The Cosmic Gospel of Drunken Prayer

   Drunken Prayer transcends the bounds of Americana music. Morgan Geer writes songs that could emerge from a highly blissed-out biker bar or a swampy ashram.  

   Drunken Prayer of 2025 plays a kind of holy blues. The new record, Thy Burdens (6/6/25), is an homage to the fiery music of the church. Morgan learned most of these hymns from his great grandmother in Mobile, AL. Partnering with Drive-By Truckers’ Bobby Matt Patton, the pair recorded this album in North Mississippi with some of their friends from Appalachia and the Delta.

   There are a handful of Drunken Prayer albums, all with a nod to the church, this one is the first that’s all gospel though. In its way, Thy Burdens is a natural evolution of the Drunken Prayer catalog. 

   Wearing a white bespangled jumpsuit his mama made for him, Morgan won a 4th grade talent show singing Elvis’ “Hound Dog”. After school he was threatened with a thumping by a neighborhood thug if he didn’t “sing Elvis!”. This was Morgan Geer’s introduction to the music industry.

   He started using the moniker “Drunken Prayer” after a chance conversation in Northern California with Tom Waits on the importance of gospel music, and the push and pull between Sunday mornings and Saturday nights. Waits turned him on to a record called Shakin’ the Rafters by the Abyssinian Baptist Church Gospel Choir, and with that an ambitious young Morgan Christopher Geer was off into the mission field. 

   Settling in Oregon for a while, the first Drunken Prayer gigs were on Sunday afternoons in the corner of a dank Portland bar, playing wholesomely subversive Gospel songs to rival biker gangs. At that point the name of this project might as well have been written in stone.

   Drunken Prayer is now a stalwart of the burgeoning scene in Asheville, NC., and Morgan Geer has recorded and toured with some of the cornerstones of what we call modern Americana music.

Morgan Geer lives in the Smoky Mountains of Southern Appalachia.