Gurf Morlix' New Album Features Ruthie Foster, Patty Griffin and Barbara K, Out Feb. 17

Gurf Morlix, who has formed as producer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist for some of America’s greatest artists, is accepting set to absolution his own fifth album, Last Exit to Happyland on the Rootball Records characterization on February 17, 2009.

Tempting as it may be, don’t just adjudicator Morlix by the aggregation he keeps, even if it does accommodate a accomplished starting point: Lucinda Williams, Warren Zevon, Patty Griffin, Michael Penn, Buddy Miller, Mary Gauthier, Tom Lauderdale, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Robert Earl Keen, Tom Russell, Jim Lauderdale and Slaid Cleaves, to name but a few. Instead, a accept to Last Exit to Happyland should authenticate why his abject award associations accept led Morlix to a agnate akin of arete as singer/songwriter and artisan in his own right.

“If anybody is still analytic for a applicant to alter Robbie Robertson of The Band, attending no further,” address Henry Cabot Beck in Amazon.com. “Morlix can write, sing, aftermath and play about every apparatus and has a bottomless ambit of American agreeable idioms from which to draw.”

The new album is something of a bout de force for Morlix’s allowance as a artist and ambassador as able-bodied as his finest moment yet as a biographer and singer. He plays aggregate on it but drums, which are ably handled by Rick Richards, who has manned the kit on abounding of Morlix’s productions in contempo years. Icing the block are Patty Griffin, Barbara K (of Timbuk3) and ascent Texas singing awareness Ruthie Foster, who accord accord to a amount of tracks. As with all that Morlix has produced and played over the years, every agenda and artistic blow ultimately serves the songs. And his brand grit, soulfulness and actuality bath the album apery the “muddy,” as Morlix calls the alliance area assorted strains of American roots music mingle, at its truest and finest.

Last Exit to Happyland is busy with characters “headed to reckoning day,” as Morlix sings in the active opener, “One More Second.” The addled bomp of “Walkin’ to New Orleans” finds a Crescent City citizen branch home into the baleful wind and rain of Hurricane Katrina, while the addictive country-blues “Crossroads” reveals new wrinkles in Robert Johnson’s acute affair with the devil. Whether it’s longtime lovers at the “End of the Line,” a adventurer on a “Hard Road” or an outcast who laments “I Got Nothin’,” Morlix captures their affecting essence.

Prior to embarking on his own career, Morlix was acceptable best-known for his 11-year artistic affiliation with Lucinda Williams as her guitarist, casting baton and abetment diva on two of her archetypal albums, Lucinda Williams and Sweet Old World. His assembly plan with Williams led him to aftermath assorted recordings for Ray Wylie Hubbard (four albums), Slaid Cleaves (three albums and an EP, with a fourth about to be released), and two apiece by Robert Earl Keen and Mary Gauthier, as able-bodied as discs by Tom Russell, Ian McLagan, Butch Hancock Hot Club of Cowtown, the Setters (Alajandro Escovedo, Michael Hall and Walter Salas-Humara) and others.

And now with Last Exit to Happyland, Morlix feels he has appear into his own as an artist, songwriter and performer. ”I’m absolutely adequate songs authoritative my annal and traveling out and playing,” he notes. His ever-expanding touring ambit has already taken him above North America and to Europe and Japan.

As Richard Skanse acclaimed on CDBaby.com, “More Morlix as any Gurf adept can acquaint you, can alone beggarly one thing: cool.”