As soon as he graduated from Owensboro Catholic High School in 2003, Nathan Morris headed for North Carolina to join Stereo Motion, a rock-edged pop band.
He toured with them for two years and then cut his first solo power pop rock CD, “Leaving Duraleigh,” in 2005.
But in 2010, Morris fell in love with Meagan Everly, a mortician’s daughter.
And he asked her father, Mike Everly, for a job at Haley McGinnis Funeral Home.
Today, Morris owns 12 funeral homes, a monument company and a vault company.
But through the years, he kept writing songs and making videos for YouTube.
Then, last year, everything exploded.
And Morris returned to recording and performing, including a near sell-out show last August at the Plaza Theatre in Glasgow.
He’s billed as “Mortician by day, musician by night.”
“Last February, a video of mine went viral on TikTok, and a massive chain reaction followed,” Morris said. “And people started discovering my previous videos.”
So, he got got busy performing again.
There’s a show scheduled in Cincinnati on March 25 for Make A Wish.
Morris just got back from Idaho, and he’s headed to Arizona next week.
Today, he has 488,700 TikTok followers and more than 6 million likes for his videos.
Last year Morris released “YET,” a song about difficult goodbyes and lingering memories.
And he just released “Feel A Little Closer,” a song about staying connected to life.
Morris said, “I long to connect my heart with these songs. 2023 will be a brutally honest and transparent year. I will spend it asking myself, am I being wholly authentic?”
In 2010, the year he started working at the funeral home, he won the Indie Charts Independent Artist of the Year Award, after his song, “A Minute More,” spent more than six months as the No. 1 song on IndieCharts.com.
Morris said the COVID-19 pandemic “was a time where everyone was experiencing some kind of loss — the loss of a job, the loss of inspiration, maybe even the loss of a loved one — and we were in the thick of that. It was overwhelming to work at a funeral home, experiencing not only the sadness of the people we serve, but also the relentlessness of the people I served alongside.
“I meld the worlds of funerals and music because they go hand-in-hand. That may seem odd, but how do we celebrate when we’re attending a visitation or memorial? Songs are what solidify particular moments in our lives. You remember those things forever, and music helps bind it all together. I’m exposed to that reality every day, and that’s where these songs come from.”
He was a 2006 nominee for Independent Release of the Year by musiqtone.com.
“I was touring the East Coast and flying out to L.A.,” he said of those days. “But I don’t miss it at all. I like being home.”
Morris still releases music videos on YouTube.
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