Who likes Michael Hurley?

http://grown-so-ugly.blogspot.com/

lots more shows at D!MEaD0z3n right now. Amateurist, email me at sleeve (at) efn (dot) org if your'e still looking for stuff.

he just recently played his first show in Astoria since moving there a number of years back (after cancelling two previous gigs). My friend who went said it was great.

New album!! It's called Ancestral Swamp, on LP and CD. As usual there are a couple of his standard remakes but it is mostly new stuff, 5 covers, buncha blues tunes, subject matter is swamps and rivers and floods. I heard one track in a coffee shop today but haven't gotten my hands on teh LP yet.

I like it, but I haven't heard his earlier stuff yet so I don't know how it compares. Need to remedy that.

can't go wrong with Wolfways or Snockgrass or Have Moicy

New one's great. As I said on the "2007 Reissues" thread, I think it seem to be mastered more quietly and with less dynamic range than some of his older material--this makes it feel more gray and less bright than some of his older releases. Subdued is the word. But it actually fits pretty well, there aren't any tracks that really scream for an ebullient sound.

He's playing tomorrow in Astoria, an Upper Oregon Coast town about 4 hours from me. My girlfriend used to live there and we are totally road trippin it tomorrow for some live Snock action that I also plan on recording.

oh, he lives there so this is not that unusual, but it has been at least a year or two since he did a hometown gig.

Ggo go go, and let us know how it is!

If he is still selling his homemade 2CDR set with 'Land of Lo Fi & Redbirds' PICK ONE UP!

awesome!

yeah Stormy I have that one but I still need "Growlin' Bobo".

or did you want one?

no i have it but i meant to say that if you didn't you should get one cuz it's SO GOOD!

someone should burn that shit for me.

http://www.snockonews.net/images/Husbands.jpg

Armchair Boogie need a proper reissue

Dude can play a little too long live occasionally, but that's a pretty nit-picky complaint I guess

No. I agree. Hurley can be transcendent, but he can also ramble. One too many songs, in my opinion, creep into the five- and six-minute marks.

"time to pause for the cause" = smoke break.

There are usually 3 or 4 of these breaks in your average Hurley concert.

also I mentioned this on teh rolling vinyl thread but Warner are still being dicks about the 2 LPs on Raccoon, informal word from Mississippi was that they won't be allowed to reissue Armchair after all.

yeah, that's a fuckin bummer. do you know what the particular hang-up is? Blame Jesse Colin Young.

Blame his moustache!

Also: Michael Hurley can never play too long as long as you keep a steady-but-not-indulgent drinking pace.

Agreed. Plus, his pace reflects the life he lives. I've spent time in places like Bolinas in northern California. It's as if the entire town lives like one of his songs.

so last night at the store I saw that the new issue of the Wire has a piece on Michael, written by none other than Byron Coley.

Damn. I really wanna read it but I also don't wanna give 9 American bones to shitty ass Wire just for the privilege. Hm.

I got a good recording but it cut off at the best part about 70 minutes in. some great song about Alice the alcoholic, totally new to me. that's always how it is, yeah? tape cuts off right at the best part. anyway, some other dude also recorded the set. His should be up on Tr@der's D3n/3tree sometime soon. I will Leonardo my recording once I get it tracked out. MH played for about 80-90 minutes, unaccompanied. Some banjo, lotta guitar, some really nice mouth trumpet action. A couple of great songs I had never heard before, just like every time I see him.

The "Husbands, Love Your Wives" referred to in the flyer above was a young woman doing a solo set with guitar and voice. Very sweet and young and pretty capable of holding the room's interest. Her grandma lived in Astoria and MH said that she had Myspaced him (!!) and they decided to set up a show together. Her whole family was there!

Astoria was still pretty beat up from that big winter storm, two-foot diameter pine trees just snapped in half. lots more just torn up by the roots. lotta blue tarps on roofs.

I bought "Growlin' Bobo", and only have a few releases left to track down (Bellmeade Sessions, Down In Dublin, and the Excrusiasion '86 tape). Bobo is a smokin hot live set in Vermont, November 1980 (actually the best of two nights) featuring a four-piece backing band, four-part vocal harmonies, and Robin Remaily's fiddle playing. Excellent and worth your time.

I'm sitting here on my lunch break reading the Hurley piece in the Wire. Did you guys know he began sessions for an album on ESP but Stollman nixed it because of the mouth trumpet?! unbelievable.

ian have you ever read the Popwatch interview with him from a few years back?

Nooooo, I am gonna have to go dig it up!

yeah, i read that wire thing on monday and was amused by the esp thing...and surprised. what got into stollman there? i was also surprised on byrons very straight approach. there was some line about halfway through that suddenly reminded me that it was byron writing...

ill look for the popwatch bit. i was wondering on mon night if there was much else written about him

also still annoyed that everyone forgot to call me when he did the random "show" at d4ddy's (here in brooklyn) a few summers back because everyone assumed someone else had called me...or simply assumed id be around at some point anyway...

it was Popwatch #9, but Perfect Sound Forever re-ran it:

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/michaelhurley.html

Michael Hurley's virtual jukebox:

http://www.snockonews.net/listen.htm

smokey the bear standin there
in front of the woods all black & bare
tears in his eyes.

has anyone purchased the OOP LPs on CDR from Hurley's web site? if so, what do you get? just a cd-r, or packaging/artwork/etc.?

amtst, which one(s) are you looking for? If they're ones I have, I will tape them for you for free.
you can e-mail me if you do not want to discuss it here--dr.carl.sagan at gmail dot com

I remember Michael from my youth--I actually ended up working at the same restaurant as his ex-wife when I was in high school. He lived in Vermont for awhile, back when the Modals were kicking around up there, playing there snockgrass and drinking their hard cider. My mom always talked about how she was down with the scene (they even had a nickname for her). I went to see him play in Brooklyn a few years back, with that band Ida for some reason, and approached him after the show, and mentioned my mom. "Oh, I remember her," he said. Before walking away abruptly. AWKWARD!

yeah he really doesn't seem too interested in talking to fans, which is fine for an old coot like himself. I'm sure he does whatever he damn well pleases at this point.

amateurist, the CDRs are on regular burned discs with his scrawled titles on them, but they do come with one-color mockups of the original covers. my copy of Growlin' Bobo is 4-color, but the ones of Blue Navigator and LoFi/Redbirds are blue and yellow-green respectively. Blue Navigator is burned from vinyl, natch.

will be listening! amazing effort.

semi-recent interview, nice and long:

https://www.cyclicdefrost.com/2018/04/michael-hurley-its-just-a-compulsion-it-wont-go-away-interview-by-erica-dunn/

he was just incredible last night, first time he's come back to Eugene in almost ten years (the last time was when he played at our house). I counted eight songs I was unfamiliar with/had never heard, out of a 90-minute set.

at this point he's the best living American singer/songwriter as far as I'm concerned.

wow....going to see him in Portland in 2 weeks

where? Laurelthurst?

https://hollywoodtheatre.org/events/lonnie-holley-toody-cole-ural-thomas-michael-hurley-and-more/

whoa that looks amazing

pretty excited, a friend of mine is playing with Lonnie.

yessssss

https://michaelhurley.bandcamp.com/album/the-time-of-the-foxgloves

July is when the foxgloves bloom in Astoria, Oregon. July is also Michael Hurley’s favorite month, whether it finds him at home in Astoria or somewhere else. He’s often somewhere else, but last summer he was home, as reasonable people were, which is where and when The Time of the Foxgloves began.

The Rope Room studio, in the Fort George brewery complex, was the place. After several sessions transferring home recordings Michael had made over the past few years on his stalwart TEAC A-3340S four-track tape machine, friends and colleagues—some local, some further flung—sang, played, and engineered what is the most varied, hi-fi Snock album heard in a while; arguably since 1988’s Watertower. Four different banjos are played by four different banjoists; there’s a battery of harmony singers (Kati Clayborn, Lindsay Clark, Josephine Foster, Betsy Nichols); upright bass, baritone ukulele, and bass clarinet address the lower ends. Beloved songs from albums past—“Lush Green Trees” (from Watertower); “Love Is the Closest Thing” (as “Time Is Right” on 1995’s Parsnip Snips)—are reassembled with some new elements (e.g., xylophone) but, lacking none of their original wonder or impact, the new versions impart an uncanny sense of continuity, as though they’ve been slowly but unceasingly evolving in the interim. (This phenomenon is a central quality of Michael Hurley performances on both records and stages). “Se Fue En La Noche” will be familiar to anyone who’s seen a Snock show over the last half-dozen years—“better put your shoesies on before you die of the cold” being among Michael’s more unforgettable adjurations—but surprisingly this is its first appearance on record. The old reliable Wurlitzer A200, instantly identifiable to all fans of Bellemeade Phonics productions, leads the way on “Blondes and Redheads,” where it’s accompanied by a nylon-stringed slide guitar. One of the banjos—this one played by Snock—is joined on “Knocko the Monk” by a sighing pump organ, making a prototypical Hurley instrumental into something disorientingly but satisfyingly wistful. Twin fiddles fiddle on opener “Are You Here For the Festival?”, this listener’s favorite recent song of Michael's since “The Corridor" (c. 2010).

“Are You Here...” came to Hurley this past June. He was out in the yard, cutting back wild blackberry. It was his second June running without a trip to Ohio for the Nelsonville Festival; it was called off this year too. Home in July to witness the foxgloves bloom again, he saw them torched come August by the extreme heat that assaulted the Pacific Northwest. But time and Snock soldier on undaunted. He’ll turn 80 in December, just after this record’s release. The Time of the Foxgloves is now.

–Nathan Salsburg, October 2021
credits

Time Of The Foxgloves is out today, at least the vinyl showed up in my mailbox. Sounds great.

I'm excited about it!

Also I've trying to research how to inquire about purchasing any of his artwork and cannot seem to get anywhere with that...

tolerable writeup in The Guardian, glad to see him getting recognition

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/dec/13/folk-singer-michael-hurley-interview

i adore hurley but it's really tied up with a past relationship that still hurts

Mine is delayed, but excited to get it next week.

Fucking lol at the "weird kkk level racist" shit. Never change ILM!

cool username, jackmyfruit

new record is fantastic — there are times when his vocals are gruff (even for Hurley), but by the end, he's crooning beautifully. long live snock!

I really love the instrumental that opens side b, "Knocko The Monk" I think?

First listen: distinctive, and sometimes subtle, turns in all these, as written, played: his Wurlitzer piano emphasizing the colors of "Blondes and Redheads," also digging the bass clarinet x half-circle of other voices around his (didn't really notice the wear that much, not after those 100 songs of Peter Stampfel's 20th Century, which I was amazedballed by over on the Holy Modal Rounders thread).

Ian and me in chat:

floyd's head
Steve…, Mississippi is reissuing sweet korn on LP, but without two of the best cuts wtf
No Barbara Allen?? Negatory romance??

floyd's head
Please have a word with someone about this

You sent
I SAW THAT

You sent
an absolute outrage

You sent
I blame Hurley himself tbh

You sent
he always does shit like that, see also Wolfways

floyd's head
Inappropriate

floyd's head
I’m still gonna fucking buy it tho 😕

You sent
lol same

You sent
gotta have the unreleased track

https://michaelhurley.bandcamp.com/album/sweetkorn

Seen him 3-4 times already this year in Portland, once opening for Will Oldham in a midsize theater, once in a little cider bar releasing this album ^^, and two more times at a bar he plays regularly. Always enjoying him.

last time I saw him (2019? pre-pandemic, also saw a pandemic zoom kitchen show) he was incredible, he's at some kind of peak