Like Billy Idol in “Rebel Yell,” Sam Morrow cries for “more, more, more” in his hard-hitting new song “More.”
A slice of bluesy classic rock that Morrow and his band cut live on the floor at Kingsize Soundlabs in East L.A., “More” finds the Houston native ruminating on the difference between what we want in life and what we need. “Walk in, walk out, baby walk on,” he sings in the first verse, delivering the line with hints of Davis Essex’s Seventies smash “Rock On.”
But Morrow isn’t aping any past hit here: He’s fully invested in the present, dialing up the “cosmic cowboy” vibes of earlier albums like 2020’s Gettin’ By on Gettin’ Down to create something fresh. It’s rock and blues, with just a hint of country.
“I kinda get lumped into being a country artist,” Morrow told Chris Shiflett on the Foo Fighters guitarist’s podcast in 2018. “I didn’t like country music for a really long time. Being from Texas, I kinda had this punk rock attitude of, ‘Oh, everyone around here likes country? Fuck country.’”
Morrow says “More,” which will appear on a new album coming Spring 2023, was born from writing a riff with a “hypnotic swagger.” “Lyrically, I tried to pick up on the groove of the music with a rhythmic phrasing and playing off words like with walk, drive, locked etc,” he says in a statement. “I wrote and discarded a lot of verses until finding the right sentiment and imagery.”
Morrow is currently on the road and has dates booked with Mike and the Moonpies, North Mississippi All-Stars, and Charles Wesley Godwin.