” he says. “You leave their show having found out about some of the best music ever made. I got a seafoam blue Fender Strat. I wanted one that looked like Billie Joe Armstrong’s, and I wanted to learn Green Day songs.”
These days, Morby has a much more spiritual relationship with the gear he uses.
I like stuff that I can throw around, or if it falls off the stand it’s gonna be okay
“I feel like guitars find you in the same way a good book will find you,” he says. “It can be a shitty $200 Kay that’s in some weird pawn shop, a $3,000 Rickenbacker and then everything in between. I have a lot of guitars, and I feel like they’re all raising their hand to say, ‘I have some songs in me that you’re gonna want to write.’”
One of the guitars that is playing on this tour is a custom-made Seüf that’s modeled after a Jazzmaster. It has Morby’s name engraved on the fretboard and sunflowers on the neck, and since Morby is bringing it out on the road, it has to be built like a tank.
“On the road it’s all about durable gear,” he says. “I like stuff that I can throw around, or if it falls off the stand it’s gonna be okay. The Seüf sounds amazing. The company is these twin brothers. They didn’t treat the wood too much, so it’s got this really nice, natural wear and tear to it.”
As we wrap up our conversation, I ask Morby – someone who has traveled the world a million times over – why he keeps returning to the heartland.
“It’s just the simplicity,” he says. “I have a list of places I want to go to, but there’s something sturdy about the Midwest. It creates this boredom, hunger and curiosity for something else. A lot of people who are the best at that thing that they did are from the Midwest.
“If Bob Dylan were from the coast, maybe he wouldn’t have had this fire in him to want to write all those songs. Growing up this way in the Midwest can make you really curious about the world.”
- Little Wide Open is out now via Dead Oceans.
- This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.
