Article Contributed by New West Records
Published on 2026-03-14
Photo: Courtesy of Hunter Morris / Mountain of Youth
Hunter Morris / Mountain of Youth will release the debut album Nowhere, NW on May 15, 2026 via Strolling Bones Records. The 10-track set was produced by multi-instrumentalist Ben Hackett (Patterson Hood, Craig Finn) and recorded at Chase Park Transduction in Athens, GA.
The remarkable debut emerges as a sort of equilibrium state, balancing Morris’s breezy heartland and lo-fi garage influences with his ‘70s singer/songwriter and ‘90s grunge sensibilities. The songs are mature and reflective, reckoning with loneliness, regret, and mortality, and the performances are raw and vulnerable to match, with lean, muscular arrangements.
It’s an honest, empathetic meditation on purpose and impermanence delivered by a keen observer of the human condition, one who’s only just begun to truly understand himself.
“When I started writing these songs as Mountain of Youth, it felt like I’d finally found my voice,” Morris reflects. “For the first time, I felt comfortable saying what I needed to say.”
Born and raised in Georgia, Morris didn’t begin taking music seriously until college. After a brief stint in Wyoming, he returned east to settle down in Athens, where he found work as a fly-fishing guide and launched various rock bands. After a few years, he was then ready to strip things back to their barest, most essential elements.
The material he began penning was deeply autobiographical, but often filtered through the perspectives of characters at various crossroads in their lives.
“All the characters on this record are choosing their path up the slope or looking back on the route they took and wondering what life would be like if they’d done things differently.”
The characters are also contemplating the passage of time and the loss of innocence, which Morris suspects is deeply intertwined with his work as a fly-fishing guide and conservationist helping protect and restore the streams and forests of North Georgia.
“There’s a youthfulness and a joy and a curiosity that comes with being out in nature,” he explains, “and I always find myself trying to go places that have been left undisturbed by man. There’s a purity and a beauty in those ecosystems that I think we’re all searching for in ourselves.”
Today, Magnet Magazine premiered the album’s first single, “Automatic Days.” Anchored by a deceptively carefree hook, the track exudes an easygoing nature that belies the true weight of its lyrics, which find an aging couple sitting at home wondering why they didn’t do more with their lives.
Morris says, “’Automatic Days’ was the first song I wrote for Mountain of Youth, and that was really intentional. It’s a reminder that you don’t have to just stay where you are and do what you do. You don’t have to settle for good enough, because someday you’ll be looking back and wondering what if…”
“I formatted the name of the album like a city and a state because I imagined Nowhere, NW, as this imaginary hometown that everyone comes from,” Morris says. “Some people leave, and some people stay. Some wish they’d left, and some wish they hadn’t. You can’t know until you do it, but deep down, I think it’s always better to try to find more out of life, even if it doesn’t go the way you planned.”
Nowhere, NW will be available across streaming platforms, on compact disc, and as a limited vinyl edition autographed by Hunter Morris. The album is available for pre-order now via Strolling Bones Records.
1. Automatic Days
2. Everything Falls Apart
3. Only In The Wild
4. I Need You More Than Life
5. The Invisible Boy
6. Nowhere, NW
7. Tell The Truth
8. This Lonely Home
9. Stowaways
10. Until You’re Dreaming
