Bill Morrissey (born on November 25, 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut) is an American folk singer/songwriter from New Hampshire. Many of his songs reflect the harsh realities of life in crumbling New England mill towns.
Bill Morrissey's astute lyrical gifts and graceful, understated melodies have put him on festival stages across the world and into theatres, concert halls, and coffeehouses. He has garnered critical acclaim from magazines, authors, and music peers and has earned two Grammy nominations.
Bill Morrissey has created as impressive a body of work as any songwriter today, a collection of finely-honed songs that match his economy of lyric and melody with a writer’s gift for storytelling. His empathetic knack for capturing the harshness and small sadness of the characters in his songs is tempered by his wry sense of humor, such that many of his songs leave the listener with a smile.
Over the course of his long career, two of Bill Morrissey's ten albums have received Grammy nominations and several have earned 4-star reviews in Rolling Stone as well as equal accolades in nearly every other major national publication. Stephen Holden, for the New York Times, wrote, "Mr. Morrissey's songs have the force of poetry...a terseness, precision of detail and a tone of laconic understatement that relate his lyrics to the fiction of writers like Raymond Carver and Richard Ford." It is not surprising that he is also the author of the novel "Edson" (Random House/Alfred A. Knopf 1996) and the recently completed "Imaginary Runner."
On stage, Bill mixes the seriousness and urgency of his songs with a wry, acerbic wit. His often improvised and deadpan monologues and introductions provide a perfect balance to his live shows.
Cutting his teeth on the American country blues of Mississippi John Hurt and Robert Johnson, the pure country of Hank Williams, the Kansas City of Count Basie and Lester Young, and, of course, the New York folk songwriters of the 1960s, Bill digested all this great diversity and found his own unique voice.
Bill’s most recent album “Come Running”, produced by Bill Morrissey and Billy Conway of Morphine, was released in 2007 by Bill Morrissey on his label, Turn and Spin Media. “Come Running” features guitar work by Dave Alvin and the remaining members of Morphine, Billy Conway and Dana Colley. Bill plans on releasing a full collection of albums, books and guitar tabs on this new label.
Morrissey, best known for his depressive lyrics, also occasionally writes such humorous songs as Party at the U.N. ("It's such a happy community / Everyone's got diplomatic immunity") and Grizzly Bear, about a frustrated working-class gentleman dating a wealthy young woman who wants to "dance till we dehydrate", while he just wants to "take her home and dance the grizzly bear".
Discography
- Bill Morrissey (1984)
- North (1986)
- Standing Eight (1989)
- Bill Morrissey (re-recording of the 1984 album) (1991)
- Inside (1992)
- Friend of Mine (with Greg Brown) (1993)
- Night Train (1993)
- You'll Never Get to Heaven (1996)
- Songs of Mississippi John Hurt (1999)
- Something I Saw Or Thought I Saw (2001)
- Bill Morrissey: The Essential Collection (2004)
- Come Running (2007)
Bibliography
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