We tried doing things the new way. Look where that got us. It’s time to go back to The Old Way.
These were the words that propelled Emmett Morris as he crafted his new self-produced album, seven songs that span the AM dial, from Jackson Browne and the cocaine kings of old L.A., to the swamps of cotton country, and to Music Row circa 1985 or thereabout. The Old Way marks Emmett Morris’s official arrival after releasing a couple of EPs since 2021, when the singer-songwriter from Barrie, Ontario (north of Toronto) transitioned from playing hardcore punk to Americana under the tutelage of James Matthew Seven (aka Matt Delong), co-founder of legendary Toronto band No Warning.
After being schooled by JM7 on the finer points of C&W, bluegrass, Delta blues, the Grateful Dead and sundry traditional folk, Emmett took the reins and began forging new musical bonds with other key Canadian alt-country figures such as Aaron Goldstein (who produced the 2023 EP Emerald), Nicolette Hoang of Nicolette & The Nobodies (who played Emmylou to Emmett’s Gram on Emerald), and Julianna Riolino (who hired Emmett to play guitar in her band and who contributes guest vocals on The Old Way’s “Won’t Fool Me” and “Well Ran Dry”).
After much deliberation about where to record The Old Way, Emmett decided to go back to the first professional studio he ever tracked in as a high school student in Barrie, now known as Thread Junction Studios, run by Jesse Harradine. “I had a beer with Jesse and he was a great hang,” Emmett says. “We shared a lot of musical common ground, and we both talked about how much we love our hometown, which everyone, including fellow residents, seem to shit on so much.” This is The Old Way: The Odyssean homecoming, the soul-soothing comfort of the familiar, and the inspiration that inevitably flows forth. And this, too, is The Old Way: Engineered by Harradine and mixed, with love and pride, by none other than James Matthew Seven.
There’s lead single “Gilded Cage,” a latter-day wage slave’s mordant cri de coeur (“They make it so easy to buy our beer / But I could fill these empties with my tears”) set to a fetching bit of roadhouse boogie in the Tony Joe White/Jerry Jeff Walker school. There’s “Fair City,” a tear-and steel-soaked ode to dear old Dublin, in which Emmett and Nobodies guitarist Ian James Bain go to absolute war on the six strings—Allmans vs. Lizzy for all the sheep in Ireland.
There’s “Friend of Mine,” an Eagles-esque rocker for the solitary stargazers (“I’ve got one thing that seems to get me by / Friend of the lonesome in the sky”). And there’s “The Old Way,” the title track, a bluesy country funk groover in the Dylan/Dead tradition, a get-this-smartphone-the-hell-away-from-me jeremiad. Both feature Nicolette Hoang on impassioned back-ups.
Throughout, the guitar-playing is heroic, the lyrics say in plain English exactly what they mean—no coded messages, and the confident, sure-handed performances evince a time-and-place immediacy owing to breakneck live-from-the-floor tracking over a mere two days in the comfy hometown studio. “I’d rather not piece a record together bit by bit,” Emmett says. “Instead I want to get my friends, who happen to be some killer musicians, into the room, laying down some great takes.”
This is The Old Way: Plugging in, pressing record and ripping; not worrying about mistakes, never quixotically pursuing perfection, just playing music you love with people you love.