Pandemic Toilet Paper Song, Cilantro Debate, and Parenting with Country Artist Nick Morgan

If you like Chris Stapleton, Texas country music, Rodney Carrington, or a good laugh, you'll like this guy! You can watch the episode here: https://youtu.be/dMSHe6bxoy0

He's the happiest guy in the world who writes sad country songs. Country artist Nick Morgan utilizes his signature humor to walk us through his influences as an artist, the stories behind a few of his songs including his hilarious tune about the toilet paper debacle of 2020, youthful mishaps, parenting advice (sort of), the great cilantro debate, and more!

Nick Morgan IG: https://www.instagram.com/steelandstrings/
Nick Morgan IG Pandemic Song: https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_QhcL7gs1V/
Bored and Curious Links: https://linktr.ee/boredandcuriouspodcast

Episode Guide:
0:00 Intro & Influences
4:06 First song you wrote
5:29 Sad country songs make me happy
8:32 Who is it your dream to work with?
10:35 The Story Behind the Song: Main Street
11:49 The Story Behind the Song: Heaven Falling Down
14:46 The Story Behind the Song: My Country Home
17:26 The Story Behind the Song: Ode to Charmin (Pandemic toilet paper song)
20:25 Whatcha watchin'?
22:47 What's on your playlist?
24:25 Bucket list
25:14 The worst thing you did as a kid
26:28 Worst things your kids have done
27:44 Most adventurous or riskiest thing you've done
30:30 Favorite memory from college
31:39 What do you remember from when your kids were born?
32:59 Any parenting advice?
36:01 Could ya not...? (i.e. What bothers you?)
37:41 Why in the Sam Hill do we Say That?
39:05 Upcoming projects

Short Guitar Clip by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Transcript

Mary Katz: 0:00

Got any parenting advice for someone that has-

Nick Morgan: 0:02

Toddlers?!

Mary Katz: 0:03

I have toddlers...

Nick Morgan: 0:04

Oh man, Benadryl for road trips. I'm joking. Don't dose your kids. Anybody that sees this don't dose your children.

Mary Katz: 0:14

Welcome to another episode of Bored and Curious. I'm your host, Mary Katz and today's guest is Nick Morgan. Nick has been writing songs for many years, but has recently decided, "Hey, maybe I want to get some of my stuff out there. So let's help him out a little bit, folks. He also happens to have quite the sense of humor. So I hope you guys get a good laugh out of that as well. Before we go any further, make sure you are subscribed to the podcast or following whichever it may be. And also check us out on social media. Alrighty, let's get started. Well, welcome to Bored and Curious. I am so excited to have you today. I've been listening to your songs and they are not only heart-wrenching and beautiful and at times you channel your inner Rodney Carrington a bit. So we will get into all of that. But first off, go ahead and tell me, Nick when did you realize that you wanted to write songs?

Nick Morgan: 1:01

I figured out. Well, I've been a huge country music fan, well, music fan in general. My mom was a, well, she was a little bit of a hippie from back in the day. I grew up on all of the the sixties stuff. And then she was also a huge Neil Diamond fan. And so I got plenty of that Three Dog Night and Beach Boys, and I've been listening. I've been deep in the music forever, but I was always brought up around country music. And then probably whenever I first decided I wanted to start writing my own stuff was a, I'm going to say probably around 90, 95, 96, 97, somewhere in there is when I heard The Great Divide for the first time on CMT. And it was a, Oh, what was that song? They had a video for, I think it was "Pour Me a Vacation" or something like that. And off that first Break in the Storm album that came out and all of a sudden I was like, this is different. This is stuff that it wasn't "Pour Me a Vacation," but it was like, this is stuff that I've that I can kind of, I get this, this sounds like home to me. And I was like, okay, so there's a different world for songwriters out there. So I really kind of leaned in to learn how to play the guitar and stuff whenever I was in high school about that time. And I kind of tapered off and then I didn't get- I never actually even considered doing it for anybody, but just my own enjoyment until I got into college there at Texas Tech. And that was right about the time that Pat Green and Cory Morrow had already started getting really big. Wade Bowen had recorded that Live at the Blue Light way back in 2001. And then I discovered those guys and I was like, these guys are writing stuff people are listening to music about. The world I came from, drinking beer in pastures, just generally being up to no good kind of stuff. And I was like, I can write songs like that. So that's kinda what got me started. Yeah, that's really kind of where I decided to start leaning into it. And I started looking at things, trying to find people to play with. It kind of went from there.

Mary Katz: 2:59

Would you say that those were, so I know that you just said that your mom kind of was a hippie and so you'd listened to more of stuff from her era, but do you think that the stuff that you listened to in high school was more influential in a way?

Nick Morgan: 3:13

I would say so. I got my appreciation for music from mom and dad, because you know mom was a little bit of a hippie. I mean, she's still Texas girl. She grew up, around Sweetwater, Midland-Odessa and then dad's born and raised flat lander, just like me from up on the cap rock, farm kid. So he was listening to Barbara Mandrell and Reba McEntire and The Oak Ridge Boys and Alabama. I learned to appreciate music with them. And even my grandparents, listening to all their old vinyl. While we were laying around the house on Sunday after eating a whole bunch of chicken fried steak or something. So I learned to appreciate it then, but yeah, the stuff that influenced my music the most is probably a lot of the things I listened to late high school, early college, and then even some early high school stuff, because I'm guilty of getting into all the the grunge stuff the Pearl Jam and the all of them. That's what most, all my friends listened to. So we listened to a bunch of them. Yeah, Pearl Jam Nirvana, Bush. Everybody.

Mary Katz: 4:06

Do you remember the first song that you wrote?

Nick Morgan: 4:09

The first ever song I wrote? Probably not because I also listened to a lot of Chris LeDoux, whenever we take road trips up to Colorado. We had the giant cassette box where I had literally every cassette he ever put out. And I tried to write all these cowboy songs now. I and I kind of a part-time cowboy growing up. My, both my folks were teachers, but I grew up running cows from my granddad and stuff. I wanted to write cowboy songs and it wasn't real. So I don't remember any of them, but the first one I wrote that I played for people I remember it extremely well. I don't play it anymore, but I remember it very well.

Mary Katz: 4:44

You don't play it anymore because-

Nick Morgan: 4:46

it just kind of outgrew it. As I grew and my writing got better. I saw all the things that were wrong with it and how repetitive it was and how, it was, it don't get me wrong I was proud as punch of it as a starting point. Whenever I was 18 years old, I thought it was great. And all my friends thought it was great. Of course, we were all a bunch of, we weren't drinking beer at 18 cause we wouldn't do that. I don't know if there's any kids watching this, but we were not the- We weren't the most sophisticated people in the world, but I thought it was great, and it's fairly typical, 19. Yeah, I guess about a 19 year old kid breaks up with his first serious girlfriend, writes a sad sappy song about it. And that's the one I remember. And then from that point on is where it really kind of took off. And I really started trying to write a lot of things.

Mary Katz: 5:29

And now as an adult you, but you do tend to write I guess more sad country songs.

Nick Morgan: 5:35

I do. And it's not on purpose. It's not on purpose. Cause anybody that knows me will tell you I'm about as far as you can get from like the overtly morose, sad melancholy person ever. I'm always trying to be in a good mood and stay positive. Wait there's a quote somewhere about something about how sad the country songs make me happy. And I can't remember what it was, but I just like them. Like I think Oh, who is it? John Moreland writes some of those beautiful stuff I've ever heard. And it's so depressing. It makes you feel like you're living in Seattle in the rain and just everything's in your head. I'll listen to that. And somebody will say, "What's wrong?""Not a thing in the world. I'm just listening to the radio."

Mary Katz: 6:19

My husband pulled that one on me. He was listening to my playlist at the gym and he was like, "Why is your- Your playlist is so sad." And I'm like, "This is just what I like. I don't know, but like, I'm a happy person. That's just what I like."

Nick Morgan: 6:31

I get it. Trust me. I absolutely get it. Yeah. I don't write them that way intentionally. But I did have decided whenever I finally get an album for that, it's going to be a, what was it? We're just going to title it Sad Songs and Cautionary Tales, because I've got a tendency to follow that Chris Knight path where it's either, somebody is getting their heart broke or somebody's going to get murdered. And unintentional, it's just. It just comes easy, which I don't know... That could speak to my character. Maybe that's something I should get checked out.

Mary Katz: 7:00

So you grew up listening to older stuff like the, stuff that I'm only probably maybe five, 10 years younger than you, maybe something like that. So I grew up listening to Reba and Vince and Brooks and Dunn and all of that. And I didn't hear any of the Nirvana and stuff like that until I got to college. My, my daddy thought all that was just evil and of Satan, so I wasn't allowed to listen to it. But bringing things into modern times, who do you like now?

Nick Morgan: 7:25

Oh, man. Are we talking Texas centric or just in general?

Mary Katz: 7:32

In general.

Nick Morgan: 7:32

I've got to say all the women in country music have been doing some phenomenal things. Like I've discovered Caitlyn Smith and Morgan Wade this past year. And Oh my God, I can't get enough of either one of them. They're just incredible Caitlyn Smith's got such a powerful fricking voice and and just writes such beautiful well-crafted songs. I'm a huge fan of hers. And then Morgan Wade, she kind of falls into that same vein of stuff that I do, writes a lot of sad country songs, but damn they're just, they're good. Beyond that, I don't, I'm guilty of kinda shying away from some of the big Nashville stuff and it's not even intentional. It just isn't really what I listen to a lot anymore. I lean a lot more towards the singer songwriter type. So people like Jason Isbell is still one of my, he's not an up and comer anymore. He's already huge. And actually married a girl that used to play fiddle in a band out there in Lubbock, Texas. And but yeah, those types, those are the two biggest ones in country that I've discovered here this past year that I've just listened to I mean, on repeat.

Mary Katz: 8:32

So let's take it forward a bit. We've done past, we've done present. Let's go a little in the future. Is there someone let's call it the next five to ten years that you just your dream to work with? Who would it be? You don't even have to name just one. Just make a list.

Nick Morgan: 8:49

Ever since I heard Radney Foster's, it was live at the Continental Club. I think it was called Are You Ready for the Big Show. It was a live album. Ever since I heard that, I always liked him ever since I heard the old Foster and Lloyd stuff or Del Rio, 1980 always been a fan of his, but I heard that where he kind of, the song writer again. So he gave a lot of the backstories behind the songs. And then what really kind of drove the drove the point home for me, how talented he was whenever he told the whole story about that song "Went for a Ride." if you've never heard it, you need to go find it and listen to it because he does this whole two or three minute long spiel about the backstory behind that song. And it's just beautiful. So yeah if anything, I love to learn how to co-write with that guy because it seems like everything he puts his his stamp on just turns out beautiful. And I'm just a huge fan.

Mary Katz: 9:39

Yeah. That the thing you're talking about sounds familiar, but I may have to revisit that just to make sure actually.

Nick Morgan: 9:44

Yeah, I think it was called, Are You Ready for the Big Show, but Oh yeah. It's one of my favorite albums is it's a live show, but I think it's pretty well all acoustic. They've got the standup bass and acoustic guitars and, minor drum kit bass near with the brushes and all that. It's it's really kind of low key, but you can hear every single word. You can hear the banter back and forth with the crowd. It's one of my favorite albums all the time.

Mary Katz: 10:08

Awesome.

Nick Morgan: 10:09

Ya know it's at least in the top five.

Mary Katz: 10:11

So if things took off for ya. We're gonna put it out there. Things are gonna take off for you. Put it out in the universe.

Nick Morgan: 10:15

I'm hopin'!

Mary Katz: 10:16

Little of that!

Nick Morgan: 10:16

Fingers crossed!

Mary Katz: 10:17

A re you thinking, ah, I am a Texas boy. I'm going to stay in Texas. Or are you like, I will move to Nashville like this minute?

Nick Morgan: 10:23

Oh no. If I can make a living doing music, I'd go wherever I had to. My kids, both my kids will be out of school in the next five to six years. So at that point, I'm kind of free to roam around.

Mary Katz: 10:35

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's head on into the story behind the song. Take us behind the scenes of "Main Street."

Nick Morgan: 10:43

I wish I had a better story for that one, but the fact of the matter is we were The Blue Light in Lubbock, Texas, legendary. Well, now it's legendary. Back then it was just, "Yeah, we're going to go to The Blue Light." It was just kind of like home. Whenever Tom still owned the place I think we started doing some open mic stuff during the summertime on Sunday nights. And we were sitting on the patio in front of The Blue Light, a Tom's daiquiri, kind of early. And we were just sitting there and I saw one of my exes walking down the street, not even particularly one that I had a deep loving relationship with. Just somebody that I used to see. And I saw her walking with her new boyfriend and I just started humming a tune in my head while we were sitting there waiting to play. And then of course, I went in my backpack and got my stuff out and just started writing all the, writing the words down and getting the melody in my head. And I tried it on stage. I tried half of that song, onstage that night. Cause those those Sunday open mikes back then were not a big deal. There was about 15 people there. It was all the local songwriters were there. We'd kind of workshop things and try it out. And that's how that one came about. And then I just kind of picked and chose some other little instances from my life history and filled out the rest of it.

Mary Katz: 11:49

Very good. Well, it's a beautiful song. And speaking of beautiful songs, for anyone who wants to shed tears and have their heart ripped out "Heaven Falling Down."

Nick Morgan: 12:00

That one is pretty close to home. Not me personally, my best friend's brother went through a very similar situation. And this all happened whenever we were in high school. Had a really, had a rough divorce with his wife, got into booze and pills. And of course that didn't make things any better with him being able to see his kids. Kind of all that. And that always stuck with me, even though it happened whenever I was 14. He overdosed and took his own life, as far as we know intentionally.

Mary Katz: 12:29

Wow.

Nick Morgan: 12:29

They didn't get there in time and something that I happened to something similar happened, and I can't remember if it was something I saw on the news or what, whenever I was in Lubbock at college. But all of that kind of came back to me and I just remembered it. And I just, that all came out as is, on the page in about 15 minutes.

Mary Katz: 12:48

Wow.

Nick Morgan: 12:48

And I was really hesitant again because I kind of get pigeonholed for writing sad songs. I was really hesitant to play that for anybody. And then I played it for another one of the buddies of mine that was in a band there Lubbock. And he's like, "You've got to play that." He's like, "You've got to put that on stage and get it recorded because that's incredible." That's the first song I ever wrote where I felt really good about it, but at the same time, nervous to play it for anybody. And then the second I started playing it for people, I got the kind of feedback on that song. Everybody dreams of having people saying that's incredible. That's phenomenal. You've got to get that out. And that's what I've been trying to do.

Mary Katz: 13:28

Yeah. A little PSA about depression and when times are really tough and you feel like you can't really make it through things and how important it is to get the help that you need.

Nick Morgan: 13:40

And I got in the habit of without trying to whenever I was playing shows and stuff, especially if it was a quieter one and it wasn't like at a bar atmosphere, if it was just kind of a sit down and listen to music I'd try to toss that out and be like, "Hey, you know what? Come talk to me if you can't find anybody else." Because it's- My dad used to tell me that all the time it's a permanent solution for a temporary problem. And so I've always taken that kind of serious, cause there's been several instances in my life and then I'm reminded of the time. So I like to try to reach out and tell people we care about them and let them know. You love them. Just be there for the people around you.

Mary Katz: 14:15

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm having flashbacks here. I interviewed Kent Blazy about"If Tomorrow Never Comes." that he wrote with Garth Brooks. And like, it's just, it's very much on the same wavelength. Not necessarily a depression sense, but I mean, that song, you know..

Nick Morgan: 14:30

Yeah. Well, important themes like that pervade all genres, all levels of musicianship. It's the things that are important are the things that people are going to write about.

Mary Katz: 14:40

Things that we all relate to. Yeah.

Nick Morgan: 14:42

Yeah. Cause everybody's been there on both sides, unfortunately.

Mary Katz: 14:46

And so, moving on to "My Country Home."

Nick Morgan: 14:50

A much happier story. Well, relatively happy. There's actually a whole, I had a live recording of it at one point where I I gave the whole spiel about this to music right before I played it. But whenever I was in college in the span of 10 days, time, I I got served with papers from a car accident that I was involved with in at 18 years old, it was one year, 360 days after the accident. So just inside the what is it? The just inside the limit to where somebody can file a suit for personal injury. So I got sued was the first thing that happened. And then not a week later we were at, and this is like, mid-July, whenever all this was going down... A week later, we had just rented this big house, me and two or three of my buddies and all their girlfriends were over. And we were, listening to the radio. We were running the dishwasher and washer, dryer. I mean, everything in the house, it was like 105 degrees outside. And all of a sudden we start smelling smoke and the power goes out. We had a blown this old fuse box on the back of the house and our house caught on fire. We got it got put out really quickly, but essentially I was homeless for a few days. And I was supposed to go to work that night and I called my boss and I'm like, "I know that I've got to get vacation time approved ahead of time. But I'm gonna take three or four days off because I don't have a place to live right now." So I'm going to go back to my grandparents' place and Sudan or Amherst, Texas 45, 50 miles away. Cause my folks had just moved to Austin. And I said, I'm going to go stay at my grandparent's place for a few days until they can get in and get our house fixed and we can have it livable again and said, and it's just been a really bad week, so I'm leaving Lubbock.. I'm done. And so I did that just like in that song, I threw my guitar in a pickup and a bag full of clothes that all smelled like an electrical fire. And and I went to the strip and I've got a cooler full of beer. And I went to my grandparents' house and I... I drove tractor all day and I did work on the farm all day. And I sat on the front porch of their house and looked out at the stars really for the first time in about two... about two years at that point that I had gotten out of Lubbock, Texas. And I'd gotten back out into the country, kind of where I grew up and I realized how much I kinda missed it. I knew that I always knew that I missed living out in the country and being out there so I could shoot guns, raise hell , and drink beer and not get in trouble and stuff. But I realized just how big of a part of me it was whenever I was out there. So that's why I wrote that song. And it always reminds me of that. So it's always one I liked to play for people.

Mary Katz: 17:26

Yeah, I think a lot of people probably kind of want to go out of their homes at this point because of the whole pandemic situation. And speaking of pandemics... Little segue here. You partook in a songwriting challenge and came up with something that if this song didn't go to number one on the charts, perhaps it would go to number two.

Nick Morgan: 17:45

Oh man. That's it. That was an excellent segue. I guess a couple of weeks after we it was probably a week after we get through the first two weeks and flatten the curve. Everybody's still naturally real worried about everything going on. I host an open mic here in Sweetwater. And a buddy of mine that comes up there and plays with me all the time, Philip Thompson, also super talented guy. He he sends me a message on Facebook and he's like, "Hey man, I've got this idea a nd I'm going to start it with you." If you do it, I'm going to challenge you to a songwriting thing. If you accept, I pick the topic and you have 24 hours to write a song post it video on Facebook. But remember I get to pick the topic. And I'm sitting here thinking, "Man, yeah, come on. Let's do it." Because at the time I wasn't working. And I was bored out of my skull. My kids were home, they were driving me nuts. I love them. But at that point, their spring break had turned into four weeks long. So they were getting kind of. Yeah, exactly. So they were getting kind of antsy..

Mary Katz: 18:45

At least yours can do things for themselves. Mine. Mine are little, man. They're little. I have to do like everything for them... Anyway...

Nick Morgan: 18:54

So I remember those days though. I remember those days. Now I've got to fight for their attention. But yeah. So, I told him, I'm like,"Yeah, you know what? Let's do this because whatever you throw at me, I'm going to get you back." He said, "All right, you have to write a country song about toilet paper." And that is where the "Ode to Charmin" came from. Cause that was right about the time everybody lost their mind for the first time and started buying all of the toilet paper in the known universe. And you don't realize you have a favorite brand of toilet paper until all of the sudden you are reduced to buying the only thing you can find, which is that John Wayne toilet paper from Sam's Club; rough and tough and don't take shit off nobody. Yeah. And so that it was essentially, it was a love note to Charmin toilet paper, which is to this day, still the strangest sentence to come out. of my mouth. It was a lot of fun though. There were actually some pretty neat songs that came out of that. We had people writing songs about drive-through liquor and to go margaritas and porch parties. And it was it was pretty interesting. Even one, I can't remember who wrote it, but somebody wrote a love song about falling in love with somebody that they met at like a quarantine picnic. And they didn't realize that it was their cousin till they took their mask off or something like that. It was just silly, but we had a good time. It was it was a good way to pass the time and kind of a brain exercise.

Mary Katz: 20:16

It's just, it's absolutely hilarious. And yeah, you definitely channeled your inner Rodney Carrington on that one. Oh man. All right. Let's move on to some, just for fun questions. And in light of the pandemic and all the Netflix and the Huluing and all the whatnot that everybody's doing, what you watching these days?

Nick Morgan: 20:34

I, this is maybe this could be embarrassing, but I just started watching, Breaking Bad for the first time ever not long ago. Yes. And no spoilers please.

Mary Katz: 20:44

That is my husband's favorite TV show.

Nick Morgan: 20:47

And I've never seen it. I'm the world's worst about like-

Mary Katz: 20:51

I even got him, I got our kids, the again, my kids are four, three, and like a year and a half. And so I got them matching t-shirts. And instead of Breaking Bad, it says Breaking Dad. And it's got the little blocks for the chemistry. Yeah, it's cute. It's precious. That was his father's day gift. Last year we took cute pictures. It was precious, but yeah. Breaking Bad. Go ahead.

Nick Morgan: 21:12

Yeah. Yes. I just got into that for the first time. I'm not real good about jumping onto the the TV show trends. I actively try not to watch any more TV than I have to, but yeah, we watched over the initial part of quarantine anyways. Before West Texas kinda opened back up, we watched everything. We watched Stranger Things. Again, I watched The Office a dozen times before they took it off Netflix because that's that is my favorite show. My daughter dressed up as Dwight Schrute for Halloween last year or the year before. It was the funniest thing. That's probably on my Instagram somewhere. Her dress is Dwight Schrute. But, yeah, so I oh and Yellowstone! I finally watched the first three seasons of Yellowstone. Everybody keeps telling me I need to watch Yellowstone and I haven't seen it yet. I've been watching Bridgerton. Yeah. I can't get into, I've seen a few people recommend that. I'm just-

Mary Katz: 22:04

That and The Sinner.

Nick Morgan: 22:05

There's- What's that now?

Mary Katz: 22:06

The Sinner. So it was originally on USA and the first season stars Jessica Biel. And she's a gal who in plain sight, just, there's no doubt about it. She murdered this guy with like a paring knife or something.

Nick Morgan: 22:21

No kiddin'.

Mary Katz: 22:21

And why did she do that? And so they're trying to figure out why. And there's this detective who's like admittedly, his first season... He needs to tone down the plant talk. It's just a lot. He talks about plants a lot. Could you just investigate, please?

Nick Morgan: 22:34

Well, it takes all kinds.

Mary Katz: 22:35

But yeah. And then the second seasons again, follows that detective. It's for another murder. And then the third one is the same detective for a different murder of sorts. They think it might be a murder. It's a mystery. All right, so you're not watching TV much, but maybe you're listening to some music. What's in your playlist?

Nick Morgan: 22:51

Right now I've somehow I've gotten lost down the the old early college, late high school rock wormhole here lately. I've been listening to a lot of a lot of my gym mix primarily, which involves a lot of Pantera and Guns and Roses. And Oh, geez. I have a bizarre playlist. It'll go from Miles Davis one second to Slip Knot the next. It confuses and frightens small children sometimes because we'll be listening to some pop song that my daughter wanted me to download. And yeah, well, two years ago before she had her own phone and yeah. And then something terrifying, like a metal band called The Ghost Inside. I've gotten into them. It's heavy metal and it's loud and it's obnoxious and they're screaming. But if you can actually hear the songs, they're actually really well-written songs, which I appreciate. And I can't lift weights to Conway Twitty. Love them as much as I do. I don't want to listen to them while I'm in the gym. Cause I need something to drown out all the other people, making the strange noises.

Mary Katz: 23:51

Yeah, the grunters is what I call them.

Nick Morgan: 23:53

But other than that, like I said, I'll listen to a lot of Texas. I'll put on like the Texas music now, playlist and listen to just about everything on there. Cody Johnson, that guy to me is like George Strait for a new generation. I love him. He puts out such good stuff and I try to, I'm trying to drill him into my kids' heads as well as George Strait. But and then, like I say, a lot of the classics, I still listen to Chris LeDoux all the time. We just kind of run the gamut around here.

Mary Katz: 24:20

Got it. You got to have the variety. That's the spice of life, as they say.

Nick Morgan: 24:23

Yep. Balanced in all things.

Mary Katz: 24:25

Yes. All right. Now hit me with at least one item on your bucket list.

Nick Morgan: 24:29

At least I'll want to see the northern lights while I am in the Iceland. That is the goal because apparently that is like the premier spot to go see them at. I don't know if it's cause the sky is clear there. Or if they're just cause how isolated they are, but I have always wanted to see the northern lights, like at the best possible place. And so I've done a little research and from what I can tell, I think that's supposed to be it. Either that or Greenland. I can't remember Greenland may be a little too icy.

Mary Katz: 24:59

The northern lights have come up in, this is the third podcast that it has come up in.

Nick Morgan: 25:05

Yeah. See the Northern lights and headline a show at Gruene Hall. Those would probably be top two..

Mary Katz: 25:12

Lofty, lofty lists there.

Nick Morgan: 25:14

Oh, yeah,

Mary Katz: 25:14

What's the worst thing you did as a kid?

Nick Morgan: 25:17

Oh God. Okay. Without anything too self incriminating or giving my kids any ideas, if they decide to watch this. The maddest I ever made my dad in my life... He went and bought me a, go-cart little, five horsepower, Briggs and Stratton motor on the back. And we, I mean, we absolutely ran that thing ragged and we blew out the seals and O-rings and all that stuff. And I had a friend of mine, 12 years old, just like me, but his dad knew how to build race car motors. So we thought with our combined knowledge, surely we can pull this motor apart and fix it. And in the 12 hours or so that my dad was gone, we had this little five horsepower motor pulled apart so much, there were pieces scattered all across this two car garage. And to this day, that is the angriest I've ever seen my dad in my life. And he's a super, super laid back patient guy. He was so incredibly mad about that. I genuinely feared for my life.

Mary Katz: 26:22

Oh my gosh.

Nick Morgan: 26:23

Yeah.

Mary Katz: 26:24

See, I can see one of my kids doing that for sure.

Nick Morgan: 26:27

It'll happen.

Mary Katz: 26:28

Okay. So, so far, tell me what's the worst thing that your kids have done?

Nick Morgan: 26:34

The worst thing that my- You know what? I can't even remember any of them. That they've been pretty good kids. My son's the most laid back individual I've ever met in my life. I wish I had his level of"We'll worry about it later." Which that could be the worst thing he does in his life, because he's a junior this year. And if you ask him what he's going to do after he graduates it's, "I don't know. I'll figure it out whenever I get there ." kind of stuff. So really, and truthfully, that would probably be the the worst is his his kind of his laid back attitude towards things. And me and mom are like, "No, you've got to at least kind of start thinking about what's going on." But they hadn't caused too much trouble, yet. Knock on wood. My daughter's polar opposite. She's me made over as a girl, which is going to be terrifying when she gets into high school. But she's still she's 13 right now. So it's just beginning.

Mary Katz: 27:23

I'll pray for you.

Nick Morgan: 27:25

Yeah. Ask me again in five years, what's the worst thing, and I'm sure I will have- We'll revisit this conversation after you've performed at Gruene Hall and you've written with with Radney Foster. When all of the rest of this has gone gray or fallen out. Well, this fallen out and the rest of it gone gray.

Mary Katz: 27:39

It relocates.

Nick Morgan: 27:41

Yeah, it does do that.

Mary Katz: 27:44

All right. What's the most adventurous or riskiest thing you've ever done?

Nick Morgan: 27:47

We, in college, in a condition that may or may not have involved exorbitant amounts of alcohol, may have-

Mary Katz: 27:56

So this is when you were 21...

Nick Morgan: 27:57

Yes, I was 21 at this point. We may have- It wasn't breaking and entering. It was trespassing. We may have climbed the wall to the Texas Tech swimming pool at two o'clock in the morning with a couple of buddies of mine, a couple of girls, and a couple of cases of beer and gotten busted almost immediately by the police. Because uh Tech at the time, anyways, I don't know if they still do had one of those swimming pools had the enormous inflatable bubble to where you could swim in it during the wintertime, it was heated. It was great. Well, during the summer they took it off. And so naturally we thought we'll just go climb the wall. The bubble's off. We'll climb the wall. Well, they've got motion sensors, so they knew immediately. And I think they watched us on video until our, drunk asses finished falling over this 10 foot wall to get into the pool before they were like, "Okay, fun's over. Let's go. Get out." And so right about the time we jumped into the pool was when we were asked to leave the premises.

Mary Katz: 28:57

Oh, but you didn't get arrested?

Nick Morgan: 28:59

No, they sure scared the snot out of us. And we had to wake my roommate up at four o'clock in the morning to come get us. Cause they held us there for every bit of two hours making us think we were about to get arrested. So kind of a scared, straight moment for us, I guess.

Mary Katz: 29:11

Did anybody cry?

Nick Morgan: 29:13

I honestly don't think so. I was there with two people that were a lot more prepared to get in trouble. I guess they, they got in a little more sketchy situations than I did on a regular basis. And then the two girls that were with us, God love 'em. They were just some hardasses. They didn't crack for nothing. So I wasn't going to, if they weren't so. That's uh, that's where we landed on that one, but we all learned a lesson. We all did some community service and help them put the bubble back on the pool before fall started. It was all good. I even actually met one of them- I ran into one of those cops at a show we played in. It was campus police, which are part of Lubbock PD, but they're still campus police. I ran into him on a tailgate party we played my senior year there at Tech. We played a tailgate party and this cop comes up. This campus PD comes up to me. He goes, "I bet you don't remember me do ya?" And I was like, "Oh, no, sir, I don't." I said 'I try not to have too many run ins with the campus police." And he said, "I know why you don't. It's because I'm one of the cops that pulled you out of the

pool at 3: 30:13

30 in the morning." And immediately I just turned red and I was like, "Yes, sir. I'm sorry about that." He just slapped me on the back. He's like, "Hey, did you learn your lesson?""Yes, sir. I did." And he goes, "Well, then it wasn't that big of a mistake." So he was a pretty good dude. I got to give him that.

Mary Katz: 30:30

What's your favorite memory from college?

Nick Morgan: 30:33

I got to open up at a now defunct music festival because of the way it was run. The opening act before Reckless Kelly at that festival did not show up because they did not get their guarantee ahead of time. And I was just, I got in for free. So I was already on top of the world because I was helping them do set up and tear down and things like that. And then the guy that was running, it says, "Hey, do you want to get up open for Reckless?" And my eyes just got as big as saucers because they're one of my favorite bands on the planet. And I said, "Yeah, what am I going to do?" And he's like, "Just get up there and play for 45 minutes. Just you and your guitar. They're going to set up behind you. Tell stories, play songs, make people drink my beer.""Okay!" So I got to open up a Reckless Kelly. And then I got to hang out with them for 45 minutes after the show and drive them back to their hotel room because the old boy that ran it, he tried, he gave his level best, but he did not do a real good job running that particular festival, which will remain nameless for that reason.

Mary Katz: 31:39

Gotcha. Understood. All right. What do you remember from when your kids were born?

Nick Morgan: 31:46

When my kids were born, I remember terror, the sheer terror of it. We did everything backwards. We had my son early and then we got married two years later. We didn't do the whole get pregnant then immediately get married because it's the right thing to do. We were both "Well, we're going to see if we can stand each other before we get married. Yes, we have a child together, but we're going to make sure we get along before we go and get married." Well, we did. It worked. So we, had my oldest whenever I was 21. And then my youngest, whenever I was teaching just north of St. Angelo, Texas. I was an ag teacher. At 20, it just sheer tear both times, because both times I was broke. The second time around I was a teacher, my wife was on bedrest. I was making a starting teacher salary, like $27,000 a year, thinking,"How are we going to do this?" But then immediately, whenever you see both of them, just all that, just melts away. Instantly go into uh angry Papa Bear, "Stay away from my kids." I was suspicious of every nurse that came in. Both times. It was just like, "What are you doing here? What are you doing to my baby?" But yeah best thing I've ever done. So-

Mary Katz: 32:55

Absolutely. Spoken like a true Papa Bear.

Nick Morgan: 32:57

Oh yeah.

Mary Katz: 32:59

Okay. So you're a little longer in the tooth with the parenting than I am and your kids seem to be doing pretty well. Got any parenting advice for someone that has-

Nick Morgan: 33:07

Toddlers?!

Mary Katz: 33:08

I have toddlers...

Nick Morgan: 33:10

Oh man, Benadryl for road trips. No, but in all seriousness buy them a Kindle. Whenever my kids were relatively small- I'm joking. Don't dose your kids. Anybody that sees this don't dose your children. But what we did whenever they were small and we would travel somewhere, my in-laws bought them the, like some of the first tablets that came out, those little Kindle Fires. And we loaded them up full of their cartoons. And at the time I was doing irrigation and I was working up in central Nebraska. We lived up there for two years and whenever we'd come home, it was like a 12 hour drive. So I'd put the kids to bed at night and then I would wake everybody up at one o'clock in the morning. And we'd take off driving. And by the time they woke up in the car and started watching their cartoons on

their tablet, it was usually about 7: 33:59

30. And I was at least through most of Kansas by that point. So it was half the trip. So yeah, travel at night. That's the best parenting tip I can offer. Travel when everybody sleeps.

Mary Katz: 34:15

We did a road trip when I was about 20 weeks pregnant with our daughter. And so my boys were I'm not going to do the math on that right now, but they were little. They're still little. Even littler than they are now. And yeah... I just, that was not the best idea we've had because we tried the travel at night thing.

We'd make it to about 10: 34:35

00 PM and then the boys would wake screaming. Oh, fun. So fun. Because we were driving from Texas. Picked up my mom in Arkansas. Went to like, went through Tennessee and all that stuff up to Pennsylvania to see my husband's sister. And we're like, next time we see them, we'll just fly. We'll just fly. It'll be fine. We'll get on the plane. We could fly. Cause yeah, the RV thing is it's. It was. When they're older, it'll be great. We'll do that again when they're older. Not right now.

Nick Morgan: 35:06

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be fun with mine right now. Only other parenting tip would just be, let them make their mistakes. Because they're not going to listen. At a certain point, whenever they started hitting about 8 to 10 years old. That's when the first part starts creeping in that "Eh, Mom doesn't know everything." You can warn them, but let them make their mistakes. As long as it doesn't kill them. Because sometimes it's just got to learn that the hard way. I was the same way so I can't say anything.

Mary Katz: 35:34

Yeah. My husband was definitely the the learn it the hard way sort. And I can see two of our kids doing that because they're doing it now. If you climb up on the cocktail table, you might fall down. You might fall- I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you. I'm going to show you how to get down. And then we're going to pull out our little slide and you can go down the slide if you want to climb on something. But if you climb on the table, you might fall down. And there's that...

Nick Morgan: 36:01

Yep.

Mary Katz: 36:01

All right. Okay. So, Nick, let's move on to, Could Ya Not...?, This is where, if you never get asked a particular question again, if you never have to deal with a certain situation, again, I don't care for something related to traffic, just whatever it is that it gets under your skin, put it out there in the world. Could Ya Not...?

Nick Morgan: 36:20

Explaining my overwhelming dislike for cilantro. Every time... see every time I say-

Mary Katz: 36:28

21%! We're in that 21% of people that just, it tastes like soap.

Nick Morgan: 36:33

Yup. And immediately everybody's like, "Well, how do you know what soap tastes like?" I don't.

Mary Katz: 36:37

I do!

Nick Morgan: 36:38

If you know what it smells like. Well, and everybody does, whether they say it or not. You wash your hands. Sometimes you don't get all the soap off. If you're eating dinner, my hand tastes like, soap. It tastes just like it smells, people. Yeah.

Mary Katz: 36:51

When you say a bad word when you're seven and your daddy washes your mouth out with soap. Yes. You know what it tastes like.

Nick Morgan: 36:56

Oh yeah. You never forget the taste of that Lava soap..

Mary Katz: 37:01

That sandpaper soap, grinding against your tongue...

Nick Morgan: 37:04

Yep. Been down that road before too. But no, that's the biggest one because every time it comes up in conversation, there's always somebody at the table that thinks they're Gordon Ramsay. And they're like, "What? You don't like cilantro? It's the best." It's not the best. It's the worst.

Mary Katz: 37:18

And that's another thing though. It's like, that's your taste buds. You don't get to control that. Like, that's just how you're built. It's like when people get offended because , "Oh, you didn't like Aunt Susie's cobbler...""It's not that I don't like Aunt Susie. She's wonderful. And all her stories from the olden times. But the cobbler, sorry....Just-"

Nick Morgan: 37:35

Well, maybe Aunt Susie can make better cobbler.

Mary Katz: 37:37

There ya go!

Nick Morgan: 37:38

That's all I'm saying.

Mary Katz: 37:40

A little less cinnamon.. Okay. And moving on to Why in the Sam Hill Do We Say That? And since, nobody has picked Sam Hill yet and you've agreed to- Yeah... Let's ... Sam Hill! I'm going to keep this brief because it is long. And I was like, I can not do all of it. So it is believed that 1887, Samuel Ewing Hill, a general from Kentucky was sent by Governor Boulevard to investigate the famous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys, which had already claimed more than a dozen lives. And reportedly journalists wanted to know "What in the Sam Hill was going on up there?" There was one more where, in his book, The American Language, H. L. Mencken said the phrase derives from "Samiel," the name of the devil in the opera- I'm about to butcher this one, Der Freischtz. I don't know German, if that's what that is... performed in 1825 in New York city. So, it might be from a general, it might be from a German play.

Nick Morgan: 38:41

The world may never know, but I feel a deep dive in Wikipedia coming up in my future. Cause now I've got to read this lengthy explanation.

Mary Katz: 38:49

I've got so much more of it here. Like I read just a teeny tiny bit, like right there. There's so much more. And I was like, I can't put the people through that.

Nick Morgan: 38:59

Maybe we can get Dan Carlin on that one.

Mary Katz: 39:01

Oh my gosh... Somebody that can do it a little more succinctly than I can. All right. So what's coming up for you? When are you putting your songs out? Where are they going to be? Tell me all the things.

Nick Morgan: 39:12

Well, working on a couple of other projects for some other people right now, but hopefully in the next two to three months... Well, hopefully in the next two months, we're going to get recorded and at the very least to get it put up on YouTube. At some point, whenever we get it recorded and mastered, we're going to get it up and try to get it everywhere. Spotify, Apple, anywhere that we can stream music. I'm going to put it out just because, I'm writing them, not just for my own enjoyment. I want people to, I want people to enjoy them. I've got a day job, so I'm not trying to make a living at it. We're just going to try to put something out that people can listen to and hopefully enjoy.

Mary Katz: 39:44

Absolutely. All right. Well, it was very nice to have you. I enjoyed your songs and hopefully we can hear some more from you coming up.

Nick Morgan: 39:52

Absolutely.

Mary Katz: 39:53

All right. Well, thanks Nick. I hope you have a good night and take care of those kiddos, man.

Nick Morgan: 39:57

Will do! Thank you, ma'am.

Mary Katz: 39:58

Bye.

Nick Morgan: 39:59

Bye.

Mary Katz: 40:00

Alrighty. Well, thank you so much for checking out this episode of Bored and Curious. I hope you enjoyed it. There's a lot more to come, so make sure you are subscribed or following, and we'll see you soon.