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Briand Morrison
Grand Portage guitarist Briand Morrison has created a new CD titled “Old Feathers.” He released it on July 14 at Grand Marais Art Colony’s Studio 21.
Briand is a recipient of an Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Established Regional Artist Grant 2021 to support this project’s writing, recording, production, and release.
Morrison was born in 1961 and raised by two incredible artists, George Morrison and Hazel Belvo.
Briand learned to play guitar at a young age, playing basic chords while his mother and father would sing around the kitchen table.
In 6th grade, Briand joined his first rock band, playing piano, bass, and guitar. His biggest music influences included the Beatles and Credence Clearwater Revival, the Stones, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin; he idolized Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and learned all of the band’s tunes.
In high school, Briand turned to jazz, learning about John Coltrane, Gerry Mulligan, and Charlie Parker, to name a few jazz greats. Upon hearing Joe Pass, who recorded an album called “Portraits of Duke Ellington,” Briand said his life changed, realizing that jazz could be played on guitar.
His mother purchased a 1963 Gibson Hummingbird Acoustic Guitar for him and found him a guitar teacher, Dave Pederson, at the West Bank School of Music. From Pederson, Briand learned chords, their embellishments, and how the chord is connected. He learned harmonic minor, melodic minor, natural minor, and Dorian minor and how to transcribe and teach songs to students who would learn from him.
Briand graduated from Highland Park High School in 1979 and attended Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It wasn’t long before he was homesick and returned to the Twin Cities after one year, entering the University of Minnesota to study mechanical engineering, then switching to computer science. He interned in Denver, Colorado, with AT&T Information Systems, earning enough money to buy a Gibson Les Paul Jr.
Once again, Briand’s free time was spent playing music in coffee houses. In 1990 his old high school band got together, and for the next seven years, he played in various bands and various rock and blues music venues.
In 2000 Briand came home to Grand Portage and began performing throughout the region.
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