To begin to understand singer-songwriter John Moreland, you have to start with the hands that write his songs. They, like him, are significant, the outsized endpoints of a very large man. But the fingers are slender and lithe, capable of moving quickly over the strings of an acoustic guitar. Find the “O” on his right pinky, the portal to the colorful rivers of ink that roll up his arms, the start of the musician’s first-ever tattoo: “OKLAHOMA,” one letter on each of his eight fingers, ending just after the wedding band on his left ring finger. His last three albums—2013's In the Throes, 2015's High on Tulsa Heat, and this spring's Big Bad Luv—are a trilogy that largely explore the life and questions between those two boundaries, the state he moved to when he was 10 and the person he lives with there now. It’s the story of John Moreland (so far), written on John Moreland.
And how does it go, this story?
“The whole thing, I guess, is a search for belonging,” he says on a gray June afternoon, the day before he’ll headline New York’s Bowery Ballroom. His wife, Pearl, is with him. He’s wearing a baggy black shirt, dark pants rolled at the ankle, and squeaky-clean white and black Nike Cortez’s. His head is mostly bald, revealing a new, still-scabbed tattoo of a flower over his right ear. His dark eyes are framed by the lenses of some Ray-Ban glasses. He is soft-spoken, his voice gentler in conversation than the barreling train it becomes in song.
“In the Throes was dealing with stuff from adolescence. It’s making sense of all that. I’ve got this baggage from when I was younger and now I'm an adult—where do I fit into the real world? All this stuff I’m carrying—where does that fit? What do I do with it?" he muses. "High on Tulsa Heat was kind of examining the idea of home. It’s the same thing as belonging. You’re trying to find that belonging in a place or an idea or whatever home is. And [on Big Bad Luv], I’ve found the belonging.”
Moreland cites influences like Gillian Welch, Tom Petty, Steve Earle, and Townes Van Zandt, but toured with hardcore punk bands in high school. He's a punk-rock spirit telling folk stories, run through a smoky, bourbon-soaked lilt, the production filter that is Basement Bar in Middle America. He spent some time opening for Jason Isbell, and that might be an apt songwriting comparison, his evocative, metaphorical lyrics the threads by which he weaves pithy, soul-rattling narrative tapestries. From “No Glory in Regret,” for example: Did you hear the devil laughing / From the ambulance passing?/ Or was that just my troubled mind? / Don’t you wanna shake the ground / And tear heaven down? / And raise your fist to the guilty sky? / Well, I’ve been pouring whiskey in the wind / Burning pictures of my best friends / Until the ashes cover me like rain.
On In the Throes' “I Need You to Tell Me Who I Am,” Moreland sings, I was born with a bomb inside my gut. Go to a show—or, until you can, watch one of his highest profile gigs to date, a slot on Colbert's The Late Show in early 2016—and you’ll get a sense of what it’s like to be in the blast zone when it explodes out of him. It’ll make you wonder how much longer a man like John Moreland can stay in the shade of his relative non-celebrity. It’s like reading a novel you feel like has been written for you, when you find a home and sense of belonging inside the words of someone searching for his own.
How did you first come into music?
My dad always listened to Tom Petty, Neil Young, stuff that dads like. And then I had an older cousin who lived with us when I was a kid. When she was at work in the summer, I used to go in her room and listen to her CDs—Naughty by Nature, Tim McGraw, everything. When we lived in Kentucky, my neighborhood was full of other kids, so I was always outside playing. And then when we moved to Tulsa [at age 10], I didn't know anybody. I didn't have anything to do and my dad had a guitar and I started playing it. I started trying to write songs pretty much immediately after I got the guitar in my hands.
Were you especially curious as a kid? Because you’re exploring some pretty big questions on these albums.
When I was elementary-school age, I was kind of just a normal kid. I was into basketball and sneakers and Tom Petty and Boyz II Men. I don't remember having any weird traumatic, existential experiences. But later on, in high school, I just kind of felt like a weirdo. I didn't know where I fit in. I just wanted to play music and go to shows. And I got into hardcore punk rock. So I think my songs now are that same impulse. Why do I feel like a weirdo? Why does it feel like everyone is over there, together, and I'm here? As I get older, I'm noticing in my life that's a recurring thing—but I also feel like I'm more comfortable that way. I don't want to assimilate into a group too much. I want to be solitary in a way, but that creates this other set of problems.
Where do you think that sense of isolation comes from?
It's like my physical disposition is sort of—it's easy to feel like maybe I don't fit in this world. It is kind of this boundary between me and the rest of the world. And maybe subconsciously, that's a defense mechanism. [My wife and I] were talking about this last night. If I was skinny and good-looking, my life would be totally different. But I don't think that's good, necessarily. Who knows what that would be like? It's kind of like that's the thing I'm always going to be fighting in my life. But it's made me who I am. And I really, really like who I am.
Did you want to be the skinny, attractive kid?
Maybe at one point. At, like, 16. Now I'm glad that I wasn't. Maybe then I'd be a fucking asshole now.
When did you first start noticing those barriers or defenses going up?
I was probably 13 or so. You're transitioning from being a kid and it's fun all the time and everything's great, to being a young adult and you're about to be in high school. There's a social hierarchy, and there's pressure and there's feelings involved. That was terrifying.
But on stage, you're so good about letting people in.
Maybe that's the time I get to not be defensive. I do let people in in my life. But it takes a while. I'm not eager to do it. You have to earn it.
I saw a tweet that Chris Stapleton had overtaken you as the "Sad Bastard of country," and you said, "Good, I ain't country and I ain't sad." How would you characterize your music?
A couple people have asked me about that tweet, and to clarify, maybe I have a different definition of country than some people. But to me—and my whole family's from the South and they're all country fans—country music is Webb Pierce. I can appreciate that, but that's not what I really do. I'm more directly influenced by rock and roll—Tom Petty, The Rolling Stones, The Band—and folk songwriters. That's maybe where the confusion is. But none of that shit matters. Maybe that's that thing again. I don't want to be assimilated into that group. And I'm not sad. I'm just a person who has emotions.
Can you articulate the process of putting those emotions into songs?
I don't really feel like I have a process. I'm not precious about it. I remember hearing a Randy Newman interview where he's like, I hate writing songs. I don't enjoy doing it. But when it's done, that's what I enjoy. That's how I feel about it, too. It's hard tearing it out of you or out of the air. And I like it in a way, but it's not like I’m having a great time, writing this song. Anything that gets it done, I'll take it.
Is it cathartic for you?
Definitely. Writing it and playing it. I get asked if it's hard to play certain songs ‘cause people think you must be putting yourself back into this depressing place. No, it feels great.
Did you think this was a career you could make happen?
I always thought I was good enough to really do it. But it also seems very improbable. I want to be myself and make art that I like and do what feels good, and where that takes me is fine. I figured I'd probably just be singing at the bar, or be the door guy at that bar for the rest of my life. But you know, that's okay. I don't need much to be happy. [My] first [tattoo] was “OKLAHOMA” on my knuckles. I thought, I'm not going to do anything where having my knuckles tattooed is going to be a problem in my life.
When you're writing, how much of the writing is from you and how much is from a character or headspace that's informed by you, but isn't quite actually you?
I think 90% of what's in my songs is just me, unfiltered. I don't need every detail in every song to be literally true. There are things where it stretches into somewhat of a character, because I'll say this thing that works better for the song. Because it's not poetry. I'm serving a musical purpose first. The song reigns supreme. I won't compromise musical ideas for literary ideals. I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a guy in a band. And play music. People ask me if I ever write poetry or stories, I don't do any of that stuff. If I'm not going to sing it, I don't want to write it.
How do you encounter your songs after they've been recorded?
I go back and listen a lot but I do it from a producer standpoint. I'm not really thinking about the songs when I do that. I don't ever really analyze the songs. Occasionally, I'll be playing something that I wrote five years ago, and I'll be onstage and I'll get to a part and sing a couple lines and [he snaps] I'll be like “Maybe that means this,” or “Maybe that's what I was talking about.”
How did you and your wife Pearl meet?
We met at a folk music conference in Kansas City called Folk Alliance. It's like a festival but over several floors of this hotel. It's just like 2000 folk singers running around playing 20-minute sets in hotel rooms. You just cram as many people as you can in the hotel room, play like five songs, and then split, from 10:00 at night till 5:00 in the morning. Folk Alliance is a really fun hang. Because you're just drunk the whole time, running around with guitars, but it's also a lot of white dudes in suspenders. There's a lot of flutes. [So] I saw her walking by, wearing a jean jacket with this big back patch that she had designed. It said Paradise Outlaw. And I was like, “Finally. Somebody who's not one of these square folk nerds.” And I was like, I gotta go talk to her. I just tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I like your back patch.”
How'd you propose?
I didn't really. Pearl's Canadian. We wanted to be together all the time, so she moved to Tulsa without us really knowing the mechanics of how immigration works and stuff. At a certain point, we started talking to this lawyer and we realized, as a visitor, you can only stay in the U.S. for six months. So she's either gonna have to go back to Canada, or we could get married. I knew we were gonna get married after we'd known each other for two or three months. And so we were kinda just like, “We're gonna get married anyway, so let's just do it next week.” So, that's what we did.
And were you writing the album throughout all of this?
Yeah.
So is it fair to say Pearl informed the album?
Yeah, totally.
What have you learned about yourself through this whole process of falling in love and getting married that you didn't know before?
Oh shit, I don't know... Man, this is like the most cliche answer, but I'm learning to love myself. I used to hate myself. And, you know, she helps me see what she sees. [That] sounds like a fucking Disney movie.
Why did you hate yourself?
I think it goes back to that thing we were talking about earlier. You hit eighth grade and it's not fun childhood anymore. I've always felt awkward and not this enough, or not that enough.
It seems like you had a harder time forgiving yourself on the other albums.
Yeah.
And at the end of “Latchkey Kid,” those last few lines that close out the new album—Cause I’ve found a love that shines into my core / And I don’t feel the need to prove myself no more / And when I look into the mirror, now I see / A man I never knew that I could be—it’s almost like you’ve now gotten to a place of peace. Are you singing to yourself there?
Exactly. Yeah. I only realized that after it was recorded and I listened to it again. That's one of those things that I'm not thinking about when I'm writing it, but maybe it kind of snuck up on me later.
If the trilogy is complete, what's next?
I have no idea. I got to figure that out. I have no new songs.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
