With almost 20 years of music-making experience, Ben Morris and his bandmates – The Great American Boxcar Chorus – approach their craft with a veteran’s sensibility and a rookie’s ambition. Individually and collectively, the Boxcars have made it a life-long mission to spread highly creative music across the great state of Texas and beyond. As a unit, The GABC shies away from no genre; folk, bluegrass, Americana, and straight-up rock ‘n’ roll are all on the menu.
Songwriting duties and instrumentation are shared with many notable collaborators, the most prominent of these being Eric Fisher, Jon Dittfurth, Austin Mayse, & Mike Paeltz – with an occasional assist from Joey McGee. Formed in 2007 on the heels of Morris’ solo debut album, “The Other Side of Broken,” The GABC has since released 4 full-band studio projects, as well as “Amen Brother,” a 2013 all-for-charity album by Morris. The band was nominated for Texas Music Awards for 6 consecutive years by the Academy of Texas Music, taking home honors in 2009 for “Live Band of the Year,” in 2012 for “Band Musician of the Year” (former lead guitarist Coby Tate), in 2013 for “Musical Event of the Year” (Harestock, an annual charity music festival the band hosted for 11 years in College Station), and in 2014 for “Artistic Excellence” (honoring “Amen Brother”).
While every show is its own unique blend of sounds, the sound of The Great American Boxcar Chorus can be most neatly summed up with their late 2018 full-length release, “The Violets & The Blues.” Whether in miles or effort, this one-of-a-kind scrappy outfit consistently delivers country-rock statements of purpose and optimism, delivering songs that could simultaneously be both the soundtrack to your Saturday night and the hymnal to your Sunday morning.