Today we’d like to introduce you to Luke Morgan.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Sure, I am originally from Huntsville, Alabama, born and raised up there. I started singing at around two years old. I was a huge music fan from the beginning and eventually picked up a guitar at age 15 and started writing songs. This progressed into a high school rock band, playing parties and stuff like that. I stopped playing in a band after high school and focused on college, but about three years into college, I joined the United States Marines. At that point, I picked the guitar back up. I started writing again, playing covers and entertaining the other folks in the service for cigarettes as tips.
Eventually, in San Diego, CA at my duty station, I started a new band and we did very well, played lots of shows and came in second place in the San Diego Battle of the Bands. I stayed in California after the Marines choosing to chase my music dreams. I eventually found myself in Bakersfield, CA home to large agriculture and home of Merle Haggard and Buck Owens. I remembered my roots and my grandad listening to Buck back in the day, spent a lot of time thinking about his farm and how unique my experience growing up around that was. I made friends with a local farmer in town, and we started playing and writing songs, but not rock songs as I had done in San Diego. These songs were edging towards Country, Southern Rock. We just were having fun until one day while visiting Avila Beach, CA I was at a small wine bar listening to a local musician and my father-in-law asked him if I could play a song during a break he had, all this unannounced to me.
When the musician asked me to play a couple, I got up there and played. I closed my eyes not yet comfortable about publicly playing a country song, not to mention a country song that I wrote. When I opened my eyes halfway into the song, there was about 50 or more people gathered on the boardwalk. I was blown away. The owner of the wine bar asked me to come play a full show. I played my first country show in March 2019. By the end of 2019, I was playing standing room only shows all over Central California from Bakersfield to the beach and had an original catalog of over 20 songs we had written. Going into 2020, I was booked full from January to June, including a potential opening slot for national touring artists that were coming to town. Then Covid happened. As with most musicians not at the national level yet, I work a day job, and I lost that job right when the pandemic started. God always provides though, and he provided me an opportunity, but it was not in Bakersfield. It was in Atlanta, GA.
In May of 2020, after all my shows had been canceled, and I had to move 3000 miles away to a brand new place and start over. My son has Congenital Heart Disease and we had no idea how this new virus would affect him. I stopped going out in public to protect him as many of us did at that time and put my music career on hold. We have worked really hard to get things going while navigating the issues with Covid. I am booking shows now, have been playing showcases in Atlanta and in Nashville in the summer of 2022 and loving this opportunity to be back in the south and to play country music in the HOME of country music! I am currently booking shows in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, shopping producers to cut our new single, writing new material and doing co-writes up in Nashville, and forming a band for full band shows. It’s a very exciting time for this music project and I am so excited to see what we can do in the coming months now that we are back in it!!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Well, no. Lol, not in the least. I think that there are a lot of challenges to get noticed as an artist to begin with but to add getting noticed and playing big shows, and then having to take a two years to break in the middle. That was hard. I also had a bout with losing my voice for a couple of months and having to go to therapy and vocal lessons to get it back when I did start to rehearse again for shows in 2022. God always opens a door for me though, and my faith has brought me through the struggles. I am thankful for the challenges because without them, I am not sure I would be in a proper place to appreciate the blessing of where I am today.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
As an artist, I would say that writing is the thing that I specialize in. I love to write music, more than playing it actually. The thing that I am known for is that I play a LOT of originals in my sets, I play covers too, but I am not here to play other people’s songs. I want to play my songs, the songs that I identify with, that are about real life that I am living and the struggles of life as a parent, husband, Christian, and aspiring touring musician.
I am most proud of the example that I am setting for my family, friends, and community. NOTHING comes without hard work. Nothing. That is my legacy for my family, if you want something, we live in a place where the only thing that limits you getting that ‘something’ is you, your desire to work for it, to go for it.
I think that what sets me apart from others is my mentality about chasing my dream. I will never quit. I will never give up. I adopted that from a mantra I’ve heard said by Navy Seals: I will go until I win or I die, but I will never quit.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Faith. Period the end. I live and walk on faith. If you had told me in 2019 that in 2022 I would be playing in Nashville, Tn, meeting some of my heroes in country music, I would have told you that was impossible. In 2020, it seemed impossible, it seemed like my hard work and my dream were all dying when all my shows and momentum got shut down. My faith got me through it. My faith has led me to where I am now and will take me where I am going. Where you might ask? ‘I’m Tryna’ put a ‘Redneck’ in a Tour Bus’ to quote a line from a new song I am writing.
Pricing:
- Hats $15
Contact Info:
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/lukemorganmusic
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lukemorganmusicofficial
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/lukemorganmusic
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChVXoVtgFmt7NrnrMhwdLzA
Image Credits
Melissa Caraccioli Lauren Appleton Vincent Broomfield USMC Paris Island, SC
