basic info:
MICHAEL HURLEY
FRIDAY October 14th
@ Lisa's Oak Street Lounge
(
sponsored by WILD AND WOOLLY VIDEO
www.wildandwoollyvideo.com
MichaelHurley is one of the last remaining American rambling folk
troubadours. Hobo-ing around the country, playing music since the days
Bob Dylan first set foot in
recorded his first album for Moses Ash's legendary Folkways label in
1964. This debut album, First Songs, has recently been reissued on
Locust Music with the new title, Blueberry Wine. Hurley continued to
release albums for both Warner Brothers and Rounder. His mid-70s Have
Moicy album was selected among the top 10 for the decade by Rolling
Stone magazine. Hurley's latest albums — Weatherhole and Sweetkorn —
show no sign of artistic decline and garnered rave reviews. While many
of his contemporaries are long past their prime or have expired,
Hurley's muse is still intact. Weatherhole and Sweetkorn are jam-packed
with gems, such as "The Rue of Ruby Whores," and
"Wildegeeses" —songs
that'll make you laugh as well as weep.
Hurley's songwriting talent is something that hasn't gone unnoticed
by new a generation of musicians. Hurley was invited to tour with
alt-country heroes Son Volt. He's also shared bills with Smog, Sunburned
Hand of the Man, and Palace Brothers, played with the Giant Sand rhythm
section, and his songs have been covered by indie stars Cat Power and Yo
La Tengo.
Whether he's playing a cracked country blues number about space travel
on his fretless banjo, an Appalachian children's song like "Shortening
Bread" on his fiddle, or plunking his heartbreakers on his beloved
Gibson guitar, on stage Hurley's charms never fail to captivate an
audience. On special occasions he might even bring out his masked
alter-ego, Kornbred, a character from Hurley's (aka Doc Snock's) cartoon
world. Besides being
also a gifted cartoonist and painter.
For more info check out the following websites:
www.bluenavigator.net
www.snockonews.com
www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/hurley.html
www.allmusic.com
www.furious.com/perfect/michaelhurley.html
Or contact Frank van den Elzen:
e-mail: octafish@rcn.com
phone: 617-628-5333
A black and white promo picture (JPEG format) can be
downloaded at:
http://users.rcn.com/octafish/MichaelHurley.jpg
*sound clip (from recently reissued debute album): www.locustmusic.com/mp3.html
*great interview: http://www.furious.com/perfect/michaelhurley.html
Michael Hurley, the legendary 35 year
veteran of the rock/folk otherworld, who has just completed his first
Hurley has just released a CD on the Irish
label Blue Navigator. The album, titled "Bellemeade Sessions: A Return to
the Land of Lo-Fi", is a collection of some of Michael's favorite blues
and country covers as well as rare performances of Hurley originals. It was
recorded in a series of sessions over the last four years in five different
states and released in conjunction with an extremely well received, first ever
tour of the
In 1996, Koch Records released
"Wolfways", a collection which introduced some of his best known
songs, and many new favorites to a younger generation of fans. Recently,
Rounder Records has reissued, for the first time on CD, the three albums he
recorded for the label in the late '70's, early '80's..
With fellow musicians such as Lucinda
Williams, Vic Chesnutt, Yo La Tengo, and Son Volt singing his praises, albums
in the record bins, and his continued touring, it seems this enigmatic
troubadour is enjoying his greatest popularity ever.
"Whether weaving a yarn about a
mysterious hog or comparing the human heart to a mechanic's toolbox, Mr. Hurley
created elaborate vistas in a musical version of outsider art." - Ann
Powers / New York Times
"Undoubtedly one of this country's
greatest folk singers, Hurley has
little in common with the majority of today's folk performers. While
they seem bent on demonstrating that all people are alike, such a
suffocating presumption has no place in this man's work. MichaelHurley
is nothing like his potential audience. What better reason to hear what
he has to say?"
- Chuck Cuminale
"...I don't know what else to say about what he writes and sings, other
than that it is gosh-darned great. What kind of music is it? Hell, what
kind of weeds does God grow? Let's just shut up and listen and go to
where MichaelHurley is. After all, we can always turn around and come
back. He can't."
- Nick Tosches
"Hurley is a national treasure"
- Scott Schinder / Time Out New York, 2/25/99
"Whether weaving a yarn about a
mysterious hog or comparing the human heart to a mechanics toolbox, Mr. Hurley
created elaborate vistas in a musical version of outsider art" - Ann
Powers / New York Times
"Trusting in his own peculiarities,
Hurley makes the world spin just a little bit slower, and a little bit bumpier.
Somehow it feels much more natural that way." - Jim Macnie
"Michael Hurley is the last
unreconstructed folkie-shaman in America. His songs are primordial tales of the
hunt for good cheer and satisfying sex, etched like cave paintings on city
walls and farmland silos. Like many characters in his songs, his voice seems to
have been run over by the dump truck of life, but it marries human mystery to
forthright music like no other." - Milo Miles
"Somehow, thinking of Hurley, I find
myself thinking also of Samuel Beckett. Now I don't see Hurley having much
truck with the modernist strain of 20th Century art, and, as a high school
dropout, he would probably be nauseated by the gasbag spewings of the ivory
tower intellectual. A true and deliberate neo-primitive, his inspiration
springs from nature, the rural blues and the lure of remote hills and
woodlands, landscapes that loom in the backgrounds of his comics like vast
parabolic gumdrops." - Vernon Tonges
"Hurley remains one of the elusive masters of American folk"
- Chris Morris / Billboard, 10/31/98
"Well, I can say once when we split a gig in
introduced me as "...not only a Senor, but a Monsieur." So, ladies
and
gentlemen, I give you MichaelHurley, not only a Senor, but a Monsieur,
a Herr, an American Original, and the ne plus ultra of Pearly
Snockgrass.Or, as the great `50s DJ whose name I cannot recall would
have said, "Cats and Kitties, I give you MichaelHurley, than which
there is none whicher."
- Peter Stampfel /Holy Modal Rounders
local contact (show promoter):
KRIS ABPLANALP
502.525.1937
blackvelvet79@hotmail.com
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