This past Saturday, Morgan Page packed the house at the Gold Room, the crowd turning into a lively dance party that was impossible to not get sucked into. He drew us in with his most recent singles, progressive track “Fight My Way” and tropical house inspired “Other Girl”. He brought it home with fan favorites such as Grammy nominated “The Longest Road” and his Tegan and Sara collab hit “Body Work”. He even gave us a gift by dropping an unreleased single, “Lost Dreams”, a light-hearted acoustic tracking featuring him as the lead guitarist. Page created a bright and upbeat experience, something that left fans floating when it was all said and done. He knew when to pump us up and bring us down to really feel the emotion and the journey of his music. He’s a master at creating the ultimate experience for his fans with his discography, everywhere he goes.
We had a chance to sit down with Morgan Page before his electric performance and ask him about collaboration experiences, supporting Youtube channels, learning guitar, and more.
RR: Hey, welcome back to Atlanta! How’s the tour been so far? Have you ever played at the Gold Room?
MP: The summer is heating up, so I’m doing triple headers and the usual couple shows a week. This will be my first time there, I usually play at the Opera, so this should be fun.
RR: I saw you had guest list contest for tonight. Do you do that often?
MP: We usually try to do it. I mean, we like to give back a little bit with tickets and awards to winners and we do meet and greets. We don’t do them for every show, but we try to do it when we can.
RR: How do you pick the winners? Any fun memories?
MP: It’s random because you can’t tell who is the biggest fan, necessarily. I always want the most eligible fan to win the meet and greet. With meet and greets, we’ve done some virtual reality ones. We’ve brought Oculus Rifts to shows. We made a 3D interactive experience with “In the Air” and did a Samsung Gear VR experience of “Open Heart”. We were able to do that locally, it’s hard to try to fly with all of the gear. We did a pre-show with virtual reality just to mix it up and do something different.
RR: We’ve seen quite a few single releases this year. You’ve said before that this alludes to an album because you think an album should consist of tracks that can all stand on their own for the most part. So, is there an album in the works?
MP: I’m still trying to figure that out myself. The main thing is to be releasing things constantly instead of doing this two year cycle of: spend two years making a record, and then a year putting it out, promoting it and plucking singles from it. I’m wondering if some of these will become an album, I don’t really know what the point of an album is now. I like albums, but it’s very easy for that album to go partially unlistened or people just listen to the singles. I think the die hard fans listen to the album, and that’s great. We might collect them into EP’s or an album eventually. The system that’s been working well is a new single every two or three months, then a remix pack, some acoustic mixes, and then the next single. It’s a whole new approach this year, we’ve never done something like this.
RR: I read in an article that Asia Whiteacre listed you as someone she has collaborated with. What brought you two together and what was it like working with her?
MP: We met through her publisher, Warner/Chapple Music. She blew up with the “Starving” track and I didn’t really know that for a while, this was pre-“Starving”. She co-wrote “Safe Till Tomorrow” along with Angelika Vee and myself. She’s super talented, and that’s the only time I’ve worked with her, just in one song. She is a super quick writer and Angelika was playing the piano. We have an acoustic version of the song now. Maybe we’ll work on more stuff together, she’s a hot commodity now.
RR: What about other artists you have worked with this year, including Reyla, Lissie, and Steve James?
MP: Everyone’s different. It’s very comfortable working with Lissie, we’ve done so many songs together like “Fight for You”, “Believe”, “Longest Road”, and “Open Heart”. I haven’t done anything with Angelica McCluskey in a while but it’s cool to work with everyone. They have a different vibe and different approach. Some people are more lyrical, some are more melody focused. So if it’s somebody like Lissie, she likes to have fully formed songs ready to go. She’ll play them on her guitar and I’ll make lyric suggestions, that’s always fun.
Some artists, like with Tegan and Sara, that was more of a remote collaboration. They’re super talented and we weren’t in the same studio. Usually, I prefer to have them in the same room. I don’t have vocal booths and I just have them sing over my shoulder.
Reyla, that was really cool. She’s super new, 16 years old and just getting into the music industry. She just had a really cool, fresh voice. She tracked the original vocals at another studio but we did all the layering together. I like to do some coaching in person when they’re there so I can really get the sound that I want. Otherwise, it can sound like somebody else’s record.
RR: What elements or types of singing voices do you feel you gravitate towards and want to work with?
MP: The voices like Lissie, those are some sawdust voices, as they call them. She has a little grit, a little Steve Nicks, so I like that. Some of them are a little polished, pop-ish vocals, like Reyla’s voice is a little more pop. I always want voices that you can distinguish who the singer is. With some of the recent releases, it may sound more familiar and may not have that same gritty voice. I’ve been experimenting with different tambour of vocalists and just seeing what works. My favorite is still that Angela McCluskey, Lissie style. The new single “Fight My Way” is really cool. Moses Keenan is a brand new singer and he has this innocence. It’s cool that we can get that out of a male vocal.
RR: I read you were wanting to learn more instruments for a 2017 New Years resolution. What have you picked up and loved so far? How much do you write and record yourself playing them for your singles?
MP: Yeah, it’s been a big focus learning guitar more. I grew up learning piano and took lessons for a few years. Playing guitar, you’re gonna hear on some of the new songs. One song I’m playing tonight called “Lost Dreams”, it’s a collab with JCO and Kaleena Zanders. It’s unreleased but it has me on lead guitar, I’m trying it out. It’s a lot of work to get the chops down, the timing right, the inclination and the right sound. It’s easy to wear a lot of hats, maybe too many hats sometimes. If I get an idea, because I’m not a great guitar player, it forces me to replay things, play it slower, and more deliberately. Then I can have a clearer melody, and so sometimes it’s an advantage.
RR: Do you think you will continue to work with other Youtube-turned-label groups such as Proximity? Are there any thoughts of working with others or continuing to work with Proximity?
MP: I thought it was really cool, it was an honor to be their first, legit release on their label. That worked out well. Hopefully we will have more releases like that. Armada has been a great partnership but it’s funny how some of these guys that are Youtube channels are doing better than labels, it’s crazy to see. We’re curious to see what’ll happen, I don’t know what’s going to happen with Soundcloud now. Soundcloud has already been a sinking ship for a while, I think, which is too bad because I thought it was a great platform. I loved it for doing my bootleg mixes. It was too bad when they got so restrictive about content, I couldn’t really post my bootlegs or my special edits, including my radio show. Even though I had permission from all the artists, they’d flag the account and shut it down.
RR: What was it like making your own Oculus experience? Will there be anymore to come?
MP: Yeah, definitely. The plan is to have a series of experiences. I think of the thing now is to be a little ahead of the curve, but you don’t want to wait to long and be perfectionist about it. So we try to get these releases out and hopefully enough of the people have the set up to do it and experience it. We were able to bring the gear and have people experience it without having to buy that $2,000 computer that you need. It’s fun to be able to control the experience; here are the headphones that I love, here is a sub pack, sub-woofer you lean against. To be able to control the variables like that is pretty cool. I think we’ll do more. The last one we did was VR for “Open Heart” but you can watch it on Facebook and on your phone as a 360º video. All the emotions are different in VR.
RR: What has been the response to your Quick Tips concept evolving into a blog and twitter platform?
MP: It’s funny you mention this because now it’s shifting form into possibly an app. It was originally we’re going to do some print products and it’s really hard to get distribution and find the right publisher. This has been my little baby, my bonsai business. It’s gotten great reaction and built a really cool little vibrant community. It’s kind of a knowledge base. Now there’s over 600 tips, 5 tips a day on Twitter, and 30 blog posts so far. It’s an outlet for me to write and reflect on making music, mental models and different approaches in the studio that I’ve learned over the years. I’m building it to be a bigger resource, where they’ll be other people’s tips and tips from manufacturers. It’s exciting to see.
MP: A nice thing is we got everybody from Zedd to the Chainsmokers that are using the tips and they’re fans of it. I got all these quotes for the product that’s going to come out. It’s funny because I have people that love the tips but they’re like ‘don’t tell anybody I use the tips’. They don’t want to be seen they need help with their stuff. I think there is that myth of being the ‘lone genius’ that makes for a good story.
We thank Morgan Page for taking the time to sit down and give us a view into the life of the multi-talented artist. If you have the chance, we highly suggest grabbing a ticket and seeing him in person during his tour for an unforgettable night.
Connect with Morgan Page:
http://www.morgan-page.com/
https://www.facebook.com/morganpage
https://twitter.com/morganpage
https://soundcloud.com/morganpage
https://www.instagram.com/morganpage/
Connect with Quick Tips:
https://mpquicktips.com/
https://twitter.com/MPQuickTips
https://www.instagram.com/mpquicktips/
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