![]() Morby bought a little house in his hometown in the winter of 2017 and converted the shed in the back into a makeshift studio. Suddenly, the stillness of the midwest seemed appealing. The triteness of the music industry began to feel irritating. The excessive fun of the coasts and the unbound freedom of the road had proved difficult to maintain creativity and process grief. He lost another close friend, musician Jamie Ewing, and went through a messy breakup in Los Angeles. Musicians he grew to know and love, like City Music producer Richard Swift and Jessi Zazu of Those Darlins, passed away too young. The pitfalls of a rock and roll globetrotter were unveiled as Morby’s expansive life on the road flourished. ![]() ![]() 2017’s City Musicwas frisky and audacious the gospel of 2019’s Oh My Godplanted its reverent heels with a right hand reaching towards the heavens. The polarity of Los Angeles catalyzed his music the sprightly, self-assertive Still Life arrived in 2014, the brooding sprawl of Singing Saw following in 2016. Critics praised the album’s likeness to Bob Dylan and the freewheeling sound of mid-’60s electric folk, and Morby’s sound began to take shape. Harlem River, the songwriter’s debut as a solo artist, was conceived early last decade in Los Angeles, his ensuing homestead for several years. Contrary to the bucolic and claustrophobic midwestern dusk, New York pulsed with life under the moon, and Morby found his stride. ![]() The fledgling songwriter found creative cohorts all around the city, joining bands like Woods and the Babies as the daring noise of the “Brooklyn scene” slid onto iPods and late night television. So he took off for Brooklyn in the mid-aughts in search of something more. It was a cold reminder that when night falls, there’s nowhere to hide, nothing to distract from yourself. Unlike the energy beholden to New York’s midnight skyline or the headlight caravans along the highways of Los Angeles, there was something unsettling about the Kansas City sunset he reckoned. Those Darlins played their farewell show almost a year ago, so Wariner and Regensburg could focus on a new project together, until she received the diagnosis.Before sojourning the coasts as a zealous 20-something, Kevin Morby was just another jaded high school kid looking for a ticket out of the midwest. They toured extensively behind bands like The Black Keys, redefining the way people looked at music that emanated from Nashville: namely, that it could rock just as hard as it twanged. Wariner formed Those Darlins in 2006 with Nikki Kvarnes and Kelly Anderson (who was eventually replaced with Linwood Regensburg), merging country instrumentation into an aggressive punk sound. Watch the video, where Wariner bravely shaves her head in preparation for chemotherapy, above. The LP’s last song, “Ain’t Afraid,” contained a line that, at the time, was meant to reflect co-front woman and guitarist Jessi “Zazu” Wariner’s mounting sense of unease: “there’s a tumor growing on my body,” she wrote, “and I don’t know what lays in store.” Now, the metaphorical has morphed into the actual: Wariner was diagnosed with cervical cancer seven months ago, and recently discovered that it has spread to her lymphatic system. Three years ago, seminal Nashville trio Those Darlins released their final album, Blur the Line, the bookend of a decade-long career shaping a hybrid of garage rock and ramshackle rockabilly that helped to define the city’s musical evolution.
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