ALBUM REVIEW: With a Johnny Cash Rumble, Marques Morel Imparts Scenes from the Road
Grant Britt
Posted On June 25, 2024
As befits a wandering troubadour, Marques Morel has a plethora of tales from the road. The Illinois native has polished his world-weary persona over decades of drifting, speaking the language of the street, voicing the thoughts of the down and out as only one who has lived the life can do. Morel’s musings aren’t all gloom and doom, but rather poignant clips from a life lived as an observer and commentator.
Morel’s vocals rumble around in the same register and tone as Johnny Cash and Dave Dudley, giving his lyrics the feel of proclamations. For his latest, Tales and Tellings, Morel rummages around in his grab bag of road tunes, coming up with a fistful of gritty recollections for all occasions.
Photo by Marques Morel
“Crazy Out There” sounds like Johnny Cash, the stentorian tone making the psychedelic vision of a long-haired gnome dispensing words of wisdom from the treetops even more bizarre. The vision warns Morel not to let his spirit get stolen by thieves: “Oh they’ll paint false villains every day in the news /
And they’ll bulldoze the elder Navajos right out of their shoes / Then they’ll get you addicted to their luxuries / And they’ll stone anyone who disagrees.”
Befitting a road dawg of his stature, Morel revives the sound of Dave Dudley from his “Six Days on the Road” stupor with the low-down and lonesome “Drive All Night,” recalling driving 700 miles on two hours of sleep. Unlike Dudley, Morel’s only cargo is himself, driving white-knuckled and red-eyed through the night from Taos, New Mexico, to Elizabeth, Illinois, for a date with “a hot guitar and a big old bass.”
“Gas Station Girl” is in Dudley’s vocal range as well, but the circumstances are markedly different from Dudley’s over-the-road sagas. Homeless at one time, Morel’s faith in the kindness of strangers is renewed with a welcoming cup of coffee a gas station girl bought for him. Ellen Angelico’s pedal steel puts the song in jukebox heaven as Morel pledges lifetime fealty to the girl behind the counter: “Them movie star girls they gets all the hype / But you gas station girls are more my type / Gas station girls, oh you saved my world.”
On “Lone Rooster Blues,” Morel switches up his perspective a bit, looking out at the world through the eyes of a chicken. Even though Morel is the narrator, encountering the crowing fowl while out for a naked pee in the rain in a New Orleans backyard, the retired-from-cockfighting rooster gets all the best lines. He bemoans the fact that all the hens have gone and died on him. “It’s hard for any ol’ one to be alone with just the moon and the sun,” the rooster says. “And most nights I don’t know what to do, so I just crows and crows them lone rooster blues.”
There’s no filler here. Every song on Tales and Tellings is packed with plenty of ear candy, revealing Morel’s wry wit that never turns smarmy. It’s delivered from the heart, dusty and road worn, but undaunted.
Marques Morel’s Tales and Tellings is out June 28.
