Blake Morgan - NYC Concert Series

["Killer pop-rock." –The Washington Post] From sold-out concert halls to the halls of Congress, Blake Morgan is just getting started. “My grandfather drove snow plows in the harsh winters of Moorhead, Minnesota during the Great Depression. Two generations later, I’m a recording artist, record producer, multi-instrumentalist, and the founder and owner of a successful, independent record label (ECR Music Group) in New York City. That’s the American dream.”

Fighting to realize a dream is in Morgan’s DNA. The native New Yorker grew up on the Lower East Side in Manhattan, the son of author-activist parents. In music school at age five, Morgan soon found The Beatles were supplanting Beethoven on his turntable. “I was already giving weekly piano recitals, but my first Rock n’ Roll gig was at CBGB’s when I was 13 years old. I wasn’t allowed in the venue by the owner, so in what’s become something of a famous story, my bandmates (who were older than me and in high-school) smuggled me into the venue inside our drummer’s bass drum case. Right as the show started, I jumped up on stage and did the show,” says a smiling Morgan. “I love how much that kid just wanted to do the gig.”

He’s done many since—Morgan’s record-breaking concert series of 30 consecutive sold-out performances at Rockwood Music Hall in New York City ran from 2016–2022, fueling over 200 performances across 175,000 miles of touring while selling out shows on both sides of the Atlantic. His most recent record, Violent Delights, has proved to be his most successful: Morgan’s one-man show of songs and storytelling made its Off-Broadway debut in New York City on November 1st, 2023 in front of a sold-out audience at The Green Room on 42nd Street.

Soon after signing a seven-album deal with Phil Ramone’s N2K/Sony label at the beginning of his career, resulting in his critically-acclaimed debut album Anger’s Candy (co-produced by music legend and mentor Terry Manning), Morgan saw danger ahead. Successful tours and rave reviews had earned him a loyal following, but in an era when music careers are written in sand, Morgan says he knew if he wanted his to last he’d have to find another way. “I knew I had to get off that ship before disaster hit, even if that meant swimming the ocean by myself until I found my way to dry land.” Although he was the label’s most successful artist, Morgan saw how precariously the label was positioned. He risked everything, and told Ramone he wanted out of his contract. Prophetically, and only six months after Morgan won his freedom, the company folded.

Instead of looking for a new label like so many other artists would have, Morgan decided to do something different. “I went to all the artists and bands I was already producing and recording, and said I was starting a label myself. I told them I wanted to found a label I’d want to be on,” says Morgan. “My favorite record labels were all founded by musicians who built a roof over the music they made, wrote, recorded, and believed in—Johnny Mercer’s Capitol Records, Berry Gordy’s Motown, Ahmet Ertegun’s Atlantic Records. This label is inspired by that same idea, and fueled by it.”

His gamble would be a winning one. Born from humble beginnings in a one-room makeshift recording studio and office and launched on Morgan’s laptop computer, that label has since flourished with Morgan’s own idealism at its core to become the globally distributed family of artists and labels it is today—ECR Music Group. The label is unique in that several of its tentpole artists work at the label, by design—and in addition—it operates under an elemental principle unprecedented in the music world: all of ECR Music Group’s artists and imprints own one-hundred percent of their master recordings.

The New York Times calls Morgan “Disarmingly unselfconscious.” The Charlotte Observer writes, “Music-biz innovator Blake Morgan has forged a left-of-center pop career.” Pollstar adds, “Serious musical chops.”

In the studio, Morgan has recorded and produced some of music’s brightest luminaries, from Lenny Kravitz to Lesley Gore. He’s produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered nearly 50 albums from dozens of artists, including all the artists (and all the new releases) signed directly to ECR Music Group.

An International Baccalaureate Scholar of The United Nations School and a Magna cum Laude graduate of Berklee College of Music, Morgan’s ideas, opinions, and editorials on music have been published regularly by The New York Times, Billboard Magazine, CNN, Newsweek, Variety, The Hill, NME, The Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He lectures frequently, including at The Georgetown University Law Center, New York Law School, California State University, Temple University, Syracuse University, NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, American University, and at his alma mater, Berklee College of Music.

Morgan is an advisor to the U.S. House of Representative’s Congressional Creative Rights Caucus, and a member of the Creators Advisory Board for the Copyright Alliance. His music advocacy has taken him to Capitol Hill numerous times where, as the founder of the largest grass-roots movement in American music history, #IRespectMusic, he continues to fight for music makers’ rights in the digital age.