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... by Joanne Corsano ... joanne@picturelake.com

Grace Morrison

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of the concert

Grace Morrison, guitar and vocals.

Saltwater Country

Lucky me, I got to see local favorite Grace Morrison for the second time in a little over a month, doing songs from her recent album, "Saltwater Country" as well as a smattering of covers, some of which you really wouldn't expect. "Gangsta's Paradise," anybody? Grace is a lot younger than many of our musical favorites, and the year 1995 was a formative year in her musical education. We first saw Grace at the New Bedford Folk Festival in 2014, when she was writing a lot of songs based on historical events. She's a prolific and talented songwriter, and her songwriting has evolved in such a way that now her songs are mostly drawn from her own experience. She's totally NOT a tragic folk singer (which is a good thing).

As well as being an extraordinarily good singer, she's upbeat and funny on stage, and in the years we've been following her career, she's really developed an excellent stage presence. Had the audience laughing with her stage banter. A thing that's relatively new is that she enjoys swearing! And she enjoys commenting on the fact that she has learned how to swear on stage and that it's fun for her to do so, especially in this venue that's in a converted church! At one point when she was tuning her guitar between songs, the audience went quiet, Grace commented on this, and an audience member piped up: "We're in church!"

The Mattapoisett Museum is quite a venue. A historic church converted to a museum. The volunteer checking people in at the door mentions there will be renovations going on that will provide disability access and also improve emergency exit availability. (Something the building inspector's daughter always notices!) Rotating historic displays keep the concert goer occupied before the show; currently the display was all about the importance of swordfishing to the town of Mattapoisett, and included a painting of a historic weathervane in the shape of a swordfish, that I am told now resides in the museum itself. The location is easy to find off Route 195 and there is abundant street parking within a short walking distance.