PEL Presents NEM#259: Glenn Morrow (Bar/None): Songwriting Re-Emergence
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Who is Glenn Morrow and what’s his role in the Hoboken music scene?
You are listening to Nakedly Examine Music, a podcast about songs and songwriters. My name is Mark Linsenmeyer. My guest for episode 259 is Glenn Morrow, best known as the founder and until very recently the owner of Bar None Records, who signed Acts Like They Might Be Giants and Yola Tango. He is and always has been based in Hoboken, where he started in the late 70s, running a new wave band with the name Name A. That is lowercase A. He then released an album in an EP with another band, The Individuals, in the early 80s, and two albums as Rage to Live in the mid to late 80s. Then after a long time not releasing his own records, he formed Glenn Morrow's Cry for Help, releasing their first record 2017 and their second, entitled Two, in 2020, who are right now hearing the opening track from that album.
Yellowed Pages, and they've just released their third album, Our Final Album Volume 1. We'll be discussing sweater weather from that album, then looking back to his 280s bands. The Individuals with the song Our World from Fields from 1982, and then Rage to Live with the song Swimmer, originally released on their 1986 self-titled album. We will conclude by listening to one more track from The new album, That's That. You can learn more at Glenmorrow's Cryforhelp.bandcamp.com. The individuals also have a bandcamp page. Glenn's also done a lot of writing that you can find out about at Glenmorrowbooks.com. Find out about this podcast at Nakedly Examined Music.com or get it ad-free at patreon.com slash nakedly examined music.
It's time to recite your yellow pages.
Well I'll have played a little of yellowed pages from your second album with the new group Glen Morrow's Cry for Help 2020. The album just being called Two. I guess I will have already sort of described the arc of your career, but let's just make sure we're clear on it that you had a a bunch of activity in the late seventies, eighties, then became a label guy, the head of Barnun Records. So at some point, what, 2017, at least it was the first record that you rediscovered your muse. Can you say a a little about that reemergence before we hear something from the new album?
I had been in bands in the uh seventies and eighties and then started Barnun Records and got married and had a couple of kids and that takes up a lot of the of your bandwidth and you know, that sort of self involvement that you need to write songs, I think. I kept my chops up and I would attempt writing songs, but I was kinda dissatisfied with what I came up with or d it didn't feel like it all connected. Then when the club Maxwells in Hoboken closed and they wanted to do a bunch of celebratory shows, I kind of helped Todd Abramson, who was running the place at that time, you know, come up with some different ideas. And one was like, well, let's have my old band A, that also had uh three members of the Bongos in it.
Why don't we that was the first band to play Maxwell's? Why don't we all get together and we hadn't played Since we broke up. back in like nineteen seventy seven. So, you know, we kind of learned all these old songs again and uh and there was just a you know, a sort of a cultural moment where all the history of Maxwell sort of coalesced and there was a lot of media coverage. And I suddenly felt like, wow, I'm in the middle of, you know, I'm at I'm back in the middle of the the media eye or something. I don't know. And it was a very heady experience. And other band, the individuals that I started after the band A also played. So it was just sort of this incredible thing. And afterwards I was like, now what do I do?
You know, like I don't want this to stop. And I didn't think A was going to continue to play shows or anything. And then suddenly, you know, I found my songs started just coming to me like ideas, you know, where you get that idea, like it just feels like bigger enough that you can pour a bunch of thought into it, chord changes and whatnot. And then that just kept happening over and over again. And I had a body of work and then I started finding various uh like-minded folks that were around that.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Glenn Morrow and what’s his role in the Hoboken music scene?
0:11–9:25
2
How did Glenn rediscover his songwriting muse after years of silence?
9:25–16:45
3
What inspired the single “Sweater Weather” and how does it reflect the album’s theme?
16:45–24:08
4
How did the band’s democratic process shape the recording of “Sweater Weather”?
24:08–32:18
5
What’s the story behind the early‑80s track “Our World” by The Individuals?
32:18–38:59
6
How did the song “Swimmer” evolve from Rage to Live’s 1986 album?
38:59–45:38
7
What songwriting techniques and influences does Glenn use across his three Cry for Help albums?
45:38–53:34
8
What are Glenn’s plans for future releases and upcoming live shows?
53:34–1:02:04
Speakers
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