Americana troubadour Marques Morel has released “Gas Station Girls.” The single is the first from his forthcoming album, ‘Tales and Tellings.’
“Gas Station Girls” was written by Morel and produced by Andrija Tokic. The retro-sounding song opens with a stuttering steel guitar laid over a driving rhythm track punctuated by harmonica flourishes, crying steel, and twangy lead guitar. Echoes of Johnny Cash-meets-Dave Dudley flavor Morel’s vocal delivery as he extolls the virtues of a kind young lady who works at a local filling station.
“Gas station girl, you really saved my world
You got no idea what your kindness done for me
Them movie star girls gets all the hype
But you gas station girls are more my type
Gas station girl, you really saved my world”
“Although this may come off as a cheesy song, it was actually born out of a very transformative experience in my life,” says Morel. “I was at rock bottom, squatting as a vagabond in the woods, feeling as lonely and rejected by the world as anybody has ever felt, when I ventured into town just to get some coffee at the gas station and try to talk to people for a change. I brought my coffee up to the counter to pay for it, at which time I realized I had forgotten to bring any money. Seeing the despair in me, the girl working the Shell station counter just smiled kindly and said, ‘Don’t worry about it man, I got you,’ and proceeded to buy my coffee and send me on my way with smiles and salutations. While this may seem like a mundane story, it is a real-life example of a random act of kindness, and as small as it was it changed the whole trajectory of my life.”
Recorded in Nashville at Bomb Shelter Studio, “Gas Station Girls” features Morel on acoustic guitar, vocals, and harmonica, Jack Lawrence on bass, Ellen Angelico on lap steel, pedal steel, electric and acoustic guitars, Charlie Garmendia on drums, and Bo Coleman on lead guitar.
In response to the upcoming record, Dan McCintosh of The Daily Ripple has stated, “If you miss hearing country singers that sound like they are actually from the country, Morel oughta scratch that itch for ya.”
ABOUT MARQUES MOREL
Marques Morel is an American songwriter/storyteller, Midwestern-twanger/folksinger, guitar-thumper/harmonica wailer, street-performer/wandering troubadour, steadfast woodcutter/migrant worker, a father, a son, and a friend to all. Originally from the Illinois corn country, he has performed just about anywhere that anybody would listen: big city street corners around the world, county fairs, folk festivals, hole in the wall taverns/dive bars/honky tonks, cabin porches, backyard barbeques, listening rooms, theatres large and small, and beside many campfires and woodstoves with and amongst the ghosts of his heroes. Marques has had the great honor of sharing stages and greenrooms with some of the great songsters of our time, including Charlie Parr, Arlo McKinley, Joe Pug, Willy Tea Taylor, Riley Downing, Billy Don Burns, Pokey LaFarge, and Chicago Farmer to name a few of his favorites.
Marques has released four original albums to date; ‘Live and Raw in Rockford’ in 2013 and ‘Searching for America’ in 2014 were recorded bare bones with passion before his disappearance from the muse for about six years before returning to the studio for ‘Trail of the Ghost’ in 2021, and ‘Wind and Rain’ in 2022.
Known for his intense and infectious energy on stage and his gritty and honest songwriting and delivery, Marques Morel has been described by his fans as “raw and rustic” and “guts on the floor,” sometimes abandoning the mic and guitar cable to march into the crowd and lead a raucous bar or a sterile listening room into a grand finale of singalongs and stompalongs. He currently plays around 150 shows a year and can be found performing either as a one man show accompanied only by his old guitar, harmonica on the rack, and makeshift kick drum, or with his dynamically spirited band, The Midnight Wind.
