BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

Bill Morris was raised by his grandmother in Western North Carolina, on land originally granted to the family in the 1780s for service in the Revolutionary War. As a child, he was surrounded by musical treasures and storytellers on all sides.

Bill recalls his paternal grandmother, Una Hawkins Morris, sitting on the porch singing old songs and telling stories. Mama Morris stressed the importance of knowing the family history and brought it alive with an abundance of colorful anecdotes.

Bill's Grandfather John Morris, also a storyteller, was infamous for playing a fiddle while dancing on two wooden legs. John had lost his legs while performing with a Wild West Show in Kansas in 1911. Uncle Lewis Boyd, another family showman, played everything – fiddle, mandolin, guitar, banjo, and harmonica -- and performed with a Medicine Show in the 1920s.

Mamie Yates Boyd, Bill’s maternal grandmother, cultivated an abiding love for the "old" music and passed it on to him. “There is a story behind every song,” Mama Boyd would say, while despite arthritic hands, she patiently taught Bill to play banjo and guitar.

In addition to storytelling and singing, Bill plays guitar, banjo, mandolin and harmonica. He has been performing professionally since 1943 when at the age of three, his mother and Aunt Helen routinely took him to the old Eckerd's drug store in Asheville, NC, a gathering place for soldiers and sailors during World War II, where dressed in a sailor suit one time and a soldier’s suit another, he would sing songs like “Madie Groves,” “Barbara Allen,” and “It’s A Bloody War” for nickels and dimes.

His love for old ballads, and the cowboy and railroad songs compelled him to create and produce a five-album series entitled Blue Ridge Mountain Music, the record label IVY CREEK RECORDINGS, which continues to be recognized by the national parks system, and museum gift shops nationwide as a solid producer of interpretive and educational albums. In addition to railroad history shows, he has performed at universities and festivals throughout the South and Midwest.

Kristin Morris, better known as “Mizmo” to her students, started writing songs around age six – not long after beginning piano lessons. On special evenings, Mother and sisters gathered around the player piano and sang words off the yellowing paper rolls as Daddy pumped the foot bellows. “I guess you could say I cut my musical teeth on parlor songs and ragtime from the early 1900s.”

The piano lessons continued, off and on, several years after the family moved to Texas near Houston, the home of KIKK country radio. Kristin first held a guitar at the age of 13. “I was captivated – discovering chord patterns and singing melody on top of a rhythm became an open invitation to make so many different kinds of music my own. I spent hours upon hours in my room trying out everything from Broadway and movie tunes, to Kingston Trio and Joan Baez, to Cat Stevens and John Denver. If I could sing it, I could find the basic chords, and I spent a lot of time writing down words and chords on top, making my own personal ‘fake’ book.”

Kristin studied Journalism in college in Austin, Texas in the late 1970s during the time Austin City Limits got its start, bringing exposure to the sweet harmonies of progressive country artists like MichaelMartin Murphy, Pure Prairie League, Jesse Colin Young and, of course, “Willie and Waylon and the boys.” Spending six years in New Orleans as a freelance writer for newspapers such as the Times-Picayune, had her listening to zydeco and Lil’ Queenie and the Neville Brothers and Doctor John. This raw infusion brought a blues awareness to her vocals and introduced the delight of improvisational voicing and phrasings that she uses in songs such as “Hushabye” and “Last Train to Glory.”

From New Orleans, she moved to Appalachia to write a first novel, and got caught up in life there. “I found that homespun music – just like what I did with a guitar – was almost a way of life for everyone in the mountains. Meeting Bill was like finally coming home, but to a place I’d never been before. I couldn’t learn the old-time tunes fast enough to suit me, and the harmonies I tried were fresh and smooth and rich – like butter out of the churn.” She began performing with Bill in 1994, and performing credits include the Asheville Folk Heritage and Dance Festival; Charlotte’s Festival in the Park; Central Piedmont Community College; the N.C. Center for Advancement of Teaching; RailDays Festival for the N.C. Transportation Museum; the Mountain Gateway Museum in Old Fort, N.C., and storytelling festivals at Horn of the West in Boone and in Spruce Pine, N.C.

Mizmo continues to teach English to high school students, still writes songs – “about being a hero, both on and off the railroad” – and continues to both write and perform stories for young adults. She holds a M.A. degree in Rhetoric, holds a certified license to teach from the state of North Carolina and is listed in Who’s Who in American Teachers 2004.