“Morgan Geer is the real thing – a songwriter with a heart as deep as the Marianas Trench and sensitive as the wet hands of a raccoon.”

– Rennie Sparks, The Handsome Family

The Cosmic Gospel of Drunken Prayer

   Morgan Geer writes songs that could emerge from a highly blissed-out biker bar or a swampy ashram. Touring with Bobby Matt Patton of Drive-by Truckers on bass, and Claude Coleman Jr. from Ween on drums, Drunken Prayer transcends the bounds of “Americana”.

   On Thy Burdens, the new Drunken Prayer record, Morgan partnered up with Patton, who grew up playing in Pentecostal church. The pair recorded their album in North Mississippi with friends from Appalachia and The Delta, including members of Wednesday, Band of Heathens, and Jimbo Mathis’ group. 

   Some of us get a little squeamish when it comes to devotional music. Think of the still generally mystified response that Bob Dylan’s “Christian” records get to this day, even among diehard fans. Thy Burdens is a “praise” record in perhaps the same way that the Byrds’ Sweetheart of the Rodeo is a country record. Morgan has a deep familiarity with gospel-blues, country-blues, the American spiritual vernacular, but with one foot in the tabernacle and another in the honky-tonk.

   Geer has been releasing astonishing songs that have largely gone under-noticed, though a core group of initiates know that he is onto something deep. Listen to his tune “Cordellia,” from 2019’s Cordellia Elsewhere, which opens with the lines “I hate what they did to my town, so I moved to another town” – a perfect distillation of American restlessness, rendered with a crafty tunefulness worthy of Elvis Costello, complete with sly lyrical hat-tips to Shakespeare.  In 2026 The New Orleans band Deslondes included it on their covers album of influential songs. Alongside like minded artists as Johnny Cash, Swamp Dogg, and Clifton Chenier, Glide Magazine says ”That song alone justifies this album’s existence.”
   Morgan landed on the name “Drunken Prayer” after a chance conversation with Tom Waits at a Bodega Coast fish market about rats.