Before moving near Durham, NC, cellist, vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Morris spent many formative years establishing himself as a musician in the Athens community. Even now he keeps one foot solidly planted in the Classic City, with a full schedule of Athens shows slated for the month of June leading up to his Slow Funeral EP release June 23.
Just as Morris aims to write songs open for interpretation but based on real experiences and feelings, the project title also carries a string of meanings. “You know, you pass someone’s house, and they’ve got the sign ‘slow funeral’ up. So it’s like free advertisement for the record,” Morris laughs. But there’s also a deeper side to the slow-paced psych-folk songs. Morris notes that the track “Stoney” was partly about his grandmother passing, and the project as a whole has taken two years to launch—and it almost didn’t.
“I had kind of forgotten about it because I got caught up in my work life,” says Morris. “But my friend Al Daglis, who played drums on it and helped me mix it, he’s like, ‘Dude, we got to do something with this…all it needs is fresh vocal tracks.’ We were going to put it out for free on Bandcamp.”
Morris happened to be playing a show with Haunted Shed, of which he is an original and current member, when George Fontaine Sr. of New West Records overheard him talking about the EP. Fontaine took an interest, and after hearing the project, helped set the release through New West’s subsidiary Strolling Bones Records. From its making to its release, Slow Funeral maintains Morris’ deep Athens roots. The entire EP was recorded live over a weekend by John Spiegel (Immaterial Possession, Cult of Riggonia) at Studio 1093 on Boulevard.
Right before Morris and his wife planned to move to North Carolina, where she had gotten a teaching job, someone nudged Morris to check out Studio 1093 right next to his house. Spiegel agreed to record Morris’ project after hours, so they set everything up on a Friday, came in at 11 p.m. each night, then broke everything down that Sunday. John Fernandes and Thomas Valadez, in addition to Daglis, backed Morris and set out to “see what happened.”
The result was six thoughtful and trancelike tracks that approach heavy topics while keeping joy and beauty within reach. The dreamy, soft song “Indivisibility” remains the most raw from the sessions, with little editing and the original live vocals in tact. Morris explains that it’s a “love song to myself,” in a sense of saying, “It’s okay to be you, man.” However, the light and often twinkling sound that ties the EP together sometimes masks more somber commentary.
The lead single “Lister” is an anti-war song named after the Spanish Civil War general Enrique Líster. After watching a documentary on the topic that framed Líster as being on “the good side,” Morris decided to dig further. Unsurprisingly, as war goes, many atrocities were committed by both sides during the war. For Morris, this brought up the question of why, as humans, do we continue such destructive cycles and the evaluation of war as an industry. The original song was far longer, but Morris decided to make it shorter and more vague to dampen what was already a very heavy topic.
“The chorus is kind of like, why do we value material possessions more than human and Earth life?” says Morris. “My job right now is working at a veterans disability clinic. I get to see these people who have all these bad problems from the effects of surviving.”
Ahead of the EP’s official release, locals can catch a preview on June 6 at Hendershot’s where Morris will be performing under his name with a seven-piece band. Also performing this night is Haunted Shed, featuring Morris on bass. The whole event kicks off Haunted Shed’s month-long Tuesday residency at Hendershot’s for the month of June. Although this isn’t the first time Morris will be playing with multiple acts on one bill, he jokes that it’s different now than when he was younger. The accomplished musician has a history of playing with artists such as Vic Chesnutt, Ham 1, Liz Durrett, Madeline Adams and Patterson Hood of the Drive-By Truckers.
“We did this Liz Durrett/Ham 1/Vic Chesnutt tour, and I played three sets in a row. At the time I was younger, so I guess I could keep 70 songs perfectly arranged in my head, right? But now I need a whole bunch of notes.”
Morris will be playing another set billed under his name as part of the AthFest club crawl on June 24 at 10 p.m. on the Georgia Theatre rooftop. He will be playing the freshly released Slow Funeral through in its entirety that night, giving you just enough time to give it a preliminary listen or two and digest at least one layer of its content.
“The album’s like a glacier,” says Morris. “But it’s in reverse, so it starts out falling off.”
WHO: Haunted Shed, Jacob Morris
WHERE: Hendershot’s
WHEN: Tuesday, June 6, 7 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $10 suggested donation
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