Member Since: 5/10/2006
Band Website: rexmoroux.com
Band Members: Anthony Drexel Moroux
Influences: Ive been a drunk, a lover, occasional liar, sweetheart, asshole, unemployed troublemaker, raconteur, bon vivant, wannabe Teddy boy, wannabe Bob Dylan, and on occasion a pretty goddamned good boyfriend.
Thats Austin singer/songwriter Rex Morouxs capsule self-assessment, offered not as lyrics in a confessional tune though the sentence does take on a sweet little rhythm but in answer to a question regarding what jobs he held before embarking on his music career.
And if the Lafayette, La., native couldnt express himself musically, he says, I hope I would have access to morphine, Gertrude Steins The Making of Americans and air-conditioning, because thats about the only other three things I could see myself doing.
Moroux doesnt mention that hes funny, self-deprecating and whip-smart and actually, pretty honest but those traits come through in his conversation and his music, a rootsy amalgam of influences as vast as the record collection amassed by his late father, who DJed in high school.
Fortunately, Moroux, 28, has been able to devote himself to developing his art and his second album, Royal Street Inn, named for a New Orleans hostel, is filled with the winning results.
Moroux started composing songs while living in Los Angeles, where hed gone in 2000 to write for a playhouse after attending Loyola in New Orleans and the University of Louisiana in Lafayette. Hed already written a play and wound up doing some pieces for actors workshops, but once he discovered songwriting, he says, I knew thats what I really wanted to do.
Its such a beautiful, simple, and wonderfully enlightening form, Moroux explains. I view songs as immortal; they are on the wind, they cant be burned or banned I grew up in the heart of Cajun Louisiana, so it always seemed like music was in the air. It usually was, but even when it was silent, someone was crying. I think thats what it comes down to. People who write honest songs are criers. I dont like to cry, normally; I have to control it, then its like an orgasm. Thats why I do this.
He began performing at coffeehouses in L.A., doing what he calls his pseudopolitical, Marxism lite songs (I was a Dylanophile, like most people, is his explanation). He loved it, and was well received, but a family tragedy drew him back to Louisiana. His beloved first cousin, a football player for the University of Florida, died of heat stroke during a practice. When Moroux went home for the funeral, he couldnt face returning to L.A.
He wound up forming a band, Rex Moroux & the Johns, and playing what he describes as heavy alt-country, kind of honky-tonk, real Telecaster-heavy stuff. (Moroux, who didnt pick up a guitar until six years ago, plays only acoustic.)
In 2002, he recorded an EP, Peggy Sue is Punk Rock, and followed it up with an album titled, 105 and a Lullaby, that he describes as very honky-tonky.
But Moroux decided he wanted to try a different direction. He was spending a lot of time listening to Wilco and fellow Louisianan Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel), and they touched a nerve. He noticed his songs were getting more esoteric, and less band-friendly, so he went back to working solo.
His songs can still be described as comfortably Americana, colored with pop-rock flourishes like the electric guitar and twinkly piano of Extended Stay America, an upbeat tune Moroux refers to as a neat little dream sequence through any big American city.
Cincinnati, a song inspired by a depressing visit to Memphis, layers strings around Morouxs plaintive vocals. Blow Away has a slightly countrified, rockabilly feel, and lyrics like, Its a one-room circus/Its a song in black and white/Its a candle a bit too nervous/blow away, baby blow away.
I write the lyric with the melody; I dont like to do one or the other, says Moroux. The most exciting thing about songwriting to me is that there is no process. Some I sit and work at, some come in five minutes.
I wrote Cincinnati while my producer (Nashvillian Justin Tocket) was setting up the mikes in about three minutes. And I think its far and away one of the best songs Ive ever written. At the same time Ive had songs that have taken a week to get just right. Sometimes Ill be thinking about some little saying or something and Ill build a song around it. Sometimes a melody will jump out of nowhere from an invisible Mexican radio station and Ill be afraid I ripped it off. Thankfully, usually I havent.
Tocket and Moroux met through Ross DuPre, Marc Broussards manager and now Morouxs manager as well.
Were definitely kindred spirits, says Moroux of his two-time producer, who also plays bass with Radney Foster.
Certainly they share at least a few influences. Among the many Moroux claims are Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, Jeff Tweedy, the Stones, the Faces, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Tammy Wynette, the phenomenally underrated Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy, the Band (Levon Helm and Richard Manuel specifically; Robbie can go fuck himself), the Clash, Randy Newman, Van Morrison, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Springsteen, Coltrane and of course Shane MacGowan, who has at least 10 songs that make me cry.
If a song can make you cry or laugh thats a measure of how it touches your soul. Theres no question that Morouxs songs have the ability to do both. When youre from a place where the music is literally written on the wind, you cant help but let it blow through you and for Rex Moroux, that beats out AC any day.
Sounds Like: "Half Graham Parsons...half Bob Dylan "Desire"
Type of Label: None