You might say Grace Morrison has a singular vision. “I live in Wareham, Massachusetts, which lovingly refers to itself as “The Gateway to the Cape,” she wrote by email. If you’re driving and see the Bourne Bridge, you should bang a Uey. “We’ve got all the beauty and coastline of proper Cape Cod with a lower price tag. That’s where I was born and where I intend to die. I love it here!” Professional musician is the only job she’s ever held. She briefly had a band around 2010 – Grace Morrison and the RSO, releasing one CD. She was solo before that and has been since 2012. “I started performing at 14 and started teaching piano lessons at 16, and I’ve never stopped. Name a music job and I’ve done it.”
If nerditude had a formal name, it would be Grace Morrison. She’s a little bit of everything – pianist, accordion player, Renaissance Faire performer, cranberry grower, reader of historical nonfiction, coffee devotee (she sells her own coffee blend), and an unapologetic expert on all things New England. She undoubtedly knows which Dunkin’ Donut shops have the drive-thrus and which don’t. Somehow, all these quirks weave seamlessly into the fabric of her music, making her one of the most unique and endearing songwriters around.
Saltwater County is Morrison’s most recent album (2025), and if you listen hard, it wants to jimmy the locked door of your imagination. For someone like me who grew up and lived in Massachusetts, recognition of her narratives on life in a seaside town at the doorstep of Cape Cod brings an appreciative shiver. Her music has a sound she calls Saltwater Country. “I was always too pop for folk and too folk for country,” she asserted. “Eventually, I started peeling back the layers of my music to find out what truly made it mine. At the heart of it all was my deep, undeniable connection to the Cape Cod coastline. It’s in my blood, in my voice, in every lyric I write. My music carries the storytelling of country, the twang, but also the raw, unshakable spirit of a Swamp Yankee. That’s Saltwater Country.”
Several songs – Only A Man and Poor Man’s Daughter, to name two – are reminiscent of life in Anytown, America, thinking of kids in a playground winding the creaking chains of a swing until they would twist the other way, throwing their heads back and extending their feet to augment the spinning. From co-writing a song with Lori McKenna, the wonderful singer songwriter from Stoughton, Massachusetts, just a couple clicks inland from Wareham, Morrison learned that “the more personal and specific my songs are, the more they seem to resonate. You’ve got to write what you know.”
Her AUK Mini-gig was recorded at her house in her husband’s office. She is playing a new guitar he bought her on their fifth anniversary. As for her first guitar: “When I was in high school my dad drove me to some parking lot where a man was waiting with a beautiful Taylor 714. I have no idea how my dad got the money for that; it must have taken him a heck of a long time to save up for it. At any rate, a beautiful sensitive wooden instrument stored in a house with no heat was a recipe for the top to crack. I’ve always been so broken-hearted about it. I can’t even look at it.”
You can find out everything you need to know about Grace Morrison’s music at her website and follow her on social media feeds: Facebook, Instagram, X. The video below is exclusive to AUK and a must-see. She was kind to supply our readers with a description of the songs in the mini-gig.
- Cranberry Blossoms – My grandfather was a WWII vet. He was on Normandy Beach on D-day, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and came home a man of few words. My brother told me the only advice grandpa ever gave him was “got a problem? Go to work.” He was a TV repairman and my mama always talked about what beautiful hands he had. In fact, he had the first TV in our town. I had always wanted to write him a song, but could never quite figure out the TV repairman angle. My husband and I live in front of 40 acres of cranberry bog, and one day the opening line the cranberry blossoms and my grandfather’s hands came to me. So, it’s about my grandpa Brayton despite the fact that I’m 99% certain he never walked on a cranberry bog.
- Poor Man’s Daughter –That is exactly what I am! I grew up in Massachusetts in a house with no heat or running water in the bathroom. It was built to be a summer house back in the 1930’s so like, no insulation either. I don’t think as a kid I appreciated just how poor we were; I just knew that we could never buy concert tickets because you needed a credit card for that (this was pre-debit cards for everybody). I remember cold winters going to sleep in my winter coat and thinking that I was so tough I could handle anything.
- Belladonna Tea – Definitely the strangest or creepiest song I’ve written. I don’t even remember what inspired it…. perhaps the Alicia Silverstone movie, The Crush? When I first shared it on my Patreon page, someone commented that it was like a lovely love song. The fact that Belladonna is a poison totally went over their head, haha. I do like a murder mystery (just finished watching “Shetland”) so perhaps that’s where the macabre sensibility came from.
