Born and raised in Newcastle, MORGAN EVANS is becoming known not only throughout the country, but as far reaching as Nashville. With many career milestones being reached over the last few months COURTNEY LAURA sat down with Evans to discuss how it is going and how he is feeling.
“It’s all about the live performance, that’s why I do it,” Evans began. “Being able to get spots at CMC Rocks the Hunter, Deniliquin Youth Muster and recently the Deniliquin Blues Festival have been some of the best experiences for me. I have been able to play next to Zac Brown Band, Bonnie Raitt, Chris Isaak and Santana.”
In recent months Evans has won both the APRA Professional Development Award and the CMC Oz Artist of the Year award. Evans shared his experience as being “pretty amazing”. The CMC voting system is fully fan based and “they got over 200,000 votes and I got the most for the new artist section, it is incredible and the most gratifying feeling. I was actually standing by myself at the award ceremony. It was the first award announced so there was no mucking around, 2 minutes in and boom there you go, I was pretty speechless and I am usually a good talker.”
“The APRA award is industry judged, so that’s a whole different level of acceptance. The cash prize that comes with it is so helpful as a new musician, dollars are always tight and although you have to tell them how to spend it, it takes a big load off and you don’t have to stress about the next dollar as you make the album.”
With both the industry and fans showing their acceptance of Evans on such a high level, he reflects, “it’s the best feeling.” In the last year, Evans has put out two EPs, which he “didn’t expect to be able to do,” but with his trip back to Nashville on the horizon, Evans stated, “those two experiences in the studio have put me in a much better position to now go and make an album. With this significant recognition there is a lot of pressure on me, I feel that it has to be really good.”
Summertime over in Nashville and he is looking forward to heading to the Key West Songwriters Festival. “It’s going to be amazing and it looks like one of the most beautiful places of the world.” Evans will be dedicating time to making and writing his new album whilst there and is looking forward to the CMA Festival at the start of June. “There is plenty going on over there and I won’t be bored that’s for sure.” Evans describes the American crowds as being “much crazier, compared to playing to an Aussie crowd which is more of a ‘good on ya mate’ vibe, but you know when they cheer it is genuine. The Americans have less inhibitions, when you finish they scream for about 10 minutes. The first time I played in America I got invited to open a stadium show for the CMA Festival. I played two songs with an acoustic guitar to 60,000 people. They had never heard of me before, as it was my first time in Nashville, and there were these ladies in Nashville with signs that said will you marry me with Morgan written on a blackboard sign.”
Next to the awards, Evans has also had many other memorable experiences including at CMC Rocks the Hunter. Evans was given “the fun job of taking a microphone and a camera crew out into the crowd and asking them how they are going. I got to do a few stupid things too, like riding the mechanical bull and dressing up as a tiger/lion/panther thing at the national geographic stand. When Mark Wells (Wellsy) started playing, I had to tell the guys we had to stop for a minute as we had to listen to Wellsy. I ended up finding a big group of people who were singing along to ‘Big Skies’, so I got in amongst them and sang along which was pretty cool. I basically got to talk to people the whole time and I had a great time doing it and will hopefully get to do it again.”
Evans began to discuss his experiences with touring with Taylor Swift and Glenn Frey. “[Swift] was a really nice girl, she asked us to come on that tour which was really amazing. It was so long ago now it almost feels like it was someone else and not me. We would get to the venue for sound check at 10 in the morning and there would already be a line up around the block. The crowds at those shows were like nothing I had ever heard or played to before.” Rivalling this experience was his show with Glenn Frey at the Civic Theatre in Newcastle. “I love playing at the Civic Theatre to Newcastle people, and when I walked off stage he [Frey] was standing there and had watched the whole set from the side of the stage. He has been in the industry for a lone time now and still genuinely loves music. He was just the nicest bloke.” Despite being two totally different experiences for Evans, “they were equally amazing,” he states.
With ‘Carry On’ launching on the CMC shortly after becoming their New Oz Artist of the Year, it became ‘Country Pick of the Week’, and Evans was delighted as this meant it was put into high rotation. “People have a good chance of seeing it and hopefully liking it and then going and requesting it to get it onto the charts,” he stated with hope. “It is also a very different kind of song to my previous three. It’s not as happy, but I think we did a really good job capturing the emotion of it in the clip, I feel like I have put myself out there and we have had a lot of positive feedback.”
“We needed to write something real, something different to show a different side to the music. We basically started drinking and it got really sad and we wrote the song. It’s about those days when you wake up wondering ‘what am I doing with my life’, and knowing you just have to carry on.” When playing at Rocks the Hunter, “Kasey Chambers came out and sang it with us. It was awesome, she is one of my all time favourites and it was definitely a benchmark moment for that song. Along with ‘Big Skies’, ‘While We’re Young’, and ‘Live Each Day’, it will become one of the staple songs in the set list.”
Morgan Evans performs at Lizotte’s, Lambton, on Sunday June 30, 2013.