Morrison-Williams 'Morrison-Williams' album

Shayne Morrison and Clint Williams knew they were a perfect musical match when they began collaborating six years ago after being introduced by a record shop owner in Tyler, Texas.

Back then, they channeled their efforts toward writing songs for bassist Morrison’s band, Perfect Stranger. Those songs never made it onto a Perfect Stranger disc, though Williams eventually joined the band as its lead singer.

The pair kept writing together sporadically, and submitted a song for the soundtrack to the 2004 film, The Alamo. When producers chose to use an all-instrumental score instead, Morrison and Williams decided it was time to record those tunes on their own.

The result is Morrison-Williams’ self-titled debut on Palo Duro Records. The disc of easy country rockers and soulful ballads could catapult them beyond the level of fame Perfect Stranger earned with its indie hits, the Vince Gill-penned “Ridin’ the Rodeo,” and “You Have the Right to Remain Silent,” which became the title of the band’s 1995 Curb Records release. That album reached No. 4 and stayed on Billboard’s country chart for 40-some weeks.

Morrison-Williams’ first single is “My Girl Friday,” which Williams wrote with Gary Leach. The lyrics are from the perspective of a man having an affair with a woman who strayed because her husband doesn’t treat her right. The message, Williams says, is: Be good to your wife or girlfriend or she might run into the arms of someone else. And she’d have good reason.

Williams confesses, “I can only write about things I’ve sort of experienced. So if there’s anything on the record that I’ve got anything to do with, I’ve probably seen it or been through it.”

Morrison, a native of Carthage, Texas (population: 5,000), says cheatin’ songs were a staple of his country-boy upbringing.

“But,” he adds, “you’ve heard cheatin’ songs by the cheater, and the person cheated with. This is the first cheatin’ song I ever heard by the cheatee.”

“Beautiful Regret,” a track the pair co-wrote, is another culled from personal experience. It’s a ballad that, according to Williams, is about “fallin’ in love with somebody who you wish you’d never met, or that you didn’t have to think about the rest of your life.”

Morrison clarifies, “It’s not that you wish you never would have met ‘em, it’s just that you met ‘em, and it’s either the wrong time, or, if your lives had gone a little differently, maybe it would have worked out between you.”

“A little differently” might have included different careers, but when asked if either has ever had a “day job,” both practically sing, “A what?”

Despite their mock incredulousness, they really haven’t spent much time in traditional job situations. Morrison did milk cows in high school, and Williams delivered pizza, then worked in the graphics department at the University of Texas Health Center at Tyler before quitting to play music.

Morrison got his first paying music gig at age 14.

“I haven’t stopped since,” he says. “They were sneaking me into the VFW and American Legion. I played with all the old dudes. When you’re 14, and someone hands you a lot of money to play for one night, you think ‘Ooh, that’s it. I’m doing this for the rest of my life.’”

He also owns a couple of tour buses, one of which he leases to country star Jack Ingram. If Morrison’s not busy, he also does the driving. But even that could be considered a music-related job, though he’s not the one onstage.

The subject of life’s twists and turns also permeates one of their favorite cuts on Morrison-Williams. It was written by James “J.B.” Patterson, who plays lead guitar on the disc. (Williams plays rhythm guitar.)

“It’s called ‘Me Again,’ and it’s a lot deeper than me and Clint,” Morrison claims with unnecessary self-deprecation.

“It’s about lookin’ at yourself, and expecting that you would have done certain things in your life that maybe you didn’t get to do, but you can still be proud of yourself for other things,” he explains. “It’s just a deep look inside. It’s very well written. You can tell he experienced the whole thing.”

But Morrison-Williams is not an album full of downbeat songs – just thoughtful ones, set to the kinds of melodies that hitch themselves to brain cells and remain pleasantly attached.

“Our music’s hopefully a little different than everybody else’s, and it only sounds right when he sings it,” Morrison says of his partner, a Mineola native now living in Dallas.

They end the disc with a rendition of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show’s “Cover of the Rolling Stone,” a childhood favorite of “redneck band” fan Williams. He’s had a lot practice singing that one – standing on the front seat of his dad’s moving truck (pre-child restraint laws) and belting it out whenever he heard it.

As for how they’d describe their decidedly non-redneck music, Morrison, who now lives in Palestine, admits, “I know we’re supposed to say country. But I don’t know what kind of country to call it.”

It could wear a progressive country tag, if strong, radio-friendly melodies featuring the occasional guitar reference to the Allman Brothers and other southern rockers, augmented by mandolin, fiddle, dobro and the singers’ tight harmonies, can be considered progressive.

But there’s a shorter description that works well, too. It’s Palo Duro Records’ own slogan: Country Music, Texas Spirit.

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