“Even though the air was dirty back then, I think you turned out pretty good.”
So said Jim Lauderdale who had just come out of playing “Dirty Old Buffalo” by , the noted Austin singer, songwriter and producer who grew up on the East End of Lake Erie, about fifteen miles from downtown Buffalo. The song, which draws from inspiration of growing up on his most recent album Eatin’ At Me, has the feel of a movie soundtrack and led into a long conversation about Morlix’s storied life on a recent episode of The Buddy & Jim Show on SiriusXM Outlaw Country.
“You couldn’t tell what color the houses or cars in the driveway were painted because of the soot,” Morlix said of the environmental impact of growing up breathing “orange air” caused by a Bethlehem Steel plant. “People’s lungs were coated with this soot. It was really horrible and the air stunk. And it was twenty-four hours a day for decades.”
The night before, Miller had cheered on Morlix during his set at the Bluebird Cafe in Nashville. “I was that guy who was clapping,” Miller points out, unbeknownst to Morlix. Miller brings up how Morlix told a story about how his mother went out with white gloves on the rare trip they’d make to downtown. “It wasn’t because she wanted to be stylish,” Morlix says picking up the story. “She was afraid to touch anything in that filthy city.”
Today the plant is gone, the air is cleaned up and there is a lot going on in the city, including one of Morlix’s favorite venues, the Sportmen’s Tavern which Lauderdale agrees is one of the best places in the world to play.
Morlix’s time in Texas has been spent making albums and producing the likes of Ray Wylie Hubbard, Robert Earl Keen, Butch Hancock or as he says “people I’ve been lucky to have knocked on my door.” Morlix was part of Ian McLagan’s Bump Band before the famed keyboardist and longtime sideman of the Faces and Rolling Stones (and one of his best friends) passed away last December.
On a day when it was actually hotter in Nashville than Texas, Miller and Morlix reminisced about how they met in 1976. They played in what Miller describes as possibly one of the worst country bands ever.
“The music wasn’t really the point in that band,” said Morlix, who was named the Americana Music Association Instrumentalist of The Year in 2009 and was inducted into the Austin Music Awards Hall of Fame just over a decade ago.
Miller, who was recently in Waco, described a world within Texas that many don’t know about and came across a radio station devoted exclusively to Texas music. “A lot of it is great and most of it you’ve never heard outside of Texas. You can make a living playing the dance hall circuit in Texas.”
“We didn’t make a great living,” Miller remembers. “But we made a living,” Gorlix counters. “Playing in Old Dime Box and every town in between,” Miller adds. Morlix describes the “frat-boy, country red dirt circuit” of bands that just play in Texas. “But they have tour buses,” he says with some exasperation.
Today’s show was a good time to play Morlix’s album as well as the Texas singer-songwriters he’s been associated with.
We got to hear Austin-based Sam Baker’s “Waves.” Morlix, who toured with him and sang as a duo, describes him as a remarkable songwriter and one of only two people he knows who died and lived to tell him about what that’s like. Baker was the victim of a train bombing in Peru planted by the Shining Path terrorist group. He suffered a severed femoral artery and lost his hearing in his left ear. “He was crawling toward the light and said it felt pretty good and the next thing he knows he work up in a hospital,” Morlix says of the man who had eighteen operations to put himself back together. “He knows things we don’t know.”
Another Texas legend is the colorful Ray Wylie Hubbard, one of the artists who Morlix has toured with and produced. The colorful Hubbard wrote “Snake Farm” about a sleazy tourist trap between San Antonio and Austin. Morlix said he has played it 50 times with Hubbard. Only Ray Wylie could write such a song.
Miller: “He can make the strangest thing sound spiritual.”
Morlix says he has been told he has a knack for album titles. Such is the record he named Blaze Foley’s 113th Wet Dream in tribute to his friend and songwriter. Foley and Morlix met when the singer was homeless. He slept for a time on Morlix’s couch when he lived in Houston. Murdered in 1989, Morlix describes him as being a great loving person half of the time and a drunken asshole the other – a person who wanted success on his own terms. Willie Nelson, the Avett Brothers, John Prine and Merle Haggard and others covered the songs that have contributed to his fame. “He’s having a bit of a career,” Morlix notes, “but thirty years too late.”
Morlix’s album cover for Eatin’ At It is a photograph of a log split thinking he’d use it for his wood stove. The log has been carved out by black ants who made a chamber. Morlix could never bring himself to burn it because how great it looked and it stayed by his stove for fifteen years. One night at 3 a.m., a time he says he gets creative and writes a lot of songs, he wondered what it would look like with a cowboy hat on it. He did just that and came away thinking it looked like Jack Palance. The esteemed Mother Jones magazine reviewed the album favorably but deemed it spectacularly ugly album art.
Morlix proudly mentions that his debut album Toad of Titicaca is included on the Facebook page He applied to be a member and was accepted and got a note back from the administrator saying he hoped he’d have a sense of humor about it since he was nominated. Morlix says he’s disappointed the new album hasn’t gotten the same attention and promises to follow-up with the administrator.
The milieu of Buffalo plays throughout Eatin’ At Me. In the autobiographical “Born In Lackawanna,” Morlix relates the stark imagery of the city he grew up in. “Breathe deep, suck that smoke in,” he sings. “When you’re born in Lackawanna you either go to college or Bethlehem Steel.”
As part of writing songs about growing up, Morlix also finds himself at the time of life when people from his past are resurfacing on Facebook. He admits he didn’t like school and never wanted to see people from that period again. Time has changed that perspective and is reflected on the song “Fifty Years.”
Morlix will make his return to the city he grew up in when he returns to the Sportsmen’s Tavern September 25. It will mark six consecutive years of playing there. “I see no reason to break that now,” he adds.
Back to the new album, Lauderdale chimes in that if he were to describe Eatin’ At Me, it would be a delicious feast that will make you glad it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Jim, where do you come up with this stuff?” Morlix wondered.
“That’s why he’s Jim Lauderdale,” Miller concludes.
Originally posted here.
