Greg Morton calls it the twin moment, that instant when he and his wombmate Randal will start playing the same chord progression on a song they havenβt really played together.
βWe have this twin thing going on,β said the award-winning flatpicker, who with his brother will headline the Tucson Folk Festival on Sunday, May 6. βThatβs kind of wild. We played together 49 years, so we have a lot of that telepathy going on.β
The pair, 62, are dead ringers, which is not surprising; they are identical twins. But youβll easily tell them apart when they take the stage with fellow Tucson musicians James Stanley on upright bass, Lex Browning on fiddle, guitar and vocals, and Jim Lipson on percussion, with Billy Parker from Phoenix sitting in on mandolin.
Randal will be the one playing the banjo, Greg will be picking the guitar. Both are award-winning, national class musicians; Greg has won a number of Arizona state flatpicking championships; little brother Randal β by 10 minutes β holds titles from the Midsouth Banjo Championship in their native Memphis, Tennessee, and the biggie, the 1975 National Bluegrass Banjo Championship.
Their show Sunday will be their first together in more than two years. Their last time was when Randal joined his brother in a bluegrass festival Greg put together at Desert Diamond Casino.
The brothers have spent their lives sharing a stage, from the time they were in the mid-teens through their 20s, playing bluegrass festivals all around the South and opening for big-name country artists including Jerry Reed in the early 1980s. For three years, they performed with Don Ho in Hawaii β ββTiny bubblesβ every day,β Greg quipped in reference to Hoβs trademark hit β and continued performing regularly together until Greg met a girl and moved to Tucson 26 years ago.
βI just love Tucson,β he said.
Heβs carved out a respectable music career, in addition to his day job building mining equipment, and is widely considered one of Tucsonβs pre-eminent flatpickers, in the company of Peter McLaughlin and a couple others.
When his brother gets into town this week, Greg said he plans to hole up for a few hours in a recording studio and do something the pair has never done in their nearly 50-year musical partnership: a CD. Randal has appeared on Gregβs recordings, including his 2008 bluegrass instrumental βWhen Pigs Fly,β but theyβve never done a full-on project together.
βIt doesnβt take us long to record because heβs so good at it,β Greg said. βWeβll go into the studio and knock βem out ... in four or five hours. Thatβs what Iβm hoping for.β
Heβs hoping they can press some CDs to sell at the folk festival, which is one of Gregβs favorite Tucson events. While heβs appeared in the lineup several times over the years, this is his first time headlining.
βTo get to headline for the first time and to do it with my brother, Iβm so excited,β he said.
βItβs all about having fun. Iβve always loved the folk festival.β
