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Mike Morningstar: Undersung Folk Music Legend – Part 1
Undersung folk musician legend Mike Morningstar is interviewed by J. Zimmerman for Independent Media Reviews.
I had the chance to sit down and talk with Mike Morningstar, a folk singer/songwriter from West Virginia. He’s lived a long and eventful life, playing juke joints in his teens before shipping off to Vietnam during the war, and learning how to live with it all after coming back home. These experiences have had a massive effect on his music, once only available on cassettes and CDs he sold on tour, which is only now being added to notable streaming services. Mike even plans a vinyl revival of some of his albums. The following interview has been edited as minimally as possible, only skipping or modifying a few of Mike’s self-described “circuitous raps” for clarity.
Our discussion continues, and the mood grows a bit darker as Mike brings up his experience as a young soldier fighting in Vietnam.
J Zimmerman:I’m glad you haven’t let retirement slow you down too much, because you’ve got some real talent.
Mike Morningstar:Well, I’m trying not to give into it. There’s some things I can’t help, like the neuropathy. It’s just a fact of life that I’ve got Agent Orange damage from when I was in Vietnam, and it’s effected my nervous system.
J Zimmerman:One of your songs on The Original is about the Mountain of the Black Virgin, if you’d like to talk about that experience a bit.
Mike Morningstar:I came home and I had a real rough time when I came back home. I had PTSD and didn’t know it. Didn’t really know it until years later when I got to talking to other veterans and I got to thinking, ‘well that sounds like me!’ I came home, and my marriage fell apart. My first wife took my daughter and moved to Florida… and I didn’t want to move there. I just like these hills, ya know, the scenery. I like being… I feel sheltered. To me, it’s perfect. I’ve got a great garden, the ground’s good because of the creek washing over it and bringing nutrients down from the woods. It’s just a good place. It’s quiet, and it’s what I needed, really. I still have the problem, but I’ve learned how to deal with it now. I was in Vietnam a little over six months, probably seven months. I just… I came to the point where I couldn’t do it anymore. Our captain was a West Virginian, and he’d always brag about the troops from West Virginia because we did shoot straight and all that. I learned how to shoot [squirrel hunting with my dad] at around age eight. And I learned how to walk distances because of these hills, so I made a good soldier. I could keep right up with the rest of them… and when the shit hit the fan, I could shoot straight too.
It was a real disappointment to my captain when I refused to fight. I just came to a point where it was like a wall. Like I hit a wall and I could not go through it. I literally threw my gun down on the ground and said, “I’m done.” I had a- It wasn’t a court-martial, it was an article 15 for refusing a direct order, and I pulled KP and guard duty for a month: 30 days, hard duty… I worked back in the kitchen washing those big pots and pans, and whistling and singing, and I was happy because I knew I was heading home. [There was this sergeant in charge of the kitchens] and he came back one day and asked me: “What are you up to? You got the worst job in the army. You’re back here with your arms in these big pans, scrubbing, and you’re whistling and singing.” And I just told him I was a ground pounder. I was out there getting shot at and shooting at people… Now I know I’m going home. That’s why I’m happy: I’m not out there shooting at anyone!
But that song was kind of the icebreaker for me. Once I wrote it, I would go out and perform that song, and people would come up to me, telling me they were veterans too… I never let people know about it. I didn’t brag about any war stories or anything like that. I just kept my mouth shut and hoped I could forget about it. But I never could: It was always there and always intrusive… I wrote that song, and people would come up and tell me, “I was in Vietnam, buddy, and you just told my story.” [Those experiences] gave me the chance to break that dam that was in there, holding all that in that I couldn’t deal with and had trouble reckoning with myself… It was in my dreams at night, it was just a terrible thing… [The VA and talking to other veterans] was really a lifesaver. I always asked people why we were there when I was in Vietnam, and no one could ever give me an answer. From friends to my commander, even he couldn’t tell me because he didn’t know. Nobody knew! I didn’t know at the time, but I was there making a retirement plan. *Chuckle* I didn’t have money. I live hand to mouth all the years I was playing music… all the money I made was used up. Trying to keep my equipment in order and where I could go out and work and keep the rent paid and phone running and groceries on the table. I was lucky if I had gas money.
J Zimmerman:I can identify with that as a writer. There’s not a whole lot of money to be made unless you manage to write a bestseller or sell out and train AI or something.
Mike Morningstar:I just wasn’t commercial, and I knew it, and I didn’t want to try to be. I wanted to tell my stories like I wanted to tell them. If people understood it, fine. If they didn’t, it didn’t bother me that much. It was therapy to me to write the song and get it out there. And a lot of my songs are like that. They were tales of bad times and strife that West Virginia people deal with all the time… Like I said, I wrote a lot of this stuff to try and make West Virginians proud of who they were. And if there was something bad going on, I called it out. Like that collapse up there at Willow Island, I wrote a song. Twenty years later, on the anniversary of that disaster, they hired me to come up and sing my song for all the survivors and the people who lost people. Fifty-one men died there that day… that’s a lot of families that had misery. All because of [the company] pushing a deadline. They were pushing those men and pushing that work… Same thing happened at Buffalo Creek. They do that kind of shit here. It really bums me out. This state has always been corrupt in the sense that the coal and oil and gas people run the state. The state defers to them more than it does its own people.
J Zimmerman:There were some themes or lines in a lot of your songs about that.
Mike Morningstar:That’s the latest song that I wrote, Marcellus Shale. It’s a song about those people who come in here and tear things up and then leave the mess behind… They make their money, and they leave, and they keep doing it because people say “it’s a job.” And that’s the big thing they lean on, but they end up messing the place up, screwing up the land and the water. It takes a lot to clean up where a coal company’s been. They’re pouring poisons into the land.
J Zimmerman:Yeah, just piling up chaff filled with lead and arsenic and other nasty stuff and leaving it there or pumping the aquifer full of dirty water to squeeze out a little more gas.
Mike Morningstar:The water gets acidic. And you can’t do anything with it. Can’t drink it. Don’t wanna swim in it. Can’t eat the fish out of it… This place is a beautiful place. I’ve been all over, and the only place that came even close to matching West Virginia’s natural beauty was Vietnam! When I went to Vietnam, I was just a stupid kid right out of high school. When I came back from Vietnam, I got a forestry degree… and now that I’ve got that, I’d love to go back there and study the plants. That was one of the reasons I couldn’t justify going out there and fighting there. Dropping bombs and all this kind of stuff.
J Zimmerman:Similar story to what you came up in.
Mike Morningstar:Yeah! We were tearing up a beautiful place! And beautiful people too. Those people had an attitude—if you had put an American in that situation they would have been bummed out completely—they were running around happy! Never saw happier kids than Vietnamese kids… I just came to a point where I didn’t want to be doing what I was doing. I felt like everything we did was wrong. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Davisson Brother’s songs, but their True Survivor [“Fighter”] song, That’s me! I did what I had to survive. It tickles me that those guys are holding true to their roots. Even with [international acclaim in places like Australia and New Zealand], they’re still friends of mine. They were inspired by me to do that.
J Zimmerman:Well that’s certainly a legacy!
Mike Morningstar:They thought “well, if he can do it, anyone can!” And they did! I’m still writing, and I’d like to put another album out. Chris and Donnie both said they’d love to help me do it. Because my hands are wrecked right now, but they’re still young and still playing. Donnie knows the type of stuff that I do. They’re doing those type of songs themselves. I’m gonna make a try of it, and I’ll get it done with their help.
Richard Anderson’s documentary, Mike Morningstar: Here’s to the Working Man, will be screening as a part of the CARE Awards in Parkersburg, WV on November 7th, 2025. A DVD is available at the film’s official website. Mike will be performing with the Davisson Brothers on November 1st. Find more information on Facebook. You can find Mike’s first album, The Original, streaming on Spotify and Apple Music, and it’s also available for purchase on Amazon.
