Tempting as it may be, don’t just judge Gurf Morlix by the company he keeps, even if it does provide a fine starting point: eminent musical artists like Lucinda Williams, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Warren Zevon, Ian McLagan, Patty Griffin, Robert Earl Keen, Michael Penn, Buddy Miller, Mary Gauthier, Tom Russell, Jim Lauderdale and Slaid Cleaves, to name but a few. Instead, listen to “Gurf Morlix Finds The Present Tense,” his sixth solo album, and understand why his blue-ribbon associations as a producer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist have led Morlix to a similar level of excellence as a singer, songwriter and artist in his own right.

As critic Henry Cabot Beck notes on Amazon.com, “If anybody is stilllooking for a candidate to replace Robbie Robertson in The Band, look no further. Morlix can write, sing, produce, and play nearly every instrument (mostly stringed) and has a bottomless (albeit muddy) range of American musical idioms from which to draw.” Through more than four decades of professional music endeavors, Morlix has distinguished himself with his innate musicality, exquisite taste, keen creative instincts, and well-honed ear for not only songwriting but also the elements that bring songs to their fullest fruition.

Prior to embarking on his own career, Morlix was likely best-known for his 11-year creative partnership with Lucinda Williams as her guitarist, band leader and backing vocalist as well as the producer of two of her classic, critically-acclaimed albums: her 1988 breakthrough, Lucinda Williams, and 1992’s Sweet Old World. His work with Williams led him to produce multiple recordings for Hubbard (four albums), Cleaves (four albums and an EP) and two albums each with Keen and Gauthier, as well as discs by Russell, McLagan, Butch Hancock, Hot Club of Cowtown, The Setters (Alejandro Escovedo, Michael Hall and Walter Salas-Humara) and others.

Morlix’s varied musical activities include touring with Zevon, Pennand B.W. Stevenson, playing guitar in McLagan’s Bump Band, and singing, playing and producing an album with the Imperial Golden Crown Harmonizers, a gospel collaborative of noted Austin talents. Among the many artists he has performed and recorded with are Eliza Gilkyson, Guy Clark, Emmylou Harris, Michelle Shocked, Robert Plant, Jimmy LaFave, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Mojo Nixon, Jerry Lee Lewis, Peter Case, Bob Neuwirth, Don Walser, Jon Langford, Steve Earle, Harry Dean Stanton, Syd Straw, Billy Swan, Charlie Sexton, Victoria Williams, James McMurtry, Sonny Landreth, Doyle Bramhall, Flaco Jimenez, SteveForbert, Bill Kirchen, Lazy Lester, Rosanne Cash, David Byrne, KevinWelch, C.C. Adcock, John Prine, Dave Alvin, to name some but hardly all.

Music captured Morlix’s imagination from a very early age growing upin Buffalo, New York, as he soaked up the many sounds to be found on the airwaves. On hearing the Everly Brothers singing “Cathy’s Clown” for the first time, Morlix found his mission in life. “It was like,’That’s what I want to do!’ It was earth-shattering music to me, really amazing.” After seeing the Beatles make their U.S. debut on”The Ed Sullivan Show,” his fate was sealed.

Starting out on bass and moving to guitar, Morlix was playing professionally by his mid-teens (his longtime friend Peter Case made his stage debut between sets by Morlix’s band). Mastering new sounds and new instruments became a lifelong pursuit when he heard the steel guitar on Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” — he got himself one and then joined a country band to learn how to play it. The band members turned him on to country icons like Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell, who remain indelible influences. By the time Morlix finished high schooland struck out to play music in such warmer climes as, first, Key West, and then in 1975, Austin, Texas, he had a rich musical vocabulary that included rock, country, blues, folk and R&B, and agrowing yen to create music in a place where all of them met and intermingled.

In 1991 Morlix returned to Texas, settling into a house outside Austin where he installed his Rootball studio at the end of the 1990s. In addition to offering his production clients a comfortable place tomake their records, having the home studio led Morlix to start making albums of his own.

Morlix will of course continue to produce and play with others, but finally adding his own voice to the chorus of great American music is a welcome (if not long overdue) move. For as Skanse rightly notes on CD Baby, “more Morlix, as any Gurf connoisseur can tell you, can only be one thing: cool.”