SWINGIN' WITH MORBY

SWINGIN' WITH MORBY

HOW-TO

A rocker’s guide to not nunchucking yourself in the face

Jaan Uhelszki

"There’s something deeply punk about learning an ancient martial art via YouTube at 3 a.m.”

It’s hard to get a bead on who Kevin Morby really is. Sincere and sardonic, drywitted and slyly funny, he’s more prone to an arched eyebrow than a grand gesture. You could say he’s a protean character in the American indie folk landscape: a modern troubadour with one Blundstone boot in classic Americana and the other in existential poetry. But who knows what protean is? And Morby has been known to wear a chic pair of black Mary Jane T-straps at times, so even talking about boots would be wrong. Moreover, he moves through the world like a character in a YA novel, a little anxious, a little restless, always searching for something—the kind of guy who would play Jared Leto’s best friend on My So-Called Life. With his ’90s thrift-store glam, a tangle of unruly curls, and that still, still, unwavering gaze, you know he’s just not like the rest of us. Even he doesn’t think so.

“I’m just trying to pretend that I’m a normal person in society,” he told Vogue back in 2022, and he almost pulls it off until you listen to his eight albums with lyrics that feel like postcards or ransom notes, sent from the secret corners of America’s heart, full of holy mutterings, romantic fatalism, and ghosts he’s encountered through his wanderings, looking for the answers to the big questions that have stumped statesmen, philosophers, and mystics throughout recorded history, delivered with a Lou Reedian cool and the dust-blown wisdom of an old soul.

With Morby at work on his next album in his home studio in Overland Park, Kan., CREEM didn’t attempt to eavesdrop on the proceedings. Well, maybe a little, but he wasn’t having it. “I probably don’t want to talk too much about it, but I’m recording. [Ed.; Probably?! I just got done with a couple years on the road, so I’ve banked a lot of music and I’m just starting a process of capturing it all.” But not in front of us, as we Zoomed in for a visit.

What he mas willing to talk about was nunchucks! You heard right. Those weapons of indeterminate origin depending on whom you ask—either they came from China during the Song Dynasty or from Okinawa, Japan, in the late 1600s. But for most of us, we first remember them when Bruce Lee wielded some in Fist of Fury in 1972. But that’s not what intrigued Morby. Nope, it was the Teenage Ninja Turtles on Saturday-morning TV.

“It’s really just a fascination with the Ninja Turtles when I was a child,” Morby tells us. “I was obsessed with them. At some point I got all of the different weapons that the four Turtles had, but Michelangelo was the only one with a weapon that you could actually do something with. What can I do with a fake sword?

“There’s actually sort of an art to nunchucking, and it just stuck with me. I didn’t do it for a long time because I got rid of my toys, but during the pandemic, having nothing to do, I found myself buying a lot of stuff from my childhood. One, because it was just a sort of comforting thing to do during the scary time, and then also just out of sheer boredom. I bought the nunchucks as a joke, but then I was like, 'Oh, wow, I really do love this,’ and I’ve just been doing it ever since.”

SO WHAT’S IT GOOD FOR?

“I use it like someone would use a stress ball. It’s this thing that I do when I’m talking on the phone. Or if I’m in my home studio and I’m working on something and I’m listening to playback and I want to anxiously pace, I’ll be nunchucking in those moments. I find this hand-eye coordination thing very soothing."

IS IT GOOD FOR WRITING SONGS?

“Absolutely! I haven’t had a quote-unquote real job since my early 20s. People who still do have retail jobs or musician peers of mine talk about those moments where you're working at your job; you’re working a cash register and that’s when your great ideas come to you. I remember that from when I had jobs like that. Now that I’ve made a living off music for this long—which believe me I’m not complaining about, I’m obviously very grateful for that—but you do have to have those sorts of things that help the great ideas come to you. That’s why I like running, tennis, and nunchucking, where you can leave all that other stuff behind and be busy with something else. Because that’s actually when the creative spirit really, really penetrates."

ARE NUNCHUCKS FOR EVERYBODY?

“I think that they’re a great thing for artists. It helps you to turn off your brain and let the ideas come. If you break martial arts down to its parts, it’s got the word 'art' in it! Plus, I think that it’s an artistic expression as much as music or painting can be. So I think anyone creative will find something in it. But also anyone athletic. Maybe you’re not creative but you’re athletic, and there’s something for you there as well."

And here’s something for you, reader: a primer that couldn’t be sublimer. Take it away, Mr. Morby.

WHERE THE MAGIC AND THE MAYHEM HAPPEN

The photo on the opposite page is of me at my command center. We’re in my little home studio, which is pretty rough around the edges, but it’s a fun little oasis for me. It’s where I go to do all my creative stuff. I don’t record my proper albums here, but I do demo all of them here. And Bruce Lee is just up there on the screen in the spirit of this article. He’s sort of the top echelon of nunchucker, so I wanted him in there, like a nod to the god. But other than that, this is just my messy desk space where I work on stuff, and there’s always some pairs of nunchucks lying around. The nunchucks around my neck are the real ones. Those are the wood ones, so those are my quote-unquote real nunchucks. That’s the security system in the studio.

NUNCHUCKS BY MORBY

1. In the beginning it’s good to use foam nunchucks. Mostly so you don’t hit yourself with them. These, however, are my real ones.

2. It’s always best to learn how to hold your nunchucks correctly. On a nunchuck, there’s two sticks and there’s a chain. With my right hand, I’m holding the right stick, toward the head, close to the chain, sort of the way you’d hold a microphone. On the first grip, you’re letting the left stick dangle. You want to be close to the chain because eventually and very quickly that chain is going to rotate over the top of your hand, which is the whole move.

3. In the beginning, you might consider protective gear. Like a helmet. I can’t say I ever considered it. Except when I was painting a room with my nunchucks.

4. This is me just starting to throw the right nunchuck over, getting going.

5. I’m swinging the chain over the top of my hand.

6. Once the chain’s on top of my hand, I can let go of that stick, and it’s going to swing the other stick into the palm of my hand.

7. I’m letting go of the right nunchuck—you let go of that and then it swings over the top of your hand and throws itself over and you catch it on the other end.

You can see it’s going over the top of my hand. I’ve let go and now it’s swinging into my palm and then I’m going to grab that other stick with my hand. That’s completing a rotation.

8. I’m doing something called figure eights. I’m basically creating a sideways eight. You just hold on to the nunchuck and swing it.

9. Here I’m doing the figure eight, plus rolling it over my hand at each side. And that’s where it starts to look really cool because that’s when you lose track of what’s even happening. There’s just all this motion that looks really neat. It’s exactly how you would twirl a baton.

10. I'm swinging the nunchucks in a windmill rotation. Just swinging it by my side. Sorta like the way a fan would just spin around. Or like Pete Townshend.

11. ADVANCED MOVE: Two sets of nunchucks. Don’t try this at home...in the beginning.

I’m doing the cross body with both of my hands. Like a classic Bruce Lee move.

12. It’s essential for any nunchucker to know how to stop the nunchucks safely. The trick is to swing it behind your back and catch it. This is the finishing move.

13. Stay away from walls. And glass— that includes soda. Multitasking is always a bad idea.

14. Last December I painted a room with my nunchucks as part of a short film titled How to Paint a Room, directed by my great friend Christopher Goodboy. I’ve wanted to do it for a very, very long time. Now I have! Did my girlfriend mind? Not really, only that I had my feet on the bed.