John Morgan Wanted to Be a Cattle Farmer - Instead, He's Topping the Charts with Jason Aldean and Taking His Music Across the Pond

Ahead of his 2026 C2C Festival debut, John Morgan sits down with Holler to delve into his new album, Carolina Blue, his bluegrass roots and his friendship with Jason Aldean.

In today's TikTok era of music, sometimes it can feel like we're being bombarded by a million different artists, all trying desperately to hold our attention through clever videography, hooky three-second riffs and inventive new marketing ploys.

This is just the nature of the landscape at the moment, and often, it can give rise to infectious and dynamic new sounds. But at times, when the objective is simply to craft a hook that will engage short-attention spams, it can feel a little forced and superficial.

Which is what makes it so refreshing when you stumble upon an artist who is immersed in and cares deeply about every step of the creative process, from the songwriting to the instrumentation to the production, and who would rather sit back and let his music do the talking than spam his listeners with sleek, dazzling TikTok videos.

Perhaps John Morgan's attitude towards creating music stems from the fact that, at one point in his life, his dream looked very different. As he reflects on ‘Kid Myself’, taken from his lauded 2025 debut album, Carolina Blue, Morgan was quite content to follow in the footsteps of his uncles in buying a nice piece of land and spending his days raising Black Angus cattle. It doesn't get much more country than that.

“When I was living in North Carolina, I had bought about 10 acres of land”, Morgan recalls to Holler, “I wanted to raise Black Angus and do the whole thing my uncles did when I was growing up. That's what I wanted to do”. At the same time, though, Morgan had been bitten by the music bug, “But I just remember that feeling of knowing I've got to chase this music thing, and if I'm going to it, I've got to do it now”.

He expands, “I remember sitting up on a centre-beam I was building while re-modeling this old house. It hit me with all the weight of the world: if you're going to chase music, you'd better go now. Otherwise, you're going to settle down, and you'll be stuck here. I didn't know if I'd be able to live with myself if I didn't chase it”.

Cattle-raising might have been in the North Carolina native's blood - but there's no question that music is too. After learning to play the guitar at 8 years old, Morgan joined his family's bluegrass band at 10, travelling across the US playing shows.

It's no accident that many of country music's brightest stars, like Keith Whitley, Chris Stapleton, Carly Pearce and - more recently - Zach Top, came from a bluegrass background.

“What I've tried to incorporate from my bluegrass days is the storytelling aspect”, Morgan muses, “I didn't really dive into songwriting headfirst until I was out of high school. I was writing some bluegrass stuff here and there, but I didn't have the bug for it like I did for guitar. I didn't really know the songwriting world existed. I thought - like a lot of people still think - that every artist writes their own songs. So when I started learning about songwriters in Nashville, the whole scene really intrigued me. It was very cool to know that there were guys behind the scenes just pumping out magic on a weekly basis. That's when I really caught the bug”.

You can tell by the way Morgan speaks about the craft of songwriting that he is fascinated by every element, whether it's the tone of the guitars or the delivery of a particular lyric.

In 2020, Morgan had officially made the move to Music City to work on his songwriting, “I really fell in love with that, and I fell in love with production. I started getting into better rooms, and I had a friend that was also fairly new to town - Will Bundy, now a great producer and songwriter. He was one of the first friends I made when I moved to town. He just told me straight up, ‘You need to learn how to do a demo. You can play enough instruments that you can track it, and get somebody to help you mix it’...Not all the songwriters that have written hits know how to produce, so that's something I could bring to the table. I started really refining that craft as well, adding that to my bag, and telling people, ‘Hey, I'm a track guy too, you know’. Or ‘I'll do the demo for free, if I can get in on this write’”.

Morgan did everything he could to put himself in the best position possible, so that when that golden opportunity came along, he was primed to make the most of it. As is the case with any success story, a little dose of good fortune was needed - and Morgan found it in the back of an Uber. After idly chatting about his love of songwriting, the driver then revealed he was a songwriter himself - John Edwards - and had penned a number of hits for country megastar, Jason Aldean.

After hearing a few demos, he recognised Morgan's talent, and connected him with Aldean, who has since become a crucial mentor for the fast-emerging singer-songwriter.

The following year, Aldean cut one of Morgan's co-writes as a blockbuster duet with Carrie Underwood, ‘If I Didn't Love You’, with the song quickly scaling the Country Radio listings and hitting No. 1, marking Morgan's first ever chart-topper as a songwriter.

Things continued to snowball, with Aldean signing Morgan to his Night Train Records imprint at BBR Music Group the following year in 2022 and bringing him out on the road. After honing his skills over the next couple of years, Morgan earned his first No. 1 as an artist, ‘Friends Like That’ featuring Aldean, in 2025. Hot on the heels of this, he dropped his debut album, Carolina Blue, a project that showcases his penchant for galvanising guitar licks and heartfelt, intricate lyricism.

“Man, there's a ton I could say about that guy”, Morgan gushes of Aldean, “He's he's been heavily influential in my career thus far. There's a few things I've learned from him in different areas of the music industry, but if I had to pick one, it's just his ability to choose songs that really resonate with who he is as an artist and what he's built over the last 20 years. He really knows his fanbase. He's spent a lot of time on the road, playing clubs, playing all these different hole-in-the-walls to get to where he's at now, playing stadiums and arenas - like, there's a process for that. And I think with social media now, guys skip a lot of those steps”.

He goes on, “There's guys that are at the top of the charts now who've never done a Sprinter van tour. They've never had to grind in that sense - and they've probably had to grind in other ways that sometimes we may not have had to, you know, with the platform they have. But I just don't think there's any replacement for that”.

Morgan pays homage to Aldean's guidance over the past few years, “He told me early on, ‘I'm not gonna do the work for you, bro. My job as your co-label head is to give you the platform, and you do with it what you will. It's on you at that point’...He's just such a such a great guy. He has been from day one to me. He's never tried to ‘Big Dog’ me or anything like like that. He's never been that guy. He's always been straight up with me. He's a ‘no BS’ kind of guy. And I work well under that type of regiment. I don't want people blowing smoke up my high-end. I want people telling me straight up - is this good or is it not good? Do I need to fix this? Do I need to change that? So he's always been a huge confidant for me”.

Evidence of Morgan's impressive trajectory is the fact that he's currently gearing up to play one of the biggest country music events in Europe, the UK's C2C Festival. Morgan will follow in the footsteps of artists like Sam Hunt in taking the Spotlight Stage, introducing his sound to swathes of new listeners across The Pond.

“Gosh, it's a big pond, bro”, Morgan laughs, “I'm excited. Man, this is my first time going overseas. It's pretty wild. You always dream about branching out into other countries. It's been crazy to see the reach that we have. A lot of our streams come from overseas, and it's blows my mind. It's going to be a blast. We're bringing a broken-down setup, which is always fun, man, because you can really lock in and be pretty intimate with a crowd, and allow people to really focus on the lyrics”.

Morgan concludes by teasing that, after this run of shows in the UK, he'll have plenty of new material for the writing room, “I've heard a lot of good things about the fanbase out there in the UK. I think I'll be very inspired when we head back to the States”.

These stripped-back shows will capture the spirit that has always underpinned Morgan's approach to music - no frills, no gimmicks, with the emphasis placed firmly on what, at the end of the day, should always be the focus: the music. With the ‘Crickets’ crooner already teasing new music following the continued popularity of Carolina Blue, 2026 is shaping up to be another momentous year for the country prodigy.

He might not be raising cattle, like he initially assumed he would be, but as he hangs another No. 1 plaque on his wall, he's surely thankful for the courage of that younger version of himself, sitting on the centre-beam of an old house as he pondered his future, before deciding to pack it all in and head to Nashville on a wing and a prayer.

“ICONS” with John Morgan:

Most Influential Artist: Tony Rice

“He's the guy who's had the most influence on my career. He's a huge bluegrass guy from back in the day. Guitar was my first love, and he's the reason for that. I had a instructional VHS that he put out many years ago, and I watched it religiously trying to learn new tips and tricks. His songwriting and vocals were also such a huge inspiration to me.

The guy that probably rivals him is Ronnie Millsap, for a lot of the same reasons. He's just a guy I connected with, being from a similar area in North Carolina. His trajectory, and not only writing country hits, but crossing over into other genres, is a huge inspiration to me.

The biggest thing I took away from both of those guys as an artist is just, if you hear them sing, you know who it is. You know what I mean? Like, you can put their vocal on an orchestra track. You can put their vocal on a metal track. It doesn't matter - you're going to know who it is when they start singing. So that was always, it was always a good challenge for me as a singer, to try to figure out what that was for me, and not have to contort my voice to make it a certain thing, but just figure out what feels good, what sounds good, and try to perfect that”.

Most Influential Song: ‘Salt Creek’ by Tony Rice

“The family band I was in, we did a lot of traditional bluegrass covers...That's where it all started. The first song I remember just being like, ‘Whoa’, was ‘Salt Creek’ by Tony Rice. It's just an instrumental song, but he plays his high-end off on it. It's very inspiring to watch somebody just be absolutely elite at what they do, and that's how I felt. I remember being eight or nine years old, and seeing that instructional video, and just rewinding it a million times, trying to figure out half of the notes he was playing...There was something about him that was so unique in his style. And not only as a musician, but as a vocalist too. He has one of my favorite voices.

The other one that sticks out to me is Rice's ‘Church Street Blues’. It has such a weird rhythm pattern, and it always tripped me out, because I could never hone in on what the time signature was. I don't think there is one, I think he just makes it up as he goes”.

Most Influential Album: Long Trip Alone by Dierks Bentley

“One of my favorite country albums of all-time is Dierks Bentley, Long Trip Alone. That was one of the first country albums I remember buying an actual hard copy of, and I had it in my truck for forever. I remember hearing that record and being drawn to guitars. I'm a guitar nerd, I guess, and I just love the different tones.

I didn't get into electric guitar till I was about 15 or 16, got hooked with John Mayer and bunch of other guys that really opened that whole world up to me. With an acoustic guitar, it is what it is. But when you swap over to electric, that whole world is just unending with tones and sounds...One of the first things that sucked me in about that album was it's, in my opinion, one of the best guitar records in country music. I think Brett Beavers was the magic behind that on the production side of things”.

For more on C2C Festival 2026, see below:

Featured photo by Matthew Berinato