Kendra Morris

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Kendra Morris recalls singers who straddled soul and rock during the early '70s, such as Ruth Copeland and Chaka Khan, while her contemporaries include the likes of Charles Bradley, Alice Russell, and Mayer Hawthorne. Morris's musical taste was developed through her parents' record collection, a library heavy on late-60s and early-70s soul and funk. During her childhood Morris's main companion was her karaoke machine, which she used for the sake of recording and learning to harmonize with herself. While enrolled in college in Tampa, FL, she became so involved in performing with bands that she decided to dropout and take on music full time. She took up the guitar, as well as songwriting, and eventually involved herself with a band which moved to New York in 2004 and split shortly thereafter. Morris took to recording songs on her own with an old Tascam 8 track she found in a shop in the east village and began releasing songs on myspace and through iTunes. Her self-titled EP (2010), was recorded with producer and multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Page (of That Handsome Devil). After touring with legendary guitarist Dennis Coffey and releasing a series of singles which included "Concrete Waves," whose b-side was remixed by DJ Premier, Morris released the album Banshee (2012) on Wax Poetics. In 2013, Morris returned with the covers album Mockingbird.

Both Banshee and Mockingbird received critical acclaim and a cult following, with several film + tv placements. The title track "Banshee" was used prominently in the Showtime hit series Ray Donovan, while her cover of Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" found itself in the trailer for major motion picture Dead Man Down.

In between extensive international touring and promotion for Banshee throughout 2013 and 2014, Morris worked on a small side project band with friends Scarlett Johansson, Julia Haltigan and Holly Miranda, releasing one single called "Candy." Kendra returned with her own follow up EP titled Babble in June of 2016. Another record to great all around reviews she continued working on more music as well putting an added focus to her visual art and connecting it further into her music world. Having been collaging for a number of years and creating art for her records and editing her own visual video projections to go with the live sets, she hand collaged fifty individual record covers for Babble, hiding herself in each one and sold out in less than a week. She also had been experimenting with hand animating her collages and wound up both directing and animating the recent music video for the hip hop supergroup Czarface and legendary MF DOOM collaboration record Czarface Meets Metal Face titled "Bomb Thrown" . The video so far has received rave reviews including online giant Mass Appeal citing it as one of the top 10 music videos of 2018 so far.

She released her own first single off her upcoming record called Nothing in February with a video and will release Playing Games to follow shortly. Along with a vocal feature on track 8 of the new Czarface/ MF DOOM record, more visual projects to come and a new record of her own on the way, Kendra seems to be both a sonic and visual force of reckoning.