We had the pleasure of chatting to the wonderful John Morgan about his latest album, his songwriting process and his touring plans for 2025! Check it out below!
The album’s four months now, how’s it been since then?
Yeah man, it’s been great! We’ve been super busy but all good things. Yeah, it’s been a lot of fun, being on the back end of being done with the project. Sometimes it can get a little stressful, all that meeting deadlines and stuff, but it’s been great just getting to promote new music and give people a few different options on what I love and the sounds I’m into.
What’s it like putting an album out on your own, aside for writing for others?
Yeah, what brought me to Nashville was songwriting, I fell in love with that side of it. I always dreamed of being an artist at some point; I knew that day would come or it wouldn’t. Fortunately it came a lot sooner than I thought it would. It’s been a lot of fun, man. Like you say, to play my own stuff, put my own songs together, cut them the way I would cut them. I couldn’t be more thankful for the opportunity to get to do that, a lot of people don’t. It’s been a lot of fun!
Do you take a different approach to writing your solo stuff compared to writing for/with others?
I try not to, to be honest with you. I try to keep it the same. With having that three/four years of just being a songwriter when I moved to town, writing for other people, I didn’t quite figure out what my sound was, but I figured out what it wasn’t. So, when the time came to finally out this record together, I had a really good direction to where I wanted it to go. At that point it was just picking the songs. That was a lot of fun, kinda low stress, it was a blast. I got to be very hands on with this record, and I love being in the studio and being just dangerous enough the engineer that I am to lay something down and get to use some guitar work and stuff like that.
Are you still writing for other people now alongside your own stuff?
Yeah, yeah! I feel like going into a room with them, to me it’s worked a lot better and keeps the stress off of everyone in the room. It’s just writing the best idea. To me it doesn’t have to be ‘for me’ or ‘for you’, let’s just write the best idea that we can. It’ll find a home.
It’s always fascinated me, being more from the rock background where a band will get together and write their own stuff, so to talk to people (especially in the Nashville scene) who will just get together and write stuff and split it off to different artists is really cool!
It is. It’s odd in some ways, because of that it can get weird, but I try to eliminate any of that just because I don’t want people to feel pressured writing for me. Sometimes when that happens they hit it too much on the nose and it’s like ‘I’ve already got this’. That’s when you start running into that, so that’s why I just try to write the best thing possible.
Are you planning a follow-up at all?
Yeah man, I’m always putting projects together in my phone notes! I love going through songs and just filtering out songs that like… is this something I want to sing for the next 10 years? Is this a message I want to send out? Really having the time to go through that is awesome so I try to get a head-start on it whenever I can and have the songs ready to roll out whenever it’s time to go back in. We’re always killin’ it, man!
You’ve got quite a busy rest of the year planned, right?
Yeah! We’re going on a little fall tour, starting in October. Kinda all over the place, East Coast, West Coast, it’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’m bringing out some friends of mine for the Friends Like That Tour. We’re just gonna keep it casual. I love… we’re about to announce the guests for this tour but both are great acts; people who I think are great humans for one, but also just really talented people who haven’t got the spotlight I think the deserve. I’m just hoping this will benefit them in some way!
I imagine it’s pretty cool to get to hit the stage and play your own material live?
It’s wild going from playing to 300 chairs at a festival at 1pm to getting a better slot and playing at least close to dark and having a handful of people singing the lyrics back. There’s no better feeling! That’s why I’m out here, that’s what keeps me out there. If I was in it for any other reason I would have hung it up by now. I just love playing shows, and I get to play it with my band! We were all buddies and played in separate bands before. That means a lot too, I’m excited to catch some success with those guys, too!
Did they contribute to the album, too?
Yes, my bass player and drummer both played on that entire record. It was really fun. That’s what feels great about getting creative control; they were really cool with me having a direction and chasing it. A lot of that comes with earning that trust starting out as a songwriter and producer. Just having a little bit of that background gave them that trust in me to get it where it needs to go.
Do you have any plans/aspirations to come to the UK at all?
Always man! You guys have been such huge supporters of my music for so long. I love looking at the Spotify stats and just seeing all over the world who’s streaming my music. It’s pretty mind-boggling! I would love to get out there at some point and see you guys in person, that would be awesome!
It’s really taken off over here and in Europe in the last few years few years or so, so would definitely be cool!
Do you have a dream tour lineup you’d want to be a part of?
I would love to… there’s a tonne of combos running through my head but obviously I would love to go on the road with Eric Church. Keith Urban’s another guy I’d love to be out with, he was another inspiration to me as a guitar player early on. I would love to do that. Maybe it’s Keith and Eric co-headlining, maybe Zach Top for direct support and then I’ll open!
I’ll be there, front row!
Do you have a song you wish you’d have written in the past?
That’s a great question! One of my favourite songs is an old Keith Whitley song, ‘I’m Over You’. That song, there’s just so much emotion in there which is so hard as a writer if you’re not feeling that emotion. That song, there’s was definitely emotion when writing that so I’ve always been intrigued. Hopefully I can wrote something close to that one day!