Biography | Recording Discography | The Novenas | Art Work

Amy Morrissey
Biography
Fall, 2006

Amy Morrissey studied sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia while earning a bachelor's degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

An artist of uncommon depth and originality (all but creating her own genre with plaster and paint), Morrissey naturally went to work in radio. She spent six years at Philadelphia's WXPN, the influential public radio station at the University of Pennsylvania which broadcasts the World Café to cities throughout the US.

In October 2002 she took on the job of Studio Manager at MinerStreet/CycleSound, the studio home of Brian McTear, where many of Philadelphia's most beloved and influential musicians produced nationally acclaimed records from the late '90s to the present.

While her own musical curiosities began after college, she began performing on records shortly after she started working at the studio. She played guitar on Mazarin recordings and sang on numerous records, including The Trouble with Sweeney's I Know You Destroy!, and The Bigger Lovers This Affair Never Happened...And Here Are Eleven Songs About It .

Many days and nights of her week are dedicated to engineering with McTear, whose own record (Bitter bitter weeks, Revenge) was produced and engineered by Morrissey between 2003 and 2004. In addition, for that album McTear recorded a version of her song, "The Greatest Extremes", and a painting from one of Morrissey's series (The Virgin Martyred Saints Alphabet series) was used for the album's cover-art.

Morrissey's own music finds its way in her new band, The Novenas, a simple four-piece rock outfit producing elegantly sweet yet driving pop songs. For the earliest Novenas recordings in the Spring of 2004, friend and drummer Ric Menck (of The Velvet Crush, Matthew Sweet, The Tyde and others) flew from his home in Los Angeles to play drums and lend his much sought wisdom. Morrissey and McTear completed the record in 2005. Release details will be forthcoming shortly.

In the Spring of 2005, Morrissey and McTear wrote and recorded the film score for director Lance Weiler's second movie, Head Trauma. Morrissey manipulated several different unconventional “instruments”  (feeding back microphones, glass bottles, violin bows on just about anything) to create a broad palette of sounds.

In 2005, Morrissey and McTear joined as partners in designing and building the newest incarnation of MinerStreet Recordings in their neighborhood of Fishtown in Philadelphia. Morrissey herself hand wired the studio, including an entirely new patchbay, a process that took weeks of work, and elevated sound quality and efficiency at MinerStreet  to new levels.

Morrissey and McTear continue to work on new Novenas and Bitter bitter weeks music, as well as the music of countless great new artists, from Philadelphia and around the country.