Leaning back in a rusty pink patio chair outside a tasty East Nashville sandwich joint, Cindy Morgan is about as close to the earth as you get. With dark features and a wide grin she looks remarkably the same as the fresh faced 20-something girl pictured on the cover of Real Life, the debut CD that propelled the East Tennessee native, now 40, into the music industry spotlight. After spending a couple of hours chatting and laughing on a host of subjects from creating to camping to Canadian summers, I found the seasoned songstress remarkably authentic, epitomizing “what you see is what you get.”
Breaking for lunch from co-producer Stephen Leiweke’s (Jars of Clay, Margaret Becker) studio nearby, the singer/songwriter talked about producing her first-ever indie release, Beautiful Bird, her dual career as both a popular recording artist and highly sought-after songwriter and shared what motivates her after 15 years in the industry.
ALL HER OWN . . .
“
Beautiful Bird is my first official ‘I’m-in-charge’ record, paying for it and everything. I co-produced
Elementary with Brent Bourgeois, but my involvement was a lot less,” Morgan explains. “I wanted to be in a situation where I did what I wanted. Not that I wasn’t going to accept counsel, but when you know the buck stops with you, you don’t want to look back and say, ‘I kept quiet again.’”
Incorporating country, bluegrass and symphonic with Appalachian overtones, Beautiful Bird is musically rich for a pop record. Morgan cites her musical influences, “I love pop music, and I love the soul of bluegrass.” Admitting the fickle freedom self-producing affords she adds, “I can’t choose between a dobro or a cello, so I simply decided not to.”
Understanding and having experienced different approaches in recording full-length records, Morgan decided for her there was no hurry. “I like doing it small, controlled and slow,” she says, issuing her preference. “For me the hooky element in terms of what I like to reoccur, to tie together, doesn’t always stay to a certain structure, so you can’t do that quickly. Every time, I started with just the piano part.”
Having spent most of her adult life in the studio, Morgan knew the record making process inside and out. But learning to trust her instincts proved a formidable challenge. “It’s weird as a woman,” she admits, “because there just aren’t many woman producers. I produced my own demos for years, but [women producing] is a little bit of a different thing. Fortunately, the people I worked with on this record gave me all the space and respect I needed.”
As for the question “Why now?” Morgan thinks briefly before being convicted, “I just felt it was something I needed to do as a human being. I needed to see if I could do it myself.”