Morrison Graves is a psychedelic rock project from Oregon, USA that recently released their debut album, ‘Division Rising’.

Their moody, fuzzed-out, sound draws influences from late 60’s fuzz and garage, surf, psychedelia, and indie rock. But they infuse these atavistic leanings with heavy saturated guitars and metalgaze drone reminiscent of Black Angels and Dead Meadow. Meanwhile, vocalist Ryan Brown croons over the proceedings like a young Jim Morrison or early Mark Lanegan’s tuneful wail in Screaming Trees.

The group features multi-instrumentalist and founder Gary Jimmerson (Small Sails, This is a Process of a Still Life), bassist Rob Bartleson (Slackjaw, Haywire Recording), and vocalist Ryan Brown.

The band’s debut album ‘Division Rising’ is a 12-track concept album about gentrification, homelessness, displacement, and socio-economic gaps — issues that currently plague Portland and many other cities across the world. Made during the height of the pandemic, these 3 friends churned out a well-recorded and focused debut. With songs about falling out of love with a city on fire, being lost to the seams of space, and corporate greed, this psych-surf landscape has drawn comparisons to The Doors, Black Angels, Queens of the Stone Age, and dark spaghetti western music.

“The album was to focus on the rapidly changing dynamics and city-scapes”

You have a brand new album out. How long did you work on it?

Gary Jimmerson: I started demoing the songs back in the winter of 2020. We finally started tracking in the summer of 2021 and it took us 10 months to finish it. The goal was to go slow and intentional with sound creation and layering. For example, we would dump just the kick drum out and back through a Studer tape machine, slamming it into the red, for natural tape compression and distortions. There was a lot of trial and error, but it was really fun to slow down and focus on getting it right.

There seems to be a concept behind it?

Gary Jimmerson: You are correct. From its inception, the album was to focus on the rapidly changing dynamics and city-scapes, particularly in Portland, Oregon, as a result of increased homelessness, ongoing gentrification, and the housing crisis. The idea of doing a concept album stemmed from some great conversations (thanks Krist) during the pandemic. The pandemic seems to have amplified these issues in communities across the globe.

Where was the album recorded? Who was the producer?

Gary Jimmerson: Rob, our delicious bassist, is an incredible recording engineer. It’s his day-to-day “gig”, so he can answer this one.

Rob Bartleson: I don’t use or consider “gig” a valid word (teasing Gary), but yes, I’ve been an audio engineer my whole life. We recorded the drums at Supernatural Sound, and did the rest of the tracks / mixing and mastering at Haywire Recording in Portland. I believe we credited Gary and myself as co-producing the album.

How do you usually approach songwriting?

Gary Jimmerson: I have a small home studio with Logic and a bunch of gear. I’ll start with a guitar riff, organ drone, or drum beat and start building layers on top of each other. There is a lot of repetition, mistakes, and jamming to find the right parts.

Ryan will sing melodies over the stuff, and then we’ll try to put words to the gibberish. Rob came up with all his bass parts on the fly, in the studio, often in 1 or 2 takes. Again, he is a wizard. For future records, we will likely approach the writing process in a similar fashion, but will do more live jamming as a full band. We have two new members that I’m excited to bring into the process. Joey is a better drummer than me, so I’ll let him take over that aspect. Aura is a better guitarist too, so I’ll default to them for advice. I’m hella excited for the future of this project.

Tell us a bit about your background and musical upbringing?

Gary Jimmerson: I’m a self-taught musician. I started playing drums in middle school, playing along to The Cure and Nirvana. In high school, I started playing drums in punk bands, which evolved into playing in art-rock and post-rock bands. I loved jumping in the van with my friends and driving across the USA to play shows. I took a hiatus from music through most of the 2010s to establish a career as an ER veterinarian. It was really hard to play drums in apartments, and I didn’t really have the time or mental strength to play. But once I graduated from school, it wasn’t long before I was back at it. Music has always been a part of my core. I’ve always messed around on guitar, but it wasn’t until recently that I really started playing it. I prefer guitar over drums these days.

Rob Bartleson: I started off as a jazz performance major in college, but realized it was a kind of a dead-end goal, so I switched to audio engineering early on. I started off on alto sax, but moved to bass when I joined rock bands. I have an audio engineering, producing and composition degree from The Evergreen State College in Olympia.

Ryan Brown: I grew up playing classical piano and singing in choirs. I got a bachelor’s degree in music education because I wanted to be a high school choir teacher. My teacher in high school changed my life, so I wanted to follow in her path. I gave up that dream to pursue my ultimate dream, which is being in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Haha! I taught myself guitar over the pandemic years. Like Gary, I really enjoy the guitar because it’s not the instrument I played growing up. Guitar helps me be more creative and think outside the box, since I don’t know fuck all about playing it.

How did you end up in Morrison Graves?

Rob Bartleson: Gary’s a good friend and a sweet talker. Plus I like his attention to detail and work ethic to make a great sounding album.

Ryan Brown: Gary is my best friend from high school. We have come into each other’s spheres many times over the years for little ventures into making music on and off. There was always something very complimentary to us making music together. We really work well in that way. He asked me if I wanted to sing on a couple of tracks on this first album and I was very down. What started off as me singing on 1 or 2 songs ended with me singing on the entire album. Neither of us really saw that one coming as Gary was trying to have more people involved on the album vocally to have more of a collaboration with different artists he’s known over the years. I think having that solidified statement in ‘Division Rising’ made it clear that we had something that we could do something with. Turning it into a band has been a blast.

Gary Jimmerson: We recently invited Joey Prude and Aura Zorba into the mix. I’ve known Joey for as long as I’ve known Rob (they played in a band called Slackjawtogether, that I absolutely loved), and I’ve always wished I could drum as well as him. I can’t believe he said yes. We met Aura through Rob, as one of his Haywire Recording clients. Rob gave them a copy of ‘Division Rising’ and the rest is history.

What kind of gear do you have in the band… tell us about pedals, effects, amps.

Gary Jimmerson: Rob’s studio has some great gear. For guitar, we mostly used an original 60’s Fender Pro Reverb and a 1960-61 Supro Coronado 1690T on the record. A Marshall half-stack made an appearance or two. I play a Fender Jaguar and Telecaster. We also use an Italian electric sitar guitar. My pedalboard features a Vox V846 Wah, Analogman Peppermint Fuzz, EHX Russian Big Muff, Vemuram Jan Ray overdrive, Spaceman Mercury 4 harmonic boost (my “always on” pedal), Strymon El Capistan tape echo, Boss DD-8 delay, EHX Small Stone phase shifter, Fender MTG Tube Tremolo, and EHX Holy Grail Max reverb. For keys we use a 1960’s Farfisa Mini Compact combo organ and a Mellotron Micro.

Rob Bartleson: For recording bass, we used a Spaceman Mercury 3 harmonic boost, an old school Russian Big Muff that looks like it’s been through a war (I toured a lot in my other bands – Slackjaw and Southerly), a vintage Fender Bassman amp, and many kinds of phasing effects that we did in Pro Tools. My bass is an old Music Man StingRay.

Ryan Brown: I plug a Fender Strat into a Hudson Electronics Broadcast, a Diamond Compressor, a Turbo Tubescreamer, a Walrus Arp 87 delay, and my favorite little magic box of all….the Guru Echosex 2. This all goes into my Twin Reverb. I’m still working on dialing in my fuzz game.

Are you planning to hit the road to promote the latest album?

Gary Jimmerson: Great question. We are currently working on putting this thing together as a live band. We are just a few practices deep, but the plan is to start playing locally and regionally. We will see how that goes and branch out from there.

Let’s end this interview with some of your favourite albums. Have you found something new lately you would like to recommend to our readers?

Gary Jimmerson: favorites: The Black Angels ‘Indigo Meadow,’ Radiohead ‘Kid A,’ Blonde Redhead ‘Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons,’ Billy Nicholls ‘Would You Believe,’ Temples ‘Sun Structures,’ The Seeds ‘The Seeds,’ The Velvet Underground ‘Loaded’. Lately I’ve really been into Canadian psych punkers, Wine Lips, NYC garage rockers, The Mystery Lights, and Californian psych rockers, Levitation Room. These aren’t new but I think everyone should be exposed to the songs ‘Je Ne Vois Rien’ by Les Problemes and ‘The Trip’ by Park Avenue Playground.

Klemen Breznikar

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