"Kevin Morby and the Search for Home in Modern Indie Music"
(Artist report)
Written by: Ginny Gaines
Kevin Morby’s story begins in Lubbock, Texas, where he was born on April 2, 1988. His family moved around while he was growing up before eventually settling in the Kansas City, Missouri, area. Music became important to Morby when he was young, and he learned to play guitar at about 10 years old. As a teenager, he started playing in bands and eventually formed a group called Creepy Aliens. But Morby wanted more than the life he knew in the Midwest. As a teenager, he left high school, earned his GED, and headed for Brooklyn, New York. He had always been fascinated by New York and wanted to experience the city for himself. When he arrived, he wasn't a star, far from it. He worked jobs such as bicycle delivery and café work while trying to find his place in Brooklyn's underground music scene.
Morby's break came when he joined the independent band Woods as its bass player. Touring and performing with Woods gave him a real education in what it meant to be a working musician. He was learning how to write, perform, travel, and live the life of a musician. Around the same time, he became friends with Cassie Ramone of Vivian Girls, and the two eventually formed another band called The Babies. The group released its first album in 2011 and followed it with Our House on the Hill in 2012. Playing in these bands helped Morby grow from a young musician into a songwriter who was beginning to understand what he wanted to say. Eventually, however, he knew he needed to step out on his own. In 2013, he left Woods and began concentrating on his solo career.
Morby's first solo album, Harlem River, arrived in 2013. The album was heavily influenced by his years in New York, and even after leaving the city, he continued to write about it. From there, his career began moving steadily forward. He released Still Life in 2014, Singing Saw in 2016, and City Music in 2017. Each album showed a different side of him, but the basic idea stayed the same: Morby liked telling stories about people, places, relationships, and the strange feeling of trying to figure out where you belong. His music mixed indie rock with folk, blues, and older American rock-and-roll traditions. He was influenced by legendary storytellers such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and others, but he developed his own voice rather than simply copying them.
As Morby became more experienced, his songwriting became more personal. His 2019 album Oh My God explored subjects such as religion, faith, life, and death. Losing people close to him also made him think more seriously about how short life can be. Those ideas continued into his 2020 album Sundowner, which brought his attention back toward the Midwest and the places that had shaped him. Then, in 2022, he released This Is a Photograph, an album built around memories, family, photographs, aging, and the passing of time. The idea was simple but powerful: a photograph can capture one moment forever, but the people in that picture continue to change, or eventually disappear. Morby followed that record with More Photographs (A Continuum) in 2023, continuing his exploration of memory and the past.
In 2026, Morby continued that journey with Little Wide Open, his eighth solo studio album, released May 15, 2026. The album was produced by Aaron Dessner of The National and recorded largely at Dessner's Long Pond Studio in New York. Morby also brought several other musicians into the project, including Lucinda Williams, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Amelia Meath of Sylvan Esso, Katie Gavin of MUNA, and Meg Duffy of Hand Habits. The album looks strongly toward Morby's Midwestern roots. Its title reflects the contrast he sees in the Midwest: enormous skies, long roads, and wide-open spaces, but also small towns and close communities. Songs such as “Javelin,” “Cowtown,” “Bible Belt,” and the title track continue Morby's interest in travel, relationships, home, memory, and growing older. The Midwest has become more than a place in his music, it has become part of the way he understands himself.
When you look at Kevin Morby's career from the beginning, it feels like one long road leading back home. He left Kansas City as a young man because he wanted to see the world, found his way into the Brooklyn music scene, learned the ropes with Woods and The Babies, and eventually built a successful solo career. Along the way, he wrote about cities, highways, love, friendship, family, faith, grief, and the reality that time keeps moving. He doesn't need giant hits or flashy gimmicks to make his music matter. Instead, he takes ordinary things, a photograph, a train, a hometown, a long drive, or a memory, and turns them into stories about being human. By the time Little Wide Open arrived, Morby had become an established American songwriter who could look back at everything he had experienced and recognize that leaving home was actually part of finding out where he belonged.
That will do it for this report about Kevin Morby. Thank you for reading and in closing, please know, Soundwave Music Media will be here and we will always do our best to bring you the rock music report. Please consider supporting our Soundwave Foundation with a donation! Rock On! Until next time...🤘
Music Video
Share This story.
Written By: Ginny Gaines
(Report)
(Sources)
Website/EPK/Contact,
Spotify,
Youtube,
Meta,
Wikipedia,
All Music,
Pitchfork,
Tune Find,
PLAYBACK 30
Every month we put together a playback playlist with a song from each report and bring it to you. listen to the all the incredible artist we report on and subscribe on Youtube!
If you want to support the team and everything we do here at Soundwave, consider donating to The Soundwave Foundation!
Our donor base keeps us truly independent and free—no paywalls on any of our content, no corporate strings attached. Your support lets us stay focused on what matters: delivering daily coverage of the great music being made today, preserving the history that got us here, and expanding with more shows, interviews, live broadcasts, and deep dives into indie and alternative rock. Every contribution—big or small—helps fuel our growth and ensures this space remains open and accessible for fans and artists alike. Donations are tax-deductible through our nonprofit partnership with Fractured Atlas.