The Morris Quinlan Experience

Bio:

.. "...When peace and love are gone...
Call up heaven...
Ask to speak to John..."

The brand new download-only single 'Peace And Love (Call Up Heaven)' featuring a fantastic guest vocal from Kathryn Williams is out now.......



Peace And Love (Call Up Heaven) - (Edit)
No Experience Necessary (Sanitised Remastered Version)
Old Friend 3am
Peace And Love (Call Up Heaven) - (Full Length Version)




..
The Morris Quinlan Experience (the MQE to its friends) was born in 1997 out of a chance meeting at an Edinburgh Festival poetry event.

Dave Maughan and Alan Morton matched a tense, film noir soundtrack to Simon Macken's downbeat, confessional lyrics to create a milestone British rock album, The Morris Quinlan Experience, where the singer spoke instead of singing...

The Morris Quinlan Experience received radio plays on BBC Radio 2, XFM, Radio Caroline, and BBC and independent local radio nationwide.

Regular overseas radio plays (particularly on US college radio) continue to this day.

In the summer of 2001, the MQE were back at at the Edinburgh Festival, performing live on BBC Radio 4's Loose Ends.

Sadly, the day that their performance was repeated as part of Loose Ends' Pick Of The Year show was the very day that Simon Macken chose to announce his decision to leave the group.

The second incarnation owes less to chance, and more to Dave's niece Jenny, who was a regular audience member at Newcastle's sprawling, chaotic Home Cooking cabaret nights, fronted by poet James McKay.

Jenny brought Dave along to a show and, within days, James had joined the MQE.

Within a few more, work had begun in earnest on creating a second album, which would eventually come to be called Follow On.

As the MQE's new poet, James contributes fewer words but wider horizons, and brings with him a style of writing and delivery based more on the rhythms of natural speech and breath: Dave and Alan, MQE's musical core, were faced with reconciling lyrics that refused to fit into traditional song structures with their own refusal to create anything that is in any way stereotypical.

Finally, almost five years later, Follow On is released, along with A New Rain, the first single from the album.

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Member Since:

October 08, 2006

Members:

James McKay - No question, the coolest poet on Planet Earth!

"... we burned the property ladder for firewood
because we realised that ladders are just prison bars turned sideways,
but mostly because it was cold, and fires are pretty" (© James McKay 2006)

See!!?

Dave Maughan - Guitarist and Hammond Organ grinder. Also a producer and recording engineer of repute, he's worked on some pretty notable records, including one nominated for a Mercury Music Prize. Co-composer of all MQE's music along with his chum...

Alan Morton - Bass Guitarist, musical visionary and co-composer

..Also featuring additional musicians.....

Tim Johnston on drums (he plays like Keith Moon!)

and the tremendous...

Bex Mather doing magnificent things with her voice

Influences:

James' major influences are the Beat poets, not least of all Allen Ginsberg. Also the Moomin books. Musically he's into Faust, Joni Mitchell, The Smiths, all kinds of stuff, some of it pretty obscure.

Alan lists The Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, Lostprophets, White Stripes and Groundhogs amongst stuff he listens to most, besides Roxy, Joni and Fagan of course. Films such as Citizen Kane, Grand Canyon, Fargo, Bladerunner, Once Upon A Time In America and Waterloo Bridge, 19th century Russian novellists and sci-fi writers including Philip K Dick and Hal Clement. Roman Noir writers particularly James M Cain. His unique bass-playing style owes as much to Colin Hodgkinson, Pete Cruickshank, Mel Schacher, Gary Thain as it does to all time greats like Pastorius, Clarke, Mingus and Carter.

Dave loves The Beatles, Steve Howe and Tony Kaye (trust the leg healed ok, Tony!), Peter Gabriel, Dave Gilmour, The Beach Boys, Deep Purple, Debussy, and Vaughan-Williams.

Dave still reads the Beano.

Sounds Like:

...a band who haven't read the script, perhaps...???

If anyone's got any good suggestions, please let us know, leave a comment!

Record Label:

soon