Singer-songwriter and Rochester resident Grace Morrison has found a unique way to advance her career. A recording artist who has toured the country with her live performances for years, Morrison is currently offering her new CD “Saltwater Country” for free on Facebook, and this promotional effort has been a rousing success.
She said 10 customers a day order the CD, and some purchase one of the other six CD’s in her catalog. “The music industry has so changed,” she explained. “You need some big recording label to sell your CD. I realized no one will do this for you. I studied the marketing in the ’90s, infomercials that included ‘free offers.’ I tried that. It has been working.”
Her impressive online presence carries a strong and apparently effective message. “Not everyone is looking for this kind of music,” the message begins. “But if you love songs that tell real stories – messy, human, honest ones – you’re my kind of people. I’m a touring singer-songwriter, and I made an album about real life: loss, family, addiction, and the weird, funny moments in between. If that sounds like your thing, I’d love to send you a free copy.”
Morrison noted in her interview with The Wanderer that the main song on “Saltwater Country,” which is also available on vinyl, is all about her beloved hometown of Wareham, where she lived until marrying and becoming Morrison-Hartley in 2017. She still visits her family home there in the summer, where she said her seven-year-old son and her mother are best friends.
She adds the quick aside that her son will appear this summer in an Apple TV movie that was shot in Boston, but she was not free to share any more details about her son’s film debut.
Back to her own rising success, “the free offer has been a game changer,” she said. “I’ve sold out my CD three times already. In this day and age, that’s pretty neat, and it’s people from across the country that never heard of me before.”
She said a big reason for this success is that her personal lyrics resonate with people. “Songs that make you feel seen” is one of the slogans on her Facebook page. “I’ve had people tell me my songs make them feel seen for the first time,” she also has on her page. “If you’re someone who connects with story-driven, honest songwriting – not just background noise – I think you might really like this.”
As another indication of her success, she reports she has been selected as an “Official Showcase Artist” for the Southeast Regional Folk Alliance’s Annual Conference scheduled for May 28 to May 31 in Owensboro, Kentucky. She noted she is one of only 10 folk artists who have been chosen for this honor. Even aside from this, her live performance calendar is very full. She’s appearing at The Spire in Plymouth in May, the Mattapoisett Museum in September, and has performances booked for Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Texas in the fall.
Morrison, 39, picked up a guitar at age 12, when her first six-string was purchased for her by her brother from the now-shuttered Radio Shack in East Wareham. Since then, her journey to this moment in her career has been filled with music that doesn’t fit easily into any one category. Like her album, she calls her sound “Saltwater Country.”
“I was always too pop for folk and too folk for country,” she said. “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.”
For more information on accessing Morrison’s new CD, you can visit gracemorrison.com or search her name on Facebook.
By Michael J. DeCicco