While working as a bartender at Manhattan dive The Library, Brooklyn musician Kendra Morris sometimes served the after-parties of shows spilling out of the Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge while fantasizing that they were her own.
"I wished that these people were listening to my music. I wanted to do that, too," Morris said.
Now, just days away from the release of her latest album, "I Am What I'm Waiting For," and an international tour, she's grateful. And not only for her musical career. As her life has changed and settled, she's found beauty in the everyday human experience, she said — and it's one of the themes that make her new album so different.
"I'm really grateful because there was a time in my life where it was like, Bushwick hangovers," she laughed. "Now, morning is my favorite time of day. I'm such a nerd. I just want to write in my journal and listen for my bird friends."
Morris is referring to her new favorite app that identifies bird sounds in her Greenpoint backyard. Her new routine is a far cry from the lifestyle of a Manhattan bartender, but one just as rich, she said.
Kendra Morris. Photo: Provided/Kendra Morris/Rosie Cohe.
"I think I take for granted that I'm a human and I get to experience every emotion, and all these different things that are beautiful when you really kind of open your eyes to them: even mundane daily experiences," she told BK Reader in a recent interview, while appreciating the joys of visiting the laundromat and putting her coins in the machine. "They're not even really mundane."
It's in part this appreciation of the ordinary that allows Morris' latest album to explore a part of herself her fans haven't seen before.
"This record is such a different record," she said. "All of the records are so much of me, but this one, I really showed some sides of myself that I haven't shown in other records."
Morris partly attributes this to her collaboration with the album's producer, Torbitt Schwartz, also known as Little Shalimar of Run the Jewels. Much of the album was written at Schwartz's home and studio in Bed-Stuy in the spring and summer of 2022.
Morris said she would drive over after dropping her daughter at school or summer camp, then Schwartz would make cold brew and they'd sit at his kitchen bar talking ideas before heading to the basement studio.
"I think he really helped to pull some things out of me that I was reluctant to show for a long time," she said.
One example is in one of the first songs released from the album, "When I Go to Space" — a catchy mix of acoustic piano, bells and synths overlaid with a whimsical Morris singing in daydreams. Morris said she first put the song down as a demo on her keyboard, and immediately thought it was too weird for anyone to like it. But after showing it to Schwartz, they realized it was the one.
"I was like, 'Wait a second. I am what I'm waiting for.' This is me, and kind of just raw, a little rough around the edges, a little bit messy. But I've learned to embrace my messes," Morris said.
Originally from Florida, Morris spent a formative 13 years as a bartender at The Library, a popular dive for Lower East Side cool kids, musicians and producers.
While working there, Morris released album "Banshee" in 2012, and the covers album "Mockingbird" in 2013. In 2015, she spent a week that "felt like summer camp" making a one-off record in a star-studded band with Scarlett Johansson and her friends Este Haim (from the group Haim), Holly Miranda and Julia Haltigan. Morris also released the EP "Babble" in 2016, and "Nine Lives" in 2022.
Morris said The Library is where she started seriously making art, collaging during the lull before the 5:00pm rush.
"The owner of the bar had all these old vintage books on top of the bar, and I would pull them down and I would sit and just make art with them all day," she said.
That practice got her into collage animation, and Morris would frequently create her own music videos and album art. She got so good at it that she wound up in the director’s chair animating the acclaimed video for hip-hop supergroup Czarface and MF DOOM's record "Bomb Thrown."
You can see Morris' many talents in the video of her new single, "When I Go to Space," which she recorded, edited, wrote and performed.
"I Am What I’m Waiting For" is out Aug. 25 on Karma Chief Records. Morris is touring throughout 2023 with her band across the US and internationally, including a hometown release show at Union Pool in Brooklyn on Sept. 23.
