Grantee:  Cary Morin
Native Citizenship:  Crow
Location:  Fort Collins, Colorado
Award:  2018 National Artist Fellowship
Discipline:  Music
Web Site:  carymorin.com
Facebook:  CaryMorinBlues

Cary Morin is a songwriter, fingerstyle guitarist, vocalist, and recording artist who excels in live performance and storytelling. An enrolled member of the Crow Tribe and also Assiniboine, he has been described as one of the best acoustic pickers on the scene today.

With deft fingerstyle guitar and vocals that alternately convey melodic elation and gritty world-weariness, Morin crafts an inimitable style often characterized as acoustic Native Americana with qualities of blues, bluegrass, jazz, jam, reggae, and dance. He has performed and toured internationally for over twenty years, and has produced or performed on over 20 recordings.

His unique recordings are made ‘live’ in the studio with little editing, in order to present a re-creation of the live concert experience. In a day and age where the common listener has been conditioned to listen to music in a format that includes layers and layers of sound, Morin uses only one guitar and one voice. He describes the results of this process as “an honest, organic, Native Americana sound, unmolested by modern digital effects and mechanization.”

His 2017 release, Cradle to the Grave, won the 2017 Indigenous Music Awards for Best Blues CD, and in 2014 he was honored with the Fort Collins Music Association Lifetime Achievement Award.

My guitar style helps to illustrate the subjects and characters in my songs. I strive to create a space for the audience, within my music, to visualize my stories and experience a moment of calm reflection.

~ Cary Morin

Cary Morin performs Cradle To The Grave, the title track to his 2017 release.