The artist is creating a space for queer people in Tennessee through music.
Singer, songwriter, and activist Morgxn sat down to speak with Mission over a cup of coffee, with his dog curled up in a bean bag by his side in his Nashville home. “If you’re asking me how I feel this morning, I feel like I had coffee. I let my dog out. And that’s a successful start,” he says. “It’s as good as any of us can ask for.”
Morgxn, born and raised in Nashville, has a lot of feelings about the place. He recently moved back home to Tennessee after living in Los Angeles–where he made his first album, Vital, following his time on Broadway in New York City. “Whenever you’re born and raised in a place there is always a feeling like you have to run away,” he explains. That feeling was even stronger for Morgxn, as Tennessee didn’t feel extremely welcoming to him as a gay man. After performing his first album all over the world, and finding himself on the Top Ten Hits of Alternative Radio, the pandemic hit and Morgxn found himself packing his bags to move back to Nashville. “I thought it was the greatest defeat of my life,” he says, but it turns out Morgxn was called back to Nashville to make a difference. “I’m not sure which problem it was in Tennessee. It could be women’s right to choose or trans health care or the drag ban. Name your poison, because this state has a lot going on, but I found myself at the Capitol singing my song ‘Pretend Rainbow’ to thousands of people.”
“You can make fun of me and bully me, but I can see a hundred thousand other queer, nonconforming kids out there and feel like, ‘oh my God, that’s home.”
His new album, Beacon, tells the story of his path back home and what has become his hero’s journey of struggle, break through, and revival. Listening to the album in order you can follow the cyclical path of Morgxn’s journey back to himself and his rediscovery of what home really means. “I think home is a forever revolving concept, and it is about who you’re with and how you’re living that creates home,” he says. “It’s not always family that gives a person the sense of home. I think about what my life would have been like if I had the lens of social media growing up. I would have felt less alone knowing that I’m not weird. You can make fun of me and bully me, but I can see a hundred thousand other queer, nonconforming kids out there and feel like, ‘oh my God, that’s home’.”
“Tennessee is not a backward state. It’s an oppressed state. You know, we’re a place of 30% voter turnout.”
Morgxn is passionately working to make Nashville feel like home for himself and countless other queer people who are trying to find their place. Morgxn is politically active in the city, recently performing at Nashville mayor Freddie O’Connell’s inauguration. He holds up an old photo of himself as a young Tennessee kid. “Go to that kid and tell him ‘you know this fear you feel to be yourself in this town, I want you to imagine that in the year 2024, you’re going to sing at the inauguration of what will be the most progressive mayor in Nashville’s history. He will walk out on stage to your song, in your hometown. That’s the kind of magic that can happen in a place like this,” he says.
Morgxn is hopeful for the future of Nashville and the South. “Tennessee is not a backward state. It’s an oppressed state. You know, we’re a place of 30% voter turnout,” he says and emphasizes the majority of people he meets want equality, but it’s not possible without votes. His new album is an example of the hope and redemption to be found in returning to the place that once hurt you and working to make it better. “If you can stomach it, go back to those places and try to make it a better place from the inside,” says Morgxn.
He sits in his home, on a farm he is building with his partner called Fruity Farms, making songs on his childhood piano, creating home in every space he performs. “The idea of my revival is sometimes not the loudest or the flashiest, it’s the most sweet and humble,” he says. “to be creating this queer farm in the middle of Tennessee is like the most beautiful revival I could ever imagine.” The song “Revival” is the climax of his album Beacon, which was released on February 2nd of this year, and has already received a lot of praise. The album, which is extremely personal, was difficult to release, Morgxn explains. “I felt like I was arriving at a finish line when the album was coming out and I had no idea what would happen, but I have been blown away by the responses I’ve gotten from people and in true hero’s journey form, the end is just the beginning.”
