Portland Drummer Neal Morgan Shares His Newest 24-Song Album, “PAW”

Between 2018 and 2022, Neal Morgan found himself writing songs. The Portland musician—perhaps best known for his drumming for folk luminaries like Joanna Newsom and Bill Callahan—was tapping into his own identity as a troubadour. Morgan had always been a collaborator, working with musicians ranging from Amen Dunes to Roy Harper on various projects. He even recorded a handful of drum-focused solo albums, but this time was different. Morgan had stumbled upon a new creative wellspring that set him on a journey of writing and recording songs.

Along the way, a lot happened to Morgan, who often speaks with a kind of winking humor. “While writing these songs, I’d sometimes be in the woods coming up with standup bits,” he says. “I worked full time helping to elect Democrats. Looked at ancient Egyptian and Greek art. Cried, dated some, danced. And if there’s a limit on how many times a grown man can kiss a rabbit on the head, I didn’t find it.”

Now, Morgan’s new album, PAW, arrives March 14. Coming in at a whopping 24 songs and 85 minutes, the sprawling collection finds the drummer stepping into the spotlight with eclectic, lyric-driven folk-pop music. In terms of its ambition, PAW brings to mind Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, the two-hour work of dreamy lo-fi rock by Canadian musician Patrick Flegel that wound up on numerous best-of-2024 lists. Like that album, PAW is best ingested in its entirety to fully appreciate its breadth and beauty.

Morgan wrote most of the songs at home on a nylon string guitar he’s had since he was a teen, working them out in his mind “while walking around Sauvie Island,” he says.

To pull off the musical vision for something bigger, Morgan enlisted a “group of heavy hitters, all but three of them Portlanders,” including Akila Fields, Anthony Schatz, Daryl Groetsch, Ian “Yuck” Lindsay, and Mirabai Peart. Many of these artists can be heard contributing to the album’s textured instrumentals with piano, synthesizer and guitars (full disclosure: WW Arts & Culture editor Robin Bacior briefly contributed). With talented local musician Tobias Berblinger mixing and engineering, PAW was truly a local affair.

“All the Portlanders on these songs elevated them; they shaped the arrangements and how the songs sound in ways I never could have planned or imagined. I will forever be surprised and delighted by what they did for this music,” reflects Morgan.

He plans to bring the songs to life onstage with a full band that includes several of the album’s players, in Portland and around the Pacific Northwest, including an album release show at Swan Dive on March 14.

Morgan took his time, writing and recording intermittently before finally finishing the album in January this year. The possibility of releasing PAW as two or three separate albums had faded away in place of something more grandiose.

“Part of the joy for me in making an album with 24 songs was the sequencing,” Morgan says.

Songs with delightfully odd titles like “Bald Eagle Bathing,” “Calf Kicks Calf,” and “Goat on Roof” range from one minute to over seven, and animals make frequent appearances.

“Animals pop in and crit around all over these songs; each is essential to how the songs move and what they’re about,” Morgan says. “In that way, PAW might be kind of like Where’s Waldo? for my fellow animal lovers out there.”

Morgan contrasts delicate moments with fuller guitar-driven power pop and rich synths. He credits Dan Elkan of acts like Breaking Bells and Hella for helping him turn so many songs into one cohesive collection. “Dan’s sequencing takes the listener on a particular journey that felt right to him. There was a harmony or poetry or balance he felt from that particular arc and from how the songs communicated with each other.”

You can hear the result of this approach on the standout track “Shania” (a reference to Shania Twain, of course), a simmering work of avant-folk strumming that switches tempos as it veers from basic guitar-and-a-mike to layered instrumentation.

Listening to PAW, you’re pulled in by the varied influences on display. Morgan found inspiration from unlikely sources, such as Jean-Luc Godard’s film Contempt and Orson Welles’ F for Fake. He listened to everything by Kendrick Lamar and Fiona Apple, Joni Mitchell, The Strokes, Chris Cohen, D’Angelo, and Mac DeMarco. He even references some of his favorite artists in the songs on PAW, quoting and thanking Prince, Missy Elliott, The Sundays, Morrisey, and Frank Ocean, among others.

“I’m what one might call a lyrics-first listener of pop music,” he says, “and maybe because of this, lyrics come first when I’m writing songs. The turns and tension of the music work only if they help the delivery of words come out in ways that feel right.”

All of this comes together in one of the more intriguing collections of music to come out of Portland’s diverse scene in recent memory. Seven years in the making, Morgan is ready to share this ambitious project and his own artistic evolution with the world.

“These songs give thanks for the true love I’ve been lucky to feel in my life, illustrated through the sensual world that has surrounded and animated it.”

SEE IT: Neal Morgan performs at Swan Dive, 727 SE Grand Ave., swandiveportland.com. 8 pm Friday, March 14. $10–$20.