BY LARRY
CRANE
Gurf Morlix likes to produce, engineer, perform, write and even just plain talk about music. It might sound hackneyed to say, but music is his life's blood, the passion that drives his spirit. Born in 1951 in Buffalo, NY, Morlix decided to become a musician exactly one day after watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. When he got the chance, he moved to Austin, Texas, in 1975 to pursue his dream, and then made the jump to Los Angeles in 1981. After 10 years in L.A., he brought his well-honed skills and his sterling reputation back to Austin when he realized he could operate from the "Live Music Capital of the World" and still maintain a national presence. Along the way he's shared stage and studio with a wide variety of talented luminaries including Warren Zevon, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peter Case, Mojo Nixon, Michael Penn, Jimmy LaFave and many other artists. Morlix was shot out of a cannon with his first record production credit in 1988, thanks to the release of singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams' self-titled third album, which included the hit single, "Changed the Locks" and "Passionate Kisses." The success of that seminal work created a demand for his recording skills that continues to this day. Besides making records for others, he's also engineered, produced and released five of his own solo albums: Toad of Titicaca, Fishin' In The Muddy, Cut 'n Shoot, Diamonds To Dust and his brand new record, Birth To Boneyard, the instrumental companion piece to Diamonds To Dust. Morlix prefers to keep things simple and work as inexpensively as possible. Even though he's produced records in lavish, modernly equipped studios for major labels, he's much more comfortable creating in his home studio where he's worked exclusively the past eight years. The Morlix sound is sensible and economical. He'll do whatever it takes to get a great track, but he's not going to rent a Telefunken Ela M 251 when a Neumann U87 will do just as well. He prefers to use the right tool for the right job — no gear for gear's sake posturing here — and his secret weapons in the studio tend to be the musicians themselves, rather than vintage compressors or jury-rigged mic chains. Call him the people's producer — he sounds like one of us.
