ALBUM REVIEW: Cosmic Country and More Pave the Way on Sam Morrow’s ‘On the Ride Here’
Grant Britt
Posted On March 19, 2024
Various and assorted assigners of labels are trying to lasso him with a cosmic cowboy lariat, but Sam Morrow won’t be attending the roundup. He’s too frisky to be tied down.
Sam Morrow (photo by Bobbi Rich)
Although he’s a Houston denizen, Morrow’s music doesn’t sound like part of the cowboy-hat-and-boots crowd. Throughout his music, including his fifth record, On the Ride Here, there are bluesy-rock Steve Miller Band threads woven through, mixed with snippets of Bad Company. But that doesn’t encapsulate his sound, which rubs up against funk and country as well.
“Thunderbird Motel” has a bluesy feel, like Steve Miller wearing a fuzzy funk jacket, chunky guitar squalls spitting out bitter licks that frame the lowdown vibe of Morrow’s lowdown hideaway, his rhinestone-in-the-rough, no-water-in-the-pool oasis.
“By Your Side” is the most Miller-ish of the bunch, the melody shadowing Miller’s massive 1976 hit “Take the Money and Run.” Morrow’s vehicle is an arena-worthy rock anthem bolstered by a Southern rock-flavored guitar solo mashup of the Allmans and The Marshall Tucker Band persuasion.
Morrow tosses big chunks of Stones-flavored honky-tonk into “Medicine Man,” with stop-motion funk flickering underneath. The slippery travelogue “Searching for Paradise” feels like Hill Country blues run through a Hollywood filter, the chronicle of a country boy coming to the big city to make it but ending up doing too much peyote and throwing up on his boots.
On “Hired Gun,” Morrow coughs up some road dawg blues in the vein of Greg Allman’s I-dont-own-the-clothes-I’m wearing-and-the-road-goes-on-forever lament on “Midnight Rider”: “Got my guitar / the rest is on loan,” he moans. “These legs are restless / Got a mind of their own,” he confesses as he follows them on the run.
According to “St. Peter,” Morrow honky-tonks his way to Heaven’s gate, but when the gatekeeper tells him he has to leave his jet-black Cadillac, leopard skin loafers, Rolex and ’67 sparkle Strat behind, he remains in no man’s land, not ready to say goodbye to all that just yet.
You don’t have to figure out what to name the vehicle Morrow uses to take you along on his journey. Just sit back and enjoy the ride.
Sam Morrow’s On the Ride Here is out March 22 on Copaco/Blue Elan Records.
