Heather Morgan (continued)

But Morgan is first and foremost a songwriter, not an interpreter. "When I was younger, I used to sing at all the regional oprys, and I would sing whatever my favorite song on the radio was at the time," she says. "Somebody finally said to me, 'As long as you sing somebody else's stuff, you're always going to be second best. You're always going to have that comparison, unless you make something truly your own.'"

Born and raised in the Dallas suburb of Richardson, Morgan can't remember ever wanting to be anything other than a singer and songwriter. Weaned on her mother's homemade mixed tapes of 50s and 60s music, she wrote her first song, a sassy little Supremes-inspired number called "Walk Away," at all of six years old. And she was singing long before that. She laughs when she recalls her embarrassment when people told her she sounded like Dolly Parton. "It was like, 'Gosh, I sound country - what am I going to do?'" She soon grew out of that - the embarrassment that is - and embraced her innate Texas twang as a teenager, when she began performing her own songs and favorite Pam Tillis and Lee Ann Womack covers at talent shows, school choir auditions and open mic nights at bars (accompanied by her amused but fully supportive parents every step of the way, of course).

"Prior to my senior year of high school, we took a family trip to Nashville - I think my parents wanted me to get it out of my system," she laughs. "I was a little bit naïve, thinking I could see Alan Jackson walking down the street as soon as we hit the city limits, but I did get to sing at an open mic at this little Italian restaurant. The manager was very encouraging of the song I'd written, and he let me cover that Martina McBride song, 'Cheap Whisky'." Naturally, Morgan also insisted on visiting Nashville's music-business-friendly Belmont University, but her parents insisted she stay closer to home - specifically, Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.

"I thought if I went to TCU for a year, surely I could talk my parents into a transfer," says Morgan. "But I got to school and decided that I like my parents. And staying in Texas totally benefited me." Indeed, she wasted little time in finding her way into the central Texas singer-songwriter scene, attending her first home-state open mic her second semester. "I played a couple of songs, and that's when the snowball started," she says, cataloging the venues in D-FW and beyond she's played in since (including an opening gig at the world-famous Gruene Hall in New Braunfels). She wrote and recorded a self-titled, five-song EP in 2001, an effort that garnered her encouraging words from some of her favorite Texas artists (the Groobees, Terri Hendrix and producer Lloyd Maines) and helped land her more gigs, but only hinted at the charm, maturity and full-band sound captured on Six Strings and Slow Backroads. Morgan's band, on stage and on the new album, includes Groobees veterans Melott (guitar) and Craig Bagby (drums) and Troy Wilson (bass).

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