John Morgan joins "Steve & Gina in the Morning" (1-28-25)

John Morgan has a single with Jason Aldean ("Friends Like That") and brings his songwriting talents to Whiskey Roadhouse/Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs on February 22nd.  Hear how he and Jason ended up becoming friends and duet partners! (Photo by Rick Kern/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, Thanks for having me absolutely now.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
The last time we saw you, you were opening up
for Jason Aldean here in Omaha, and I know Jason
is a big supporter of yours, in fact, so much
so that he signed you to his label, Night Train Records.
How did you and Jason meet?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Yes, I'll give you the short versions. We I moved
to Nashville, I guess almost six years ago now, and
it was just kind of touring the tour in the
city for the first time and ended up running into
a guy through an Uber Ride who was a songwriter
for Jason for a long time, you know, fifteen years

(00:37):
or so, and we kind of hit it off and
we started writing some songs together, and he ended up
sending a few of those songs that we had written
to Jason's bandmates Kurtin and Tully, and Jason somehow heard
a few of them and he, I guess he liked
what he heard, so he got my phone number from

(00:58):
from Tully, his bass player, and just called me up
out of the blue a couple of weeks later, and
thank god, I answered the phone. Usually I don't answer
it if I don't know who it is, but yeah,
just he's just been the greatest guy. He's uh, you know,
just still still does everything he promises me he's followed
through with. So that's kind of the short version of

(01:19):
how we met.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Was there even a second where you thought, Okay, is
this really Jason Aldan?

Speaker 1 (01:24):
Yeah, no, I got a guy. I got a Actually
it's my drummer. He does really good. He does voice
over work, so he's very good at prank calling. And
that was my first thought for sure. But the more
you talk to the more I was like that, it's
got to be him.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
That's that's awesome. Now we were talking about Jason Alden.
You co wrote your latest song Friends like That with
Jason Aldan. Tell us a little bit about the song.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
We had the idea and we our original pathway for
it was a little more somber and serious. You know,
we were trying to figure out how to how to
land a hook, and I think we all just looked
at each other and I'm like, this is cool, but
I don't know if this is right, and so we
just kind of changed directions completely and try to make

(02:09):
it more of a lighthearted, upbeat feel with you know,
more of a I guess, somber lyric instead of you know,
everything just being kind of dark and mysterious or sad
boy country kind of thing. It was, We're like, we
got to make this happy somehow. So, uh, we ended

(02:29):
up we ended up kind of changing courses and thankfully
we did. It worked out, And I think the coolest
the coolest thing to me was, you know, getting getting
Jason on on on the song with me, and I
think it just kind of fits both of our things
in certain ways, you know, sonically, and so I think
that's kind of what drew him to the song as well.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
John Morgan our guest. John. We're excited to have you
at Whiskey Roadhouse inside Horseshoe Casino accountsil Blosso on February
twenty second. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Thank you. I can't wait to see yo.