Andrew Morse on The Tasty Kings, Artistic Freedom, Collaboration, Creativity & Songwriting // #063

heartdea13r Podcast w/ chr1stoph3r g0nda // Episode 63 // Andrew Morse (Founder of The Tasty Kings, Songwriter, Label Owner)

Episode Summary:

Seasoned musician Andrew Morse shares his journey from childhood musical discovery to a diverse career spanning genres, collaborations, and entrepreneurship. Discover insights on creativity, industry wisdom, and the importance of love and authenticity in art.

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Full Episode Transcript:

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:00.088)
That’s why we’re here. It’s Friday and like a long week and I’m just happy to be going into the weekend.

Andrew Morse (00:01.343)
Yeah, we’re gonna wait.

Andrew Morse (00:08.881)
Yes.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:10.924)
So the pressure is on, I guess, for you because your publicist emailed me a couple of days ago and said, fascinating guy, really solid dude, worldly cultured, energized, but more energized with hanging out with musicians at the Chelsea or Marmont in Hollywood. Does that sound like you?

Andrew Morse (00:35.807)
Not really. I mean, I did live at the Chelsea for a while and I have stayed at the Chateau a number of times. But yeah, no, I’m just, you know, I’ve played guitar since I was five. I’m just a songwriter and guitar player. So it’s not really that glamorous. know, the publicists, they always want to like talk you up and stuff, but I’m actually a fairly mundane person. But like you, I am also a dad. I’ve got a daughter who’s about to turn 25.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (00:52.685)
and humb-

Andrew Morse (01:05.471)
So there’s that. yeah. Yeah, I’m actually going over to UK in about a week from now. I’m to play in some listening pub, I think they call it, about an hour west of London. But yeah, I love playing and I love England. I lived there when I was in 78. I was about 19. I lived there. This is kind of a funny story. didn’t. I’m 19 years old. It’s a semester in London.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08.43)
She’s in the UK, right?

Andrew Morse (01:34.238)
I’m there for a few days and I lived in this neighborhood, Earl’s Court, which at the time was called the Kangaroo Valley. It’s a lot of Aussies. And I’m looking around and all these people with green hair and safety pins through their eyebrows and stuff. And I didn’t know anything about punk rock. I thought I’m going to be going to school in England. I’ll see the royal guards and the this, maybe the queen, whatever. These people, I thought, am I living in an asylum or something? What happened? What’s going on? Then someone explained to me, no, there’s this new thing called punk rock.

all deal. went, okay, but that was really, it was really funny when I just first got there, you know, it was just very, very strange.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (02:13.848)
So it’s like culture shock and also at the same time like an emergent genre, an emergent style happening.

Andrew Morse (02:21.02)
Yeah, yes. Well also having my daughter there now, she’s doing this sort of revenge tour that I never got to do. So when I go over and visit her, I see the shows or I go to the museums or I take her out. We do all the stuff that when I was there, I really didn’t have any money and the exchange rate was horrible. It was just, you you were lucky to eat a little bit of beans on toast or Heinz can spaghetti, tinda spaghetti, I they called it. So it’s a lot more fun now.

And, but I’ve always had a big affection for England and London and just Europe in general is where we had the most fun playing. We played in France and Denmark and know a bunch of places. It’s just very easy over there. They seem to understand music in a way that the people in the States, a lot of places, if you play in a bar in the States, it’s just a little bit more raucous and not a lot of listening and stuff. yeah, so I love to play and I love to write songs.

And I’m actually in the kitchen of a studio where I work in Austin, Texas called The Church House. And I come down here from New York. I come down so often that I wound up actually getting a place here finally. I broke down about five years and bought a place. cause it was actually, it was cheaper for me to come down to Texas, pay for the plane ticket and the hotel and the studio. And it was still cheaper than doing it in New York. So that’s how that all started.

This is in the East end of Austin. It’s a converted church So used to be a Baptist Church 30-foot ceilings lots of space lots of light I don’t know how much time you’ve spent in the studio, but it can be extremely claustrophobic and and dark and you go and it’s light you leave when it’s dark and just there goes that day So this is is a nice nice bright airy environment to work in so that’s So yeah, we’re good. Okay

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:07.276)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:13.966)
So let me ask you just…

I can hear myself on your end. I wonder why that is.

Andrew Morse (04:25.692)
I don’t know, I can’t hear myself, which is nice.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:30.508)
Well, it’s okay. Hopefully that’s just,

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (04:37.472)
Yeah, it should be fine. I’m just thinking, sorry, I’m just thinking about the recording and it’s coming in on your end, so it should be okay. Let me take us backwards because you’ve already kind of like set up the conversation really well. You mentioned that you were playing guitar at seven or sorry, five, but like you had your first band at seven. It was called, hold on, The Little Devils. I mean, most people aren’t in bands at seven. What was your aha moment?

Andrew Morse (05:00.048)
Yes. Well, I had this great enterprise cousin. was a sort of, he’s a successful businessman now. I think he’s successful. But anyway, he set this whole thing up where we had these business cards, the little devils, rock and folk music. And we’d go and we’d play it. There was him and then the guy who played keyboards and me. And we’d go and play it. know, somebody’s sister’s birthday party or.

Whatever, just whatever event presented itself would go on and play. So we did that for a little bit, for a couple years I think it was. And it was, I think we played the Monkeys and the Beatles and Simon Garfunkel, a little bit of the Doors. The Doors was a little bit forward when I think about it now. Simon and Garfunkel was interesting, made a lot of good songs. It was a lot of fun. He was a…

He was just really the guy that went and made it happen. And so I was just along for the ride. It was enjoyable. So then I…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (06:04.173)
So is that how you first got into music? Was it through this band or was there a different entry point?

Andrew Morse (06:09.916)
Well, I had a, the big entry point for me, and I think it was for a lot of people, was in February of, what was it, 63 or 64 maybe, I think it was. February of 64 when The Beatles came on Ed Sullivan. And I’m sitting around, it was obviously a different world then, but you’d watch Ed Sullivan on Sunday night with your folks, and The Beatles came on and they played, think, I Want to Hold Your Hand or something, like twisted, whatever they came on played.

and it just made me go insane. just couldn’t believe, I didn’t even know what it was. I mean, I think I was sort of cognizant of the fact that it was music, but I just went kind of berserk. And so, and actually we had these curtains in the living, in the den where we were watching and I crawled up one of the curtains and fell down and sprained my ankle. So I had to be taken to the emergency room. I found out later, who is it?

think it’s Howlin’ Wolf did this thing where he went up the curtains and went, yeah, I’ve done that. When I was five or four. Anyway, so it just had a big, big effect on me. And so I knew I wanted to somehow do something like that. So you see a fire truck go by when you’re a little kid and you want a toy fire truck or you want, just somehow want to be part of it. Or a cowboy’s an Indian, so you want to part of a cowboy thing. So I…

I got this, my mom and dad got me a little Giannini nylon string guitar for I think 50 bucks or something. It was really not the highest possible quality. Anyway, so I learned on that. I had a guitar teacher. I went to see him once a week for a couple of years and got the basics down. It the Mel Bay chord books and all of that, which a lot of people my age, the Mel Bay books, everyone learned those chord books and learned sort of simple songs from those.

And then kind of went on from there. And I think it was, I was about seventh grade or so, but I remember hearing the Allman Brothers clapped in and all of that and just thinking, I need to get in on all this stuff, and then the Stones. And that just, was like the sort of the beginning of the whole deal for me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (08:21.558)
Yeah, so you got Beatles Mania and it never went away and you at what point did you say like I’m going to be doing this for the rest of my life? I know there’s a story in university which I have as well but like tell me a bit about the psychology behind why you picked this.

Andrew Morse (08:37.754)
Well, I went sort of quickly to the Stones. I had the Beatles mania, but then I got the sort of Stones mania even more. I think we were, was about 10 or 11 or somewhere in there. And we were on this ski trip to Canada, to South Side of Montreal, Manoir Saint-Castan, I think you might know it, it was that area. Anyway, and they had Jumping Jack Flash on the jukebox. And it was a quarter for three plays, I think. So I just kept.

putting quarters in and listening to Jumping Jack Flash over and over again. And I couldn’t believe that. Then I played ice hockey when I was in about fifth grade or so, fourth, fifth, sixth. And I remember we were going to an ice hockey game. The parents would drive four or five kids in the car. And I remember hearing, know, yeah, yeah, yeah, whoa. And I think from brown sugar, I’m just going, this is incredible. I got to get a hold of this. just the stones really stuck with me, I think a lot more than the…

needles did.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:37.102)
So.

Andrew Morse (09:39.054)
But anyway, there was a question there that I probably didn’t answer. What was that?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (09:42.54)
No, no, no, this is great. I’m just trying to like get the context in the background. you know, you’re falling in love with music. There is all kinds of stuff happening with different tastes discovery. You end up in university, Columbia, and there’s a guitarist, Kevin Trainor, we were like…

Andrew Morse (09:58.286)
Yeah, my friend Kevin, right. Yeah, he’s unbelievable. mean, Kevin is he’s not just a great musician. He’s a great cook. He’s a great visual artist. He’s just a very sort of Renaissance outstanding. And he’s also a lovely guy. But he was good at all this stuff. But I remember going to see him at these different either cruddy frat parties or bars or whatever. And he’d just do the wildest stuff. He played so great, such exuberance and such talent.

And he was fantastic. So I was, I was around, this is up, up around Columbia, the upper west side of Manhattan, the upper, upper west side of Manhattan. And some girl came up to me one night and she said, Kevin Traynor says you’re a good guitar player. And I said, he said that about me? And so I immediately got ahold of his phone number. I called him up and said, I’m coming over. And I couldn’t believe it. So, so, uh, so we got together and the first afternoon we got together, it lasted, I don’t know, four or five hours.

sat there for a really long time. And he played me all these songs that I had no clue about. they were, he knows all the, know, Merle Haggard, George Jones, he said, there’s a whole country, the really great, you know, old Hank Williams, the great country music. And he knew all these sort of, I think he taught me pale blue eyes, I developed underground. So that kind of stuff. And he just does regular blues and Sonny Terry, Brian McGee, that kind of acoustic blues.

I mean, just knows all this stuff. So it was a complete pleasure to play with him. every time we would get together periodically, we would just bang away on our guitars. And then we started playing electric and different rehearsal spaces or whatever. And then we started just making these records. first one was a rock and roll record in about 1985. The name of the band at that time was Nice Boys from New York.

So we started, we had a bunch of guys that were just playing this sort of thrashing. It was very, you you hear the music from the eighties now, we didn’t sound anything like that. It was just through that hole, we’re just bypassing that entire sound, just going straight to trying to just sound like the Stones or Chuck Berry or that kind of music. And it was really fun. So we made those records, then we made a country record after that. and then we went toward Europe a bunch of times.

Andrew Morse (12:25.718)
And that was fun. Sometimes, I think it was mostly country music. Sometimes it was just as a duo, sometimes with a band. I don’t know, we just always have stayed in touch and played a lot of music together. I mean, I can’t emphasize how much fun it is to play with this guy. He really is great. I like to go play, I’m playing solo. I’ll play anywhere and I like to play, but this guy is a really terrific player. He’s just unbelievable.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (12:53.261)
Well, so he obviously, was reading that he obviously, I thought you were good as well and he had you over and you listened to records and it reminded me of one of my biggest childhood entries into music in Toronto. was a, on this cul-de-sac on this neighborhood block, a few doors down was this guy, JT, Julian Taylor, who ended up being, you know, founded a band here called Staggered Crossing and they did quite well and now he’s doing very well as a solo musician. And I must’ve been like 10, 11.

And he gave me like he let me borrow a Gibson. It was this like red fiery Gibson the strings were missing and I didn’t know what to do with it But I was just so fascinated by it and I ever fast forward a few years and I had Bob Marley posters and I was like music is my thing What I want to know is you know 50 years of career or five decades of career now since that point more or less

Andrew Morse (13:37.591)
Thank you.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (13:47.674)
What did you do? Because I can’t find anything about like, you know, job and stuff outside of music. Has it been only music this entire time? Yeah, like, weren’t you a lawyer?

Andrew Morse (13:55.682)
What have I done? Well, mostly, yeah, no, I’ve mostly been writing music and then also in the beginning of this century, I took a couple of courses at NYU and learned how to trade securities because I was going through divorce and I needed a better source of income than just music. And also the music industry was changing. So that’s basically how I’ve been able to afford all this music because it’s making

Making money and making music traditionally, well, as you know, it used to be you have a record and you go out to promote the record. Now, if you go out and you have the record as sort of an after the fact. and then since I was trying to raise my daughter, she lived with me a little bit more than half the time, I couldn’t really go out anymore, at least for that 20 or so year period. So I kind of worked.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (14:32.514)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (14:50.996)
worked it the way that I could. dashed down, when she was with her mom, I dashed down to Texas for a few days or I’d go to somewhere else and do whatever I could do. But yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (15:00.203)
Yeah, that’s fascinating. And I didn’t mean to imply anything because I know that you’ve had like a label since I believe the late 80s and obviously you’ve been prolific with your career. so you’ve been

Andrew Morse (15:09.825)
Well, no, but it made it actually easier. It made it better for me because it let me make what I wanted to make as opposed to being beholden to one of the larger labels. I was little tiny labels and things, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if I had to be presenting a product to somebody that they were telling me what to do. It would have been a lot more restrictive. And to me, the best thing, one of the key parts of the music has been the freedom or the…

the exhilaration of just doing whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. I mean, it’s been, I’ve been very lucky. I knew a lot of really great, I’ve known a lot of great musicians and I still know a few really great ones, but.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (15:48.014)
So it sounds like you’ve been like a lifelong musician but you were able to subsidize your career through trading. Is that accurate? That’s amazing.

Andrew Morse (15:56.535)
Yeah, yeah. Not really day trading. was more like long. I mean, people go like, oh, you’re a day trader. Well, no, most people who day trade really don’t make much money. It’s just sort of relatively short term trading, not super long term, but somewhat short term. So yeah, I’ve got very, very lucky. I’ve gotten people who, what’s the expression? There are three rules for always making money in the stock market.

Nobody knows what they are. you know, it’s just, if you’re lucky, you get some luck, you know, and if you don’t, you don’t. But there’s no reason, let’s look like a bunch of fifth grade girls and just all decide, oh, this is the sweater that we’re all gonna wear. So we’re all gonna buy Tesla. And then, oh my God, we hate Tesla. So we’re all gonna, and they’ll just all go with this. It’s the ultimate cheap, we’re all doing the same thing. And then if you have one original thought at all, they say that you’re a contrarian.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:50.807)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (16:55.202)
It’s just no, I’m just a non-sheep, which is different than being a contrarian. But there’s such a lack of original thought and it’s just an awful… It made me think a lot about, especially during COVID, I was doing a lot of trading during COVID and writing a bunch of songs, but I’ve just been thinking about how I feel so bad for these people who all they do is the stock market because it really does gut your soul, it really eviscerates you any kind of a…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (16:57.869)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (17:25.494)
It’s just an awful thing. You’re just moving money from point A to point B, then from point B to point A, then from point A to point B. And what kind of a life is that? mean, yeah, can pay your kids tuition and you can get some food, but in terms of a fulfilling artistic life, it’s really not much.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:30.594)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:36.492)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (17:49.93)
Yeah, but I mean, it’s fascinating. I ask because one of the things that comes up always with artists is, you know, subsidizing their careers. How do I do this? I need to get signed. I want to invest in myself, but I don’t have cash. So for me, it’s always…

Andrew Morse (18:01.259)
Yeah.

A lot of people teach, there a of people who are teachers, but to me, first of all, teaching is incredibly exhausting. And second of all, they don’t really pay you very much. So it takes a lot of that energy away from you. it’s also, teaching can be so challenging. I have a lot of respect for people who are teachers. My sister’s a teacher. And it’s just, I don’t see how you have anything left in the tank after you’ve been dealing with it.

an entire day of, seventh graders, then you’re supposed to be able to go write something for years. That just seems incredibly hard. I know it’s the same thing with novelists and stuff. A lot of those people are teaching universities, whatever, I kind of like to keep them separate. I just like the separation of church and state, you know? But that’s me.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (18:51.595)
Yeah. So what was your balance as you were growing up or coming up in the industry, I should say, and you’re realizing that you need to make some money. How much trading versus artistry were you doing in your average week?

Andrew Morse (19:06.261)
It depended on the week. It depended on what was happening and where I was going and whatever. I mean, during COVID, we couldn’t go anywhere. So I did a tremendous amount of trading and I did okay. I did well. right now, it’s funny, know, there are some, the guy who I work with, he’s from Australia and he says stuff like, well, you can’t serve two mistresses. said, oh yeah, you can. Or you have to, you know? But, but,

Whenever I go through phases of work, I’m doing a lot of active trading and I make a decent and make some money and Then I decide okay, that’s it now I should just let everything ride for a while and not worry about it be one of these people as the Long-term investment or and I always get hammered. I was good The market just goes to shit. go I knew I should have gotten out of that. I knew it. So there’s there’s no There’s no there’s no set formula for how to do it. I mean, I just this year

A lot of people have done this well, have done well this year so far. I’ve made hardly any money this year. But one of things that you learn about, especially when you’re a musician, I’m sure that you can relate to this, that the whole bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. you’re some guy who’s a billionaire and you’re making, say, 10 or $20,000 on a trade, it seems like absolutely nothing and you just let it keep going. If you’re a musician and you see 10 or 20,000 bucks, you go, thanks for the money, goodbye.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:09.378)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (20:33.865)
And that’s it, and you can get out while the getting is good. I mean, 20,000, that’s probably, that’s a year, that’s a good year for me as a musician. So, you it’s just, you have a different perspective. And also, another thing that helped me from being a musician was being flexible about it. You know, being able to recalibrate ideas or to reconsider things or to go, yeah, I think this was bad what I did, I have to do it differently this way or something.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (20:37.569)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (21:04.132)
There’s a fundamental, I would say about musicians. Whenever you see an actor try to be musician, it’s always awful. Whenever you see a musician trying to be an actor, it tends to be pretty good because the musicians are able to just dump their ego and just play something different if it should be played differently. They don’t take it all personally. Their ego isn’t all invested in it. So I think that helped me as far as the financial world.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (21:28.054)
Yeah.

That’s awesome. I mean, one of my guests, Jake Gold, the music manager, he told me during our chat that there’s different, there’s two types of musicians. There’s basically those that want to make music and need to make music. And then there’s the true artists that are compelled. You cannot explain it any other way than you have to do it. You wake up and it’s the only thing you’re thinking about. You sound like you fall into the latter camp.

Andrew Morse (21:56.019)
I always say that about, for instance, someone like Taylor Swift, who’s probably worth a billion dollars, whatever she’s worth, but I have no doubt that if Taylor Swift was making six bucks for her last song or whatever, she still would have written it. She still would just keep going and writing music and writing music and writing music, because it’s just sort of in her blood. And it becomes a very interesting sort of trip where you go on a voyage or something, where you go,

I just did this one, but that made me think that maybe I should do this one. And it’s just a sort of going from stepping stone to stepping stone. You go, oh, well, or now I know this, or you have an idea, or somebody plays some song and you go, I don’t really like that song, but this one little part of it, I think that should be a whole part of a song or something. So you take something and you work with it. I think it was Keith who said, the way to write a good song is to listen to 10 or 12 really good songs.

and then that puts you in the head of that. I don’t know. Do you write songs as well?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:53.932)
Mm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (22:59.571)
No, I don’t play. I played when I was in high school. I learned to the piano and then went to guitar so I can read some tab and stuff. But I always found myself the most comfortable on this side of the industry. I love supporting artists. I love blending.

Andrew Morse (23:17.139)
I think it’s the same with Rob. Yeah, some people are just like being in the whole thing. Other people feel like they have to make the stuff. It’s just what people fall into and how it works. But I think it was Lou Reed who said if he has a good title for a song, he’s halfway there. A lot of times we go, yeah, I hear what he’s saying. If someone said to me, I want you to write this song and call it Closed for Repairs, I go.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (23:34.209)
Ha ha.

Andrew Morse (23:43.667)
Okay, I think I could probably write a song called Closed for Repairs or something, you know, that’s a that’s an evocative title and actually I did write a song called Closed for Repairs. What happened was I was riding my motorcycle through Oakland, California when I was living in the Bay Area and I saw this movie, movie marquee and it said Closed for Repairs and I thought to myself, I wonder what that’s about. I was like, you moron, the theater is closed, you know, I thought, well, but maybe a country song from the point of view of some guy who doesn’t really get that. He’s just wondering what that’s about.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (23:49.634)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (24:13.063)
That could be an interesting song, you know? So just ideas just jump at you no matter what. mean, just you go through the day and ideas pop up. And then the more receptive you get to it, you know, it’s like if you have a Honda CR-V, then you notice all the Honda CR-Vs that are out there on the road. Whatever you’re immersed in, you see that all over the world, so.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (24:18.668)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (24:37.969)
Well, it’s funny because I think that artistry and creativity is all the same. So whether you’re musician or a painter or an entrepreneur like me, it’s again, it’s the compulsion to do it. You’re going to do it no matter what. You’re trying to figure out something and work towards, you know, creating that product, creating that idea, that company.

Andrew Morse (24:57.638)
Yes, and also if you have that focus and that ability to stay with it and to make it better and better and better, I think that serves you well in every category. That’s why I know a lot of musicians who are very good cooks or whatever, just people who are, I know I have a cousin of mine who’s married to a cosmetic dermatologist and during COVID her offices were closed. So she took a painting and she’s a great painter.

But it’s really not very surprising because she was so focused on people’s skin and every pore and this and that. So for her to just really lock on to what something looks like visually, it’s not that much of a leap for her. So maybe you should take up guitar again there, Chris.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (25:42.126)
I mean, we have guitars around, the kids like them, it’s probably gonna happen at some point. You said something there that is important, focus. I love to talk about mental wellness, mindset, the things that get people from here to there. You’ve been doing music for 50 years. What are some of the mental traits, other than the compulsion to do it, that have got you here?

Andrew Morse (25:48.474)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (26:07.602)
Well, I think it was Billy Ray, no, Billy Joe Shaver, Texas songwriter, who he goes, he goes, songwriting is the cheapest psychiatrist there is. And goes, and I pretty much need one every day. I mean, I says for mental health purposes, I find it extremely cost effective. Very helpful. You know, you can just sit there. And the other one, I was talking to somebody about this, how you can sit there and typing away on an, if you’re trying to write a book or something, you could type.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (26:18.029)
Ha

Andrew Morse (26:37.361)
and you’re basically out of your mind and you’re about to have a mental breakdown. But you could sit there with a beautiful Brazilian rosewood guitar or something and just play D, D, D, D with a nice drop D or something. And it’s an incredibly enriching, satisfying experience. You have that comfort of the instrument. So in a way, it makes music a lot easier. Although you could, the other night I was thinking, but you could make an argument that a person who’s writing a novel becomes so…

110 % immersed in that world that maybe to them they’re hearing the music and they’re doing all that. You know what mean? Maybe that’s even a level higher. It just depends on how absorbed you are in what you’re doing. But for me, I just find having a really lovely instrument sitting there is just a very comforting and just a really wonderful experience. I’m fortunate I have a couple of really nice guitars.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:16.098)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (27:35.854)
and I pull them out and I play them and it’s just like diving into a nice warm swimming pool or something. It’s just, you know, here we go. It’s just, they’re just, somebody’s, to be honest with you, a couple of these guitars, I really don’t even feel qualified to look at, let alone play. So I’m very, very fortunate that way and I’m deeply grateful. I just really have a great time playing. And then I got a couple of friends down here, I have a couple of friends down here to play with who are great too and that’s really fun.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:40.631)
meeting.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:44.076)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (27:59.64)
So there’s an elephant.

Andrew Morse (28:04.944)
And then Kevin has come down, he’s played on a bunch of stuff.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (28:06.509)
So there’s an element of like release and being soothed by the music and whatnot, all of which makes sense to me. There’s the camaraderie. What about the career? know, like to wake up every day or week after week, year after year to say, I’m going to keep going in this crazy industry. What is it for you that compels you to do it?

Andrew Morse (28:26.224)
Well, that’s the thing, because I don’t rely on it for an income. I have a much more pure relationship with music than maybe other people do. And I don’t really feel burned out on it. It’s just like saying, you want to stop going for a walk or something? Well, why would you want to stop going for a walk? It’s a beautiful day. You get to go out. You get to walk for a few miles. So it’s on that level for me. I’m not really somebody who…

I I guess one thing that I’ve been thinking about doing is just doing a long piece of writing because that doesn’t require all the collaboration. You just sit there with your, and that’s why guess one of the reasons why there’s such so many great Irish writers is because writing is cheap. You can sit there with a pen and some paper and do it. So you could be from a country that’s not so well-off financially or whatever and you can still write.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (29:15.373)
Mm.

Andrew Morse (29:23.854)
Or can also still draw, but you still need to buy paints and stuff. But I think writing is the most economical of the arts, maybe. Unless there’s something else that I’m not thinking of. I don’t know. If I ever got sick of it, then I wouldn’t do it. I think there’s always this process for me anyway. There’s this process of discovery. You’re always discovering new things. There’s a limitless number of things.

If you’re playing piano, you’ve got to, here’s the piano, here’s this key, this key, this key, and this key, right? But on a guitar, you could play the same chord in nine different positions, and you could play a piece of that chord, and you could slide into that chord. And there’s all these different things that you can do. I don’t really know much about playing piano. Maybe you can do that as well. But I’m just saying, there’s so many possibilities with guitar that I think it’s a great instrument that way.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:19.701)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (30:21.647)
I wish I knew piano because I think a lot of people, they write on piano and piano is supposedly a very good instrument to write on. So I’m sort of lacking that way. my timing could be better. My timing has come along lot better than it used to be, there are always ways to improve. But honestly, I’ve always thought, yeah, that’s all great. But there plenty of people with great timing whose songs suck. It’s like, do you have a good song or do you not have a good song?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (30:48.919)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (30:49.422)
That’s the ultimate to me. And there’s so many people, you know, and when you mentioned Bob Marley before, yeah, there’s somebody, Bob Marley, what is the percentage of great songs that Bob Marley records? I don’t know, 96 % or something? I mean, it’s just one incredibly great song after another. And they’re incredibly well recorded and they’re well played, obviously, and all that stuff. But the songs themselves, God, it just keeps going. You can go even back to the Lee Perry days.

And then what was the last one he did? think it was Uprising. I think Buffalo Soldier, all that was after he passed. But the hits, yeah, the hits just kept coming. was just, oh my God, how can this guy have so many good songs on one record? I mean, in our day, it seems like popular music. You’re lucky to get one, maybe two good songs on a record. Bob Marley, it’d be unusual to have one or two bad songs on record. Usually it was all great.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:30.391)
Thanks.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:39.117)
Mm-hmm.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (31:45.723)
But you know what, you said something really interesting there that I think is worth unpacking, not just in this conversation, but in life in general. You said that because you were trading, because you were investing, and you had that relationship with money there, you didn’t rely on it from the music. And so it kept your relationship with the art pure. And I feel like it’s true.

Andrew Morse (32:04.258)
Yeah, sort of pristine, yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:05.865)
Yeah, and so many musicians now are like, okay, if I don’t make it by this time, then I’m done. Or my parents said like, you can be good at it, but you got to make a living. When you remove that barrier, and you just create for creation’s sake, I think that you get into more of the flow like Bob did, where, you know, it’s just constant stream of creation.

Andrew Morse (32:26.126)
Yeah. I know a guy, he moved to Nashville and they said, I’m going to write a song every week. And at the end of the year, I’m going to have 52 songs. And I remember saying to him, well, you’ve got this, you’ve got this piece of this one good song. Why do you finish this one good song and you’ll have a good song instead of having 50 not so great songs? but he was on this sort of, you know, this gerbil wheel thing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (32:45.451)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (32:55.753)
of self pressure. what did they say? When you’ve written a good song, you tell people you’ve written a good song. When you’ve written a great song, people tell you that you’ve written a great song. know, it’s like you want to be somebody who wrote a great song and someone says to you, I love that song. You go, thank you. You you don’t want to be having to, you know, toot your own horn. You want somebody to feel, no, this is really good and I really like it. And they go, okay, well, I’m glad that you like it. You know, that’s the…

It’s not for you to, it’s like eating in a restaurant. You’re not supposed to tell somebody that the food they’re eating is great. They’re supposed to tell you that the food they’re eating is great. Or the ultimate of that is being a parent, right? You’re not supposed to tell your kid what a great parent your kid is. You are. The kid is supposed to tell you what a great parent you are. Otherwise it doesn’t count. It doesn’t matter. Your opinion about stuff doesn’t matter. It’s the world’s opinion. And to keep with that for a second.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (33:31.085)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Andrew Morse (33:55.852)
I think all of the really great art or food or anything like that, it all comes down to love. comes down to are you expressing some sort of love or is there some element of love? That’s where most of really powerful stuff seems to come from. That’s certainly true for Bob Marley. mean, there’s tremendous undercurrent of love. It’s just amazing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:02.017)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:14.444)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (34:20.237)
I agree with you. I think it’s also an element of just loving that art that you’re doing. You might not be in a good place mentally. Maybe you’re creating something out of a heartbreak or loss, but you’re so invested into that idea of creation that it’s pure. You it can have negative connotations, but you’re not sitting there writing a song like you said under duress or stress because I got to run back to work and I got to pay the bills. And if it work out, I’m canceling the career.

Andrew Morse (34:50.029)
Yeah. Yeah. And also I think it’s like running. It’s like anything else. You feel better having played than you do just watching some shit on TV or something. It puts something into your soul. more you’re working on something in the arts, the more you ever… It amplifies you as a person, I think.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:09.197)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (35:17.801)
And even if you’re just trying to master a little something or trying to just get better, you’re one of these artists who’s always trying to get better at things, you know, and sometimes the best thing is to be around people who are better than you. I always compare to the example if you had, say, Arthur Ashe and you had a tennis court in your backyard and Arthur Ashe was playing against you, suddenly you’d find yourself making all these shots and being amazingly great. Whereas if it was your friend and you just smoked a couple joints, you were whacking a couple…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (35:30.816)
yeah.

Andrew Morse (35:45.942)
balls at each other. It’s a completely different game. So I’ve been fortunate and I’ve had a lot of people around me who are such superb musicians that it made me both learn exactly from them, but it also made me amp up the whole thing inside of me and get a lot better because of that. Well, you need to be worthy of these people because they’re so good.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (36:07.991)
Yeah, I agree. got a little thing on my desk here that I remember or reminds me every day that if it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you. Like growth doesn’t happen in the comforts.

Andrew Morse (36:19.136)
Yeah.

Completely I said I was at something where somebody was talking it was giving a tribute to his web saying who she’s yet managed to step outside of her comfort zone blah blah and I thought to myself Well, why would you want to be in your comfort zone? There’s nothing nothing good ever comes from being in your stupid goddamn comfort zone lady So you’re the whole the whole idea of any kind of improvement all comes from outside the comfort zone I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why I would want to live in the comfort zone. It just seems like a sort of

It’s a way of just getting out of things, just like sneaking off and being all cowardly or something. I mean, you you have to be willing to fall on your face. I mean, that’s a, yeah, nobody likes sucking, but sometimes you have to suck in order to get good. That’s just the way it works. don’t know. My friend Kevin comes down, he’ll come down and he’ll do say like five or six takes of the vocal reverie and four or five of them will be so…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:01.474)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (37:18.911)
Just so heinous. I can’t believe how bad that was. But then he gets to that fifth or sixth one, goes, that’s it. He found it. That’s it. And if he hadn’t been willing to do that, then the fifth or sixth one wouldn’t be there as good as it is. So I’m thinking of him a lot because we just finished, I think we may be, except for one song, I think we may be done with this next record that he sang on and played on. Now we have another record. Are you familiar with the Sexton Brothers? Charlie and Will Sexton.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:43.797)
like

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (37:48.204)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (37:48.427)
So this one, the other one that’s coming out is Will Sex and singing all the songs on it. And he’s got a great voice. Charlie and Will both have great voices. They’re known for being great guitar players and producers and blah blah blah. But you never really hear anyone talk about their voices. But to me, their singing is unbelievable. It’s every bit as good as their guitar playing. So that’s cool.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:09.645)
So that segues nicely into one of the questions I had, which was simply, you’ve worked with a lot of well-known or prolific artists throughout your career. What is it that makes a high-level artist want to work with another artist? Is there a special trick? Is it just being yourself? Talk to me a bit about how these collaborations happen.

Andrew Morse (38:35.562)
Usually a friend of mine knows somebody. There’s a guy down here, Stephen Barber, who seems to know everybody in the entire history of the world. He knows so many different musicians. He’s the one who found Blondie, Formulier. So that’s the first step is you call them up and you talk to them about it. Then you have to pay them well, have to treat them well, feed them well, and give them lot of freedom to do what they want to do. We don’t really tell people what to play.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (38:39.276)
Hahaha.

Andrew Morse (39:05.13)
to see what they come up with. And then if there’s something that they did that seems better than the, know, a couple of takes ago or whatever, go, well, you know, this thing that you played, maybe more of that. But I like to hear people just, I mean, it really comes down to having a lot of respect for people who are great players. And then if they find out that it’s good and they enjoy it and the hang is a big part of it, then they might have somebody else who might be in mind. over the course of however many years it’s been, I’ve kind of developed this little network of people.

Terrific but it took a long time, you know and a couple of them have gone on to the great beyond like Howie Wyatt was a terrific drummer and stride piano player that I was I was very close to for a number of years and then You know, remember when he passed away he was in his he was 52 or 54 or something. I think 52 I think you’re like God man. That’s so old. Well, at least you made it to fit now Jesus

But he was a great guy and a terrific player. He was the drummer in the Rolling Thunder Revue, you Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, the guy who always had that denim cap on. That was Howie. He was great. He was a lefty. He also came from a sort of jazz background drummer. So he didn’t play that big heavy rock beat. He played with a kind of like feathery thing. He always would do these roles that would feed right into the, when the singer’s supposed to come up with their vocals. They’re like, and then you sing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:13.133)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (40:33.833)
I mean, he was just fantastic to play with. Everyone loved him. He was great. yeah, left this world too soon. But then he was replaced by Charlie Drayton. Do you know who he is? He’s unbelievable. He’s a great drummer. He’s played with everybody.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:43.821)
Good.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (40:52.151)
So it sounds like being kind and hospitable and having a good rapport, being authentic, this is something that’s super key. But I I believe that good recognizes good, talent recognizes talent. So you obviously are a prolific musician as well. And that’s one of the reasons why these artists are enjoying playing with you.

Andrew Morse (41:10.27)
Yeah, well I try really hard to be respectful and to let them know how much I appreciate their being present for this project. It means a lot to me that they’re there. It’s not, I’d have to drum up some fake bullshit. I am genuinely grateful to see them. And I, the people who are the really great players, there are a of people who are very good, but the really terrific ones are the ones who listen. They can get inside of a song and they understand.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (41:23.862)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (41:37.713)
what would be good for a song here or there. For instance, Charlie Drayton, the drummer, he shows up with a little notebook and he’s just sitting there taking notes on the song and stuff. It seems kind of academic to me. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a note on any song in my life, but there he is, paying attention to what’s gonna happen and maybe this should go here, maybe that should go there. It’s a really, it’s a very, he takes his job really seriously. What does it say? You should take the job, you should take the work seriously, but not yourself.

That’s what you know, I to pay, I try to put a lot of care into what we do. But then, you know, at end of the day, we’re kind of all just sort of schmucks anyway. you know, do what we can do. But everyone’s trying to get by, you know.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:17.974)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (42:23.469)
So you play like different genres, mean rock, blues, country folk all come to mind from your bio. Is there something that you default to? Is it more blues or rock or do you love everything equally when it comes to the genres?

Andrew Morse (42:39.081)
I go in different phases. Right now I’m on this sort of country blues phase. I saw Jorma at Carnegie Hall, Jorma Kalkinen from Hot Tuna. And he plays that great country blues. And I’ve just been going a little bit of a jag of that because I just saw him. So if I were to sit down now and just play, we just had lunch at this guy’s house the other day and he had a really nice old Martin. I just sat there and so I tried it and I just started playing a little country blues.

So it really kind of depends. I guess you could say the age that you are, probably the older you get, the less loud shrieking rock and roll you want to play. But that hasn’t really happened to me yet. I still have a little bit of that in my veins. But the tradition is that you get a little bit quieter as you get older. You don’t feel like you have to scream as loud. But I don’t know. We’ll see if that happens.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (43:31.841)
Yeah.

So was it mostly blues or blues based stuff that you first fell in love with?

Andrew Morse (43:41.596)
Yeah, yeah, there was that record, Eric Clapton at his best. I think that was in, I was about eighth grade, seventh, eighth grade. And I remember hearing him play Key to the Highway with Dwayne Allman and thinking, I have got to play this. I’ve got to, I’ll die unless I know how to play at least something like this. It’s a one, five, four blues, but then, and then he realized, well, Dwayne Allman is playing the slide guitar. So then you have to figure out what’s going on with the slide. Kevin’s very, very good on slide, big surprise.

No, he’s really, really good slipper. But then, you know, there’s all this other stuff going on that you have to try to… So what exactly is getting that sound? And then you start looking into amps, and you start looking into guitars, and just all the different stuff that goes into all of that. And then the stones. You know, they have these… I mean, I meant to tell you this back a couple of minutes ago, but back in the day, let’s everyone gathered around and watched The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

You couldn’t just punch something up on YouTube. You couldn’t just have it at your instant disposal. Maybe the records and stuff, but you didn’t even have all the records. So when something hit you, it just hit you with that one-time shot. And it was a very strong singular sensation. Now you can find… I mean, I just saw something the other night, the Stones at the double door in Chicago.

I it was 95 or something. This great club gig where they’re killing it. They’re all sweaty in this little tiny club. Well, it’s 500 seats, but it’s this tight club and they’re just murdering it. They were playing so, so well, whatever. I mean, in my day, the 500 people that saw that show are walking away with a memory in their hearts of just, can’t believe what I just fucking saw tonight. That was unbelievable. But nobody else gets to see it. And so now with this democratization of everything,

It’s all kind of different. It’s kind of strange. You have people like Paul Simon, was one of the first, well, he’s one of first that I know about anyway, who would go and sort of appropriate different cultures music. I mean, I guess he gave him credit and stuff. don’t mean it necessarily. I think he was just inspired by it. Like Ladysmith, Black Mimbozo, and different people that he would, that he listened to their music or he’d incorporate their music into his music. I’m going all the way back to say me and Julio down by the schoolyard.

Andrew Morse (46:07.88)
whatever, this Latino kind of thing. It’s just weird. It’s weird what influences people.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (46:14.785)
Mm-hmm. Well, I think it happens organically. mean, like, you’ve had such an incredible career within the music and have all these different genres and different collaborators, and all of that eventually led to the Tasty Kings and the sound that you’re producing there.

Andrew Morse (46:16.68)
I

Andrew Morse (46:31.92)
Yeah, my folks, when we were little, my folks took us, we lived about an hour away from New York. So my mom and dad would take us to see musicals.

Peter Pomeri, Gordon Lightfoot, Judy Kongs. They would take us to see shows and it made me really appreciate a good lyric. It made me appreciate good writing. It wasn’t just some sort slag making noise. The way that a song went, the rhymes, the choruses, the bridges that we mullate.

All that stuff, it obviously got into my head. I mean, it just left a big impression on me. Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Hammerstein, whatever. I I remember the music to My Fair Lady. I remember that just knocking me out. And that show My Fair Lady, the movie with Audra Hepburn. Unbelievable lighting. mean, some of the most beautiful songs in the world. I could have danced all night or Street Where You Live.

I think what happens is that you get older and you get exposed to more more more stuff and it just creates this big, I don’t know what, what do they call those big, a big cistern, a big huge cow watering thing, where it’s just this huge thing. You keep pouring more and more water into it. You’ve got this big bucket or whatever it is and then just

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (47:56.289)
like a tapestry.

Andrew Morse (48:12.294)
And from that, you pull out whatever you pull out depending on what your mood is.

Yeah, I don’t know and then some people sometimes you meet somebody and Well, this is happening to me a couple I’m just telling this because it’s happened a couple times to me recently. So someone like say blondie Blondie Chaplin or Charlie Sexton or you meet somebody and their voice Inspires you to write a certain way their their voice you think this would be a good song for this guy This would a good song for this guy this with his his

his voice with Greg Weld would be with these lines here. This would be a story that he could tell really compellingly or whatever. So the singers actually have a big influence on the way that you write it, what you’re drawn to do. That’s an interesting aspect that I’ve discovered in the last, say, 10 or so years. I don’t know. There’s so much mystery in it, and it’s also interesting and exciting.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:05.889)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (49:15.302)
and wonderful and if you’re lucky enough to do this, you know, at the end of a good day, you just go to bed thinking, Jesus Christ, I’m so lucky to be able to do this. You know, this is a great thing to do.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:24.439)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (49:29.133)
You know, it’s funny. like kind of like to segue into the Tasty Kings and and you mentioned the marquee and seeing something and that’s how you came up with the idea for the band. My grandfather, when I was younger, said because we would order Chinese food sometimes from a local shop and he said, Chris, Christopher, Chinese food is like sex, even when it’s bad, it’s good. And an hour later you always want more. And I feel like music creation is like that as well.

Andrew Morse (49:55.109)
Yes, that’s funny. I heard that for pizza, but yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, yeah. That was it. Yeah, the taste. That was a Chinese restaurant that had closed down on 14th Street. And I called up Kevin. said, hey, I think I have a new name for our band. He goes, yeah, I love that. So that was it. No, it was closed down by the time I saw it. I looked over their menu. It looked like it really wasn’t that great.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:16.833)
Did you ever eat there?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:24.651)
Hahaha

Andrew Morse (50:24.741)
There’s a lot of sort of, you know, there’s a lot of not great Chinese, there’s some good Chinese food in New York, but there’s a lot that’s kind of, know, I don’t know if I’m gonna be, yeah, looks like I’m gonna be sick. I mean, New York’s got a lot of, New York’s got a lot of cruddy food in every ethnicity. We have no good Mexican food really. And then, but one thing we do have in New York, we have great Italian food. We really, really good Italian food. A lot of great Italian food.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (50:53.481)
I wanted to ask kind of like one industry piece of advice for people that are watching and listening. You you started a label in the late 80s. What was it about the industry that pushed you to do that? You know, why are you doing everything on your own rather than what a lot of other people think they should be doing, which is getting signed and discovered.

Andrew Morse (51:15.033)
think that my big hero, John Prine, who was my big songwriting hero, but also just my hero period and just the way that he lived and everything about him. I John Prine is just, he just seems like such a wonderful guy. I never met him, unfortunately, but I saw him a bunch of times. And he started Boy Records with Al Bonetta back, think it was in the eighties. And I think he called it Boy, the story goes, because he was just thinking.

If I could have my own record label, oh boy, that would be great. So it was called Oh Boy Records. Anyway, so I thought, yeah, why not just do this yourself? Why do you have to go through all these people that are gonna be giving you all this advice that you really don’t want or need or isn’t even good? And then just gonna be trying to circle the wagons and play it safe. It’s the same thing I talked about in the stock market. Just people saying, oh yes, value investing is making a comeback, Andrew, bye bye.

No, it’s not. whatever, but they’ll tell you stuff because it’s just the party line. They’re just saying what they heard some guy say. So they’re saying it and it makes them feel smart because they’re just parroting what somebody else said. And so if you want to have your music be subjected to a pile of that, then be my guest. But I think that would probably, that would go a long way toward destroying my enthusiasm for it. And to do it the way that you want to do it is…

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:39.531)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (52:43.234)
It’s great.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (52:44.909)
I mean, for better or worse, it’s important to think of your art as a business, right? And to take care of it that way. Create organically, create from love, like you said. But when it comes to the rest of it, be a little smarter about how you wrap it up.

Andrew Morse (53:01.604)
Well, to that end, would say you gotta find people. I don’t consider myself having any real clue about what to do music business-wise. The only thing I can suggest is you find somebody like Rob Evan off my guy or a couple other people that I’ve known and have them say to you, this is what I think you should do. And if you trust them, then you go and do it. And that’s it. mean, there are people that know a lot more about how to be successful in

music industry than someone like I will ever know. just, the only thing you do is just listen to what those people say and follow whatever advice there is that seems right to you. But I think also the more people that you know and the more you try to create a reputation for being a good person to work with, that won’t hurt you. It’ll only stand you in good stead when you meet other people and someone’s like, oh yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (53:34.657)
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Morse (54:00.791)
I heard about you blah blah blah. It’s not all bad. No, heard whatever. You can have a you have a reputation that precedes you and then it hopefully works out so that you get more work. If somebody you want work with wants to work with you, blah blah blah blah blah. Someone decides they want to co-write with you because they heard this from you. They heard a song of yours that you like. I mean, this guy Stephen Barber, he did a…

the music for the soundtrack for a movie that this guy named Jacques Nodia from South Africa did called Mamous, which is about some tribe in South America. It’s a beautiful movie. The music’s amazing. So I happened to be out in Los Angeles and I went to the premiere of the movie with my friend Stephen Barber and I met the guy Jacques, who was the director of the movie and I said, this is so fucking good. And then I really got to say, it’s magnificent. And then we’re talking to us.

I go, do you ever do any videos, like rock videos or whatever? And he goes, yeah, once in a while. said, all right, well, let me send you this record. Everything strikes your fancy, let me know. So he heard one tune off the record that we did with Pliny Chaplin. And he said, I think this would be a good song for me to do. said, great, be my guest. And so I gave him little money and he went and he created this lovely video. He shot it on film and it’s for this tune called Maybe I’m the Queen, which I wrote for this girl.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:17.261)
Mm.

Andrew Morse (55:28.61)
but it wound up being sung by Blondie. the thing went on to, it’s a couple hundred thousand views, but it’s done very well in terms of awards and this and that, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that all just happened from, you can see how that happened. This is a natural progression of events. It wasn’t any kind of, oh gee, maybe we need to have a video made. It was just more, well, I’m going to see this. This guy does beautiful work. I wonder if he’d be interested.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:44.236)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (55:54.123)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (55:58.006)
and you just kind of go from there. It’s just one thing leads, this is really just one thing leads to another. That’s all I can, that’s it, one thing leads to another.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (56:06.379)
That makes sense. I got two last questions for you. One last one about music. You’ve spent a lot of time in the industry. You’ve been on the label side. You’ve recorded, you write, you’ve traveled or toured, I should say. For you, what’s the best part about being a musician?

Andrew Morse (56:09.954)
Alright.

Andrew Morse (56:28.149)
Well, I’d say there two things. The one is when you sort of crack the code of the song, for instance, this this song, Maybe I’m the Queen, it goes blah, blah, blah. had all these different lines. And then I got to the point where it said, I’m the kindness, maybe I’m the greed, maybe I’m the limit, maybe I’m the speed. And I thought, okay, I see how this song should go. This is these two ends of the spectrum. Okay.

And I felt like I’d sort of cracked the code for this song because before then I was seeing it going, I don’t know, maybe I’m a match, maybe I’m a matchbook, maybe I’m a diss, maybe that. I was on Google going, what are the most common objects in the world? And I was just, you know, just very pedestrian, horrible, long thing. But then I got that one little couplet there and I’m like, shit, I think I’m onto it. I think I know how this should go. I think I get the essence, the structure of the song and I think I’m gonna be okay. So when you have those moments of discovery when you’re writing,

That’s incredibly thrilling. That’s a great, great thing. And I think any songwriter will say yes when you feel like you’ve got, know, okay, now I see where we’re going. And that doesn’t happen. A lot of times you have to work on it for long time, then you have to go to sleep, then you wake up and go, wait, and then you go. I mean, it doesn’t just happen sitting down with your quill pen. I you have to go through a lot of iterations or something. So there’s that. And then the other thing is when you play live,

And you feel like you really gave them their money’s worth and they had a great night. you you had a good, you can just tell these people really, really enjoyed what you were doing. And they came, know, God only knows what their day was like or whatever. And they came and at least for an hour or so, you gave them a good night. You know, they went, fuck, these guys are actually a lot better than I thought they were gonna be. This is pretty cool. And you can sense that, you know, you can tell that. And that’s a great thing is that wonderful exchange.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (58:15.521)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (58:24.287)
So those are the two things. think it’s not that, you know, it’s not super original, but those are the two things that for me would feel it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (58:31.767)
So cracking the code, putting together the puzzle, or seeing the bigger picture in something, feeling amazing about that, and also feeling amazing about sharing love, or guess finding, instilling positivity or happiness in other people.

Andrew Morse (58:46.689)
Yeah, if you’re lucky enough that it goes well, that’s a great, great thing. Yeah, I’m very lucky. I’m not exactly a spring chicken anymore, but the way that it’s all gone for me, I think that I’ve gotten better and better and better. And that’s all I ever really wanted to be was better. I think it was that self-help guru guy, Tony Robbins.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (59:16.385)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (59:16.426)
who said something like, someone said, define happiness in a single word, and he said, progress. I thought, shit, I feel that, you progress. So I feel like I’ve made progress. And maybe I started off sort of shitty. So for me, progress is just getting to be sort of average or mediocre or okay. But to me, it feels like progress and that’s really exhilarating in itself, you know what I mean? I’ll take it.

I’ll take progress in any form, even if I’m starting five blocks behind the starting line or something. I’ll take it. So, yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (59:51.958)
I’m right there with you when it comes to life, creation, being a dad, whatever it is, like all we can do as best as we can now and then endeavor to learn more and better ourselves so that tomorrow we’re doing something a little bit better than today.

Andrew Morse (01:00:05.875)
Yeah, well, if you’re a dad with five kids under your whatever, all I can say is that’s pretty impressive. I’ve got one daughter and she’s great and I had a very easy time raising her and still I understand all the care and love and the challenges and they’re just trying to keep everything straight. So it’s funny too when you get to be a bit older, 40s, 50s, 60s.

You can always tell the people who have parents, have kids and who don’t have kids, people who aren’t parents. It really does take you outside of yourself and it makes you, it’s just a biological thing. makes you the kind of person who has lived a life where there’s something bigger than themselves versus somebody who’s just completely self-concerned. And it’s a wonderful thing.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:00:54.497)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (01:01:04.544)
It’s very profound. was thinking that how, once you have a kid, you realize how much your parents loved you. You understand that in a way that you never would understand unless you have a kid of your own. So it’s just a really, it’s a very special thing. My mom passed away in August this last year and my dad is 97 now. She was 92 when she passed. So I’m very grateful that my dad is still around and I get to go. I’ll be back in New York on Sunday.

And first thing I’ll do on Monday is go up and bring a pie up to my dad and see him and hang out for a minute. It’s just a great thing. Are your parents still around?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:01:44.376)
They both are and I agree that not only is gratitude super critical to just like a happy life, but you all those cliches you hear like spend time with your parents because when they’re gone, they’re gone. And it’s crazy how much it’s important to value that time now.

Andrew Morse (01:02:02.281)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s really worth it. Okay, we’re going.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:02:05.449)
Okay, one last thing and then we can wrap up and I’m gonna go completely off topic just to see what we get. Apparently you’re also a hobbyist photographer and have a now out of print coffee table book from time you spent in Haiti.

Andrew Morse (01:02:24.127)
I wouldn’t say it’s really a coffee table. It’s about 12 by 12. But yeah, so as I said, I’ve been lucky enough to do okay in the stock market. One of the things that’s enabled me to do is a bit of philanthropy here and there and to take time off to do different things. And one of the things I did was after Katrina in 2005, went down to New Orleans to help out with Habitat for Humanity to start rebuilding. I’d never been in New Orleans, first of all.

And second of all, when I saw that picture of the president flying over on the Air Force One at the window over his shoulder, can see the city underwater. went, you know, fuck this guy. I’m going down to help them out, you know? So I don’t know if you know this, but during Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Lyndon Johnson was standing there in his hip boots in a bunch of water, shining a flashlight on himself and saying, people of New Orleans, this is your president. I’m here for you, whatever.

So this was the exact opposite of that and it really salted me. So I went down, I did Habitat for Humanity about, I think it was eight or nine times. And I had such a great time, learned a bit about construction, fell in love with New Orleans, which is a very easy thing to do. And then they had the earthquake in Haiti about 10 years later. Or it was either 2010 or 2012. Anyway.

So I thought, all right, well, I’ll go down to Haiti and do Habitat for Community down there. But they weren’t there yet. So I did this thing all hands, all hands volunteers. And I went to Haiti for a week and did construction down there and that whole deal. so while I was down there, I had this little teeny tiny camera and I took a lot of photographs of everything that I saw there. And then this guy that I knew who’s in Paris made a sort of really nice book out of it. But yeah.

I mean, it’s all just kind of connected, you know? It’s all one big, he’s also the guy that’s done all the artwork for all the records and stuff for the last five records or so. It’s all just one big goddamn circle of something. But anyway, if you ever get, I mean, I wouldn’t go now, the gangs are running and it’s a horror show. But Haiti, when I was there, you’d read the articles in the newspaper and think this is gonna be the end of the world. This is gonna be completely bombed out, horrible.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:04:19.116)
Mm.

Andrew Morse (01:04:45.149)
And you go there and it’s the nicest people in the world and they’re really super great to work with, hardworking, wonderful people, very funny and just really cool. And I had a great time. so I tried to do, I did another little book called No Help New Orleans from about when I was down there for that. But, you know, I just try to get out and do things once in a while that are helpful to the-

I grew up in a very relatively comfortable life. But one of the things that my parents sort of impressed upon us was just, that means that you have a responsibility to help out people that haven’t had an easy time as you have. So get out there and do some shit. Okay, so yeah, and it was great. I was very lucky. We had a good ethic in my house.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:32.097)
Yeah.

Andrew Morse (01:05:44.017)
My mother didn’t want a bunch of asshole spoiled kids. She wanted people who were decent citizens. And so I think she kind of got that. So.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:47.798)
I

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:05:54.708)
It’s so important. mean, the world would be a place if everyone did a little bit of that. have a cardiologist in Vancouver. I’m, thank God, I’m fine. But I was born with a congenital heart defect, which thankfully was repaired. And I went for a checkup recently and he said like, yeah, you know, you’re totally fine. Everything’s good. I was actually not good the last checkup or a couple of checkups before that, but everything’s fine. And I said like, you know, what should I do? And he just looked at me and he said,

You’re blessed. So you go out there and you give back.

Andrew Morse (01:06:28.544)
Yeah, that’s very touching. That’s really, Someone set me up on a blind date with this girl one time. Her son had a heart defect and he died when he was four. So this was about, I don’t know, probably 20 years ago. So.

She sent me an invitation to the Baby’s Heart Fund Gala, which takes place every year in New York. There’s a big benefit at the Plaza Hotel, but it’s for the Columbia Presbyterian Baby’s Heart Fund thing. So every year, I haven’t been to the gala yet because of my scheduler, but every year I give them a bunch of money just because I remember this girl, how nice she was, how fortunate I was that my kid didn’t have this, and how it just keeps me in line with all of that.

The heart defect thing is just, you know, I have a friend who just had a stent actually put in today. So that’s pretty hardcore. Isn’t it spittrace?

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:07:23.339)
Yeah, but it’s what’s so important about conversation and long-form conversation like this. think now more than, I shouldn’t say more than ever, but more than many times in recent history, because we need to do our best to…

Send good messages, positive messages out there to people. Give them not just hope and inspiration, but different ways in which that they can get through their lives, maybe cope. you’ve obviously led with love in most of your career. And that’s where it’s kind of all led you to this spot.

Andrew Morse (01:07:58.209)
Yeah, I hope so. I’m doing, yeah, you do the best you can do, you know? But yes. Where are, you’re located in Canada now? part in Toronto? Vancouver, really? That’s a beautiful, I have a very dear friend off of Vancouver Island. There’s a little island called Hanson Island. You know Alert Bay? Yeah, well right south of that is an island called Hanson Island. He and his wife for many years have run this place called Oracle Lab.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:08.779)
I’m in Vancouver.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:18.443)
Mm-hmm. I’ve heard of it.

Andrew Morse (01:08:27.344)
which is an orca research station, which they do non-invasive research of orcas, so they don’t bore down on them with a boat or anything. But anyway, so I’ve been out to this place, I was just there last summer, but that’s such a beautiful part of the world, God almighty, it’s like National Geographic poster come to life, know? Just wall-to-wall bald eagles and sea otters and whales and this. know, Jesus, where do I look first, you know? It’s a really, really special place.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:42.742)
Yeah.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:46.285)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:08:51.991)
Well you kind of proved my point. You got friends all the way up here and they’re doing stuff, you know, for the betterment of the planet, whether it’s whales or not.

Andrew Morse (01:09:00.124)
Yeah, I love Vancouver itself. It’s a lovely, it’s a beautiful city. I would say it’s like, it’s like San Francisco, if it was kind of cleaned itself up and had it and got it together. know, Vancouver is just, is just really a gorgeous, gorgeous city.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:11.117)
you

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:15.275)
Yeah, well, Austin, New York and England or London are all pretty awesome.

Andrew Morse (01:09:20.3)
They’re not bad. Yeah. Well, it was lovely to meet you. If I come back, if I come up to Oracle Lab, even next summer, whatever, and I’m stopping off for a night in Vancouver, I’ll look you up, all right? Take you to dinner or something. That’d be fun.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:23.265)
I

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:09:32.077)
Yeah, I would appreciate that. So do me a favor. I’m so grateful for these conversations and all the time I get with my guests. And I always like to leave off with words of wisdom from you. So why don’t you give me some kind of important words or life lessons to live by outside of what you really care about.

Andrew Morse (01:09:49.018)
My important life lessons to words of wisdom is that I have none. You got to find them for yourself. That’s all I can say. But it’s been a lovely afternoon. Thank you very much for a lovely conversation. I appreciate it.

Chr1stoph3r G0nda (01:10:06.424)
So don’t go anywhere yet. Give me one second. I’m just going to hit stop.