More About
TONY MORRIS
Music

TONY MORRIS is spending an increasing amount of time writing songs to be sung without accompaniment, predictably ploughing a lone furrow against the trend to write Folk Music that is more about the sound of the accompanying instrument than the words and is barely distinguishable from easy listening popular music. TONY MORRIS is trying to achieve a sound and feel with his songs of the more grained songs that were sung by those who laboured with their hands and sung songs in the pub or place of work or home which they made up themselves, the real local bards who were not detached from the grit and grime of everyday life. So it is back to bar room singing without canned music, microphones, guitars, drum machines and backing tapes. Real raw Folk Music. HERESY?

Aged nine, Tony MORRIS wanted to learn to play the violin. His parents bought him a piano. Within a few weeks his piano teacher had a fatal heart attack. The replacement, who later became organist at Canterbury Cathedral, receiving a knighthood for his services to music, quickly persuaded Tony to give up piano lessons.

Tony MORRIS’s next contact with the world of musicians was conducting a choir in a choral competition. Though a success, the next year he was ousted by the musician’s mafia.

This was in his late teens when, on Sunday mornings, he would sneak into the empty flat where the old piano still lingered and improvise music to accompany stories told silently in his head.

At university his music was singing doubtful songs in the bar. Later his rendition of "The Lambton Worm" earned him many a free dinner and there was more bar room singing with a friend who played piano.

There was no music for some years till a revived interest in acting led him to establish a skill for singing out of tune. Unfortunately, after a while, others ceased to regard this as an accomplishment so he adopted a more orthodox approach and played both the roles of Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins in ‘My Fair Lady’, with different companies.

In the mid 1980’s Tony MORRIS worked with musicians in poetry and music events which he devised but sometimes had communication difficulties with musicians whom he found, mainly, too conformist.

Tony MORRIS’s experiments with watercolour painting from 1987 led to a solo exhibition at the York Arts Centre in 1993. He thought it would be fun to return to his poetry and music ideas for the preview so he teamed up with a friend who was a solo flute player. The event was a success but it reminded Tony of the difficulties he had working with classically trained musicians.

That Christmas a jesting Sue Morris, bought Tony MORRIS a Klutz book, ‘Harmonica for the musically hopeless’, with harmonica. The joke backfired. He developed an aptitude for blues harmonica investing in a whole range in different keys to use in his poetry performances.

A Rose Theatre production using a wooden sounding bowl inspired him further. Although this instruments was out of reach at that time he did manage to pick up a couple of lyres and a kantele typically used by norse bards of old. These instruments were easier to use in performance. A harmonica in the mouth inhibits the diction when speaking. 

Tony MORRIS now has a collection of more than fifty different instruments which he uses in his performances and while working with other poets, musicians and storytellers.

In year 2000, on a trip to Canada, Tony MORRIS found the instrument which he had sought for twelve years, a NATIVE AMERICAN FLUTE . He fell in love with it as an instrument essentially predating  written music, an improvisational instrument easy to play and sound mellifluous. This fitted perfectly with TONY’S views on musical creation (Click "Music Philosophy"  here)  Having acquired quality instruments from both American and United kingdom Makers in 2008 Tony is now majoring on this instrument both as a solo instrument and as an instrument to jam along with from Jazz, folk music to arabic music

TONY  MORRIS has now developed a progressive style of playing guitar which, having resisted the instrument for years, he now sees as a way forward with an increasingly younger audience. This has inspired him to write a suite of ten poems, 'Street Sounds'. Although this grew out of his progressive, free form style of improvisation on guitar it  now includes several other instruments. Music is not only an integral but also the major part of the suite which is descriptive of various streets at different times of day, in different places, some from the perspective of people who are differently abled.

TONY MORRIS has recorded two CDs. The first one, 'CHANGING TRACKS' is poetry based 15 track album with accompanying music on 11 different instruments. The second album is completely different. 'TRAPPY LAD' has  16 tracks, 15 of them Folk songs and stories about the ironstone mining days of nineteenth century North Yorkshire. Although some songs are sung unaccompanied most have a guitar accompaniment using open or two note tunings. The stories have a Bowed Psaltery accompaniment.