He said he’d be back soon and William Michael Morgan obviously wasn’t just playing lip service to his British fans. Less than six months after his first ever trip overseas, the George Strait inspired young country singer is back here for a UK mini-tour.
On his first visit, back at Buckle and Boots festival in May, we had a quick chat on a Sunday morning outside a big-top tent where he was about to take part in a unique festival tradition – the country style church service. He’d been as much a festival attendee as a headline artist across the weekend in Stockport, as he put it “soaking it all in, meeting everybody, trying all the foods.”
There was something brilliant about seeing our normal British stuff through the wide eyes of a first-timer; a 26-year-old whose way of addressing the fans (“hey baby” and a hat tip to ladies of all ages) seemed as foreign to us as our Yorkshire pudding did to him. “Pudding doesn’t look like that where I’m from.”
Bacon, it turns out, had been the biggest culture shock to his system.
It’s different over here – instead of slices of crispy American bacon, there’s ham! Which is a shock but still good…”
But it’s not our food, and definitely not the Greater Manchester weather, which has brought the Mississippi native back so quickly. Apparently our ‘country family’ made the biggest impact.
Over in the states it’s not quite as [close a] community I guess. Everybody just goes out there and has a good time, and that’s alright by me too, but here it just seems like everybody knows everybody; everybody’s family and they’re just all coming together for music and that’s killer.”
Hopefully, he’ll get the same family feeling on his tour which kicks off this weekend and will take him from Glasgow to London. To get in the mood for his shows, William suggests Vinyl – the title track – from his debut album, as the song which gives the best sense of him as an artist (though he’s best known for the equally romantic I Met a Girl). And if you want to hear those smooth tones in person, get in quick as he’s playing surprisingly small venues and remaining ticket numbers are low.
I’m hoping he won’t be Missing from the UK for too long (sorry!), but if everyone else has a big an appetite for deep, 90s-style country voices as I do, this is probably the last chance you’ll have to see William Michael Morgan play in a pub in the middle to of the day.
TICKETS: Altrincham (BCMA Awards) 09th November, Manchester 10th November, Birmingham (songwriters round) 11th November, Glasgow 13th November, London 17th November
CJ
Brits in Boots 
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