Song of the Day & Video Premiere: T. Hardy Morris - My Me

Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part of our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJ’s think you should hear. Today’s song, featured on the Morning Show with John Richards, is “My Me” by T. Hardy Morris from the 2015 album Hardy & The Hardknocks: Drownin on a Mountaintop on Dangerbird Records.

T. Hardy Morris - My Me (MP3)

Across the better part of the last decade, T. Hardy Morris has become one of the Southeast's most active and wide-reaching songwriters, freely dipping into country and punk tradition while prolifically pumping out ferocious "crunge" gems. Morris' songwriting roots lie in Dead Confederate, a rock outfit based in Athens, Georgia, whose country- and grunge-leaning style garnered helped the band break through to a wider audience towards the end of the '00s. Despite that band's heavy touring schedule, Morris found time in 2011 to join Diamond Rugs, the supergroup of sorts with Deer Tick's John McCauley and Black Lips' Ian Saint Pé among others, with whom he has since released two albums. During a break between those two projects, Morris began work on a solo album, 2013's languid Audition Tapes, and followed it up two years later with this year's significantly louder Hardy & The Hardknocks: Drownin on a Mountaintop. Of the album, Morris says that "the whole 'crunge' thing happened naturally from these other songs I had written that kind of slammed grunge and country vibes together... it just seemed like where the song needed to go. But people reacted to it, and I liked their reaction, so we did a record that has that feel on a lot of the songs and it was a ton of fun.”

A highlight from that album, "My Me" burns with the same ragged insensity as that of Morris' outlaw and punk predecessors, and today, KEXP is exclusively premiering the video for the track. About the video, Morris says "This record feels the most like a 'southern rock' record of anything I've done, and it just kind of happened, so I figured why not give the video a little bit of that feel? We went out to the drag races one day and set up and played the song a few times the next day. It's a simple song about doing what you want, so that's what we did." The song's fiery spirit carries over into the video with ease – copious shots of drag racing cars will help with that – and only underscore "My Me" as one of Morris's most direct, explosive, and outright thrilling tracks to date.

T. Hardy Morris and the Hardknocks have a series of Southeastern dates planned through October, and if they announce plans to come up north afterward, that news will be posted on Morris' website and Facebook page.

Now, watch the exclusive premiere of the new video for "My Me" below.