Musician Mike Morningstar was born October 7, 1947, in Parkersburg, the son of Fred and Jean Harbin Morningstar. His father worked in the engineering department of the local Union Carbide plant.

Around age 12, a borderline-chronic kidney disorder began limiting his activities. To keep his son busy, Fred bought him a Gretsch guitar. Next came a Silvertone electric with a built-in amplifier. Fred, worried his son would never make a living, told him to choose between music and a more traditional career path. The 15-year-old Morningstar moved in with his Aunt Ruth in Parkersburg. He recalls, “From the time I was 15, I supported myself with my music.”

He started playing in various garage bands in the Parkersburg area before joining The Royaltones in 1963. Of the eight-member band, six were Black. He called the music “straight soul music—rhythm & blues,” covering songs by The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, and Jackie Wilson. He followed that by forming another soul group, The Pastels. The bass player was attending West Virginia University, which gave the group a choice of venues to play in Morgantown.

After a brief stint in California, Morningstar’s music became more psychedelic in nature, which he notes was “well received in Athens, Marietta, and maybe . . . in Columbus, Ohio. But it was not West Virginia music.”

In Parkersburg, he tried forming his own psychedelic band, The Truth, but was called into military service in Vietnam one month after the birth of his daughter Gypsy. In Vietnam, he began listening to Bob Dylan and other songwriters with “deeper lyrics.” During the war, while serving in the 1^st Air Cavalry, he was exposed to Agent Orange and intense traumas that led to severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some 20 years later, he would finally write about his Vietnam experience in “Mount of the Black Virgin (Nue Ba Den).”

By the time Morningstar returned home, his old bandmate Nick Beach had formed a new group designed to make money performing at VFW, Elks, and other clubs. They played ‘40s and ‘50s music to entertain the audiences and often made up their own lyrics to entertain themselves. During this time, Morningstar became adept at reading what the audience wanted and began building a vast repertoire of songs.

He also started writing his own music, including what he considers his first “true Mike Morningstar song” —“West Virginia Girl,” originally a tribute to his late grandmother, but ultimately representing all Mountain State women. During this time, he developed one of the more unique Appalachian instruments: the hickory stick, a single piece of hickory with one string and an acoustic microphone attached to an amplifier. He changed the notes by bending the stick. For the rest of his career, the hickory stick would become the highlight of his shows.

His first experience with nationally known musicians was opening shows for Black Oak Arkansas on a 1972 get-out-the-vote tour, during which the deadly Buffalo Creek Flood occurred. Morningstar played a benefit for flood victims with the band Northwind and sang Dylan’s “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.” Those events spurred him and his brother Steve to write the song “Buffalo Creek.” It was Morningstar’s first 45 record. Piece by piece, Morningstar assembled a musical history of West Virginia that would eventually include “Mountaineers Are Always Free,” “Coal Country Blues,” “Black Eyed Logan,” and “Here’s to the Workingman”—a tribute to people in the working-class settings where he performed.

That tour essentially marked the end of his band days. He became a solo performer, singing, playing guitar, and accompanying himself on harmonica and the hickory stick. He drifted toward folk music and away from soul because, as he put it, “You can’t play soul music without a back-up band.” Author Charlotte Whipkey, writing in Goldenseal magazine, said that is when he became “West Virginia’s troubadour.”

Just as things were getting started for Morningstar, he quit playing entirely from 1975 to 1977 to get an associate degree in forestry. After re-emerging as a solo performer, he joined fellow musician Rick Roberts, a Sutton native, around 1981; the pair began performing as a duo across West Virginia in venues from bars to state parks. Morningstar was a regular on the Morgantown scene and back closer to home in Glenville, where he could tend to his vegetable and flower gardens, can food, and spend more time with his wife, Donna. Fans would sometimes drive hours to see him perform.

One of his thrills was performing on the radio program Mountain Stage in 1994 and singing on the finale alongside blues legend John Hammond, one of his music heroes. In 1992 and 1995, Morningstar released his first two cassettes. In 1998, he released Common Grounds IV, including all his live performances from a Charleston coffee shop, some of which  had already been released on the 1995 cassette.

Morningstar semi-retired in 2012 but continues to appear on special occasions. In 2016, filmmaker Richard Anderson produced the 88-minute documentary Mike Morningstar: Here’s to the Working Man.