The originator of much melodic eccentricity, fiercely independent, yet full of wisdom, common sense and off the wall humour, Michael Hurley left us recently. Simon Jones remembers his music and an unlikely encounter.
There have been many well intentioned but misguided attempts to pigeon hole Michael Hurley and his music since the artist’s passing on April 1st at the age of 83. Neo folk, anti folk, freak folk, outsider folk… the list goes on. The truth when all’s said and done is Michael Hurley and his music are totally undefinable, if ever there was a case of square peg in a round hole, it was Hurley. Hurley was Hurley and his songs equally distinctive. Who needs a genre anyway?
The closest he ever came to belonging with any particular tribe was as part of an ever changing collective who with equally unclassifiable music made an album ‘Have Moicy,’ back in 1976. It came out on Rounder Records and contained Hurley’s best attempt at writing a commericial song, which even then wasn’t anywhere near straight, ‘Sweet Lucy.’ Fellow travellers on the venture included the cracked folkies Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones who’re far out there without a map. Somehow the record jells and what could have been unorganised chaos is instead mildly all over the place and pleasingly rough round the edges. When asked to explain the record’s unique allure Hurley’s fellow lead vocalist Pete Stampfel put it down to ” the stars were right, the moon was in Cleveland.” Which tells you everything you need to know! The original album’s now worth quite a bit of money but the 2011 reissue on the bijou Finders Keepers label is more sensibly priced.
Swinging super session.. the moon was out and the price is high.
That wasn’t Hurley’s intial venture into a recording studio though, far from it, he’d actually been a Greenwich Village original in the US folk boom years, his debut album from 1964 entitled ‘First Songs,’ was cut for the roosty Folkways label and is vaguely left field containing as it does one of his signature numbers ‘The Werewolf Song,’ sung in a kind of mountain music voice/holler to very basic strummed guitar. The track was picked up over here by Barry Dransfield, of all the people, a version appeared on his eponymous album in 1972 cut for Polydor.
Hurley meantime was forging a reputation by releasing albums which came to shape his future, label hopping between Racoon and the afore mentioned Rounder. By the early 80s when I discovered him through a cut out bin copy of ‘Snockgrass’ and found his eccentricity fascinating, he was already off grid and seemed to move around the US with frequency. His records though kept appearing every couple of years, a deletion copy of ‘Have Moicy’ joined my collection. Hurley seemed content with life as a wandering troubadour, playing festivals, folk clubs and coffee houses as well as music bars and then retreating to wherever he laid his hat – normally a cap of some kind, baseball or engineers.
In 1998 Crewe record shop owner, Tony Smith, a man of a wide taste in music and trust worthy recommendations, informed he was not only staging a Hurley gig but he was transporting the man around radio stations in Yorkshire for interviews, did I want to meet and interview Mr. Hurley? Did I ever. And that’s how I came to be drinking tea and watching a World Cup soccer match with Michael Hurley. We’d done an hour long interview before the game during which MH had been thoughtful, informative and answered most of my questions with humour and detail. Like how he became a cartoon artist for an American Folk rag, he invented two wolves named Jocko & Boone who had way out adventures for several years before being replaced by the character Kornbred, a weird amalgamation of a trumpet and a city gent who just happens to smoke a pipe. You get the drift. The wolves and Kornbred found their way onto his album covers.
An individual who did things his own way Hurley had given up on record labels and made his own records when the fancy took him. Michael toured England twice, first on his own and second time with Holy Modal Rounders bass player Dave Reisch filling out the sound. Each time I saw the show it was off the cuff, gentle but aimiable, quietly charismatic.
That Mr. Hurley was a road hound should be no great shock, over the years a whole raft of self released live sets sourced from places he’d played were issued, ‘Live In Edinburgh,’ 1999, ‘Down In Dublin,’ 2005 and ‘Live In Ljubljana,’ 2012 being three. He continued doing his own sweet thing, his own sweet way. He sang songs about life, love, laughter, booze and romance salted by the occasional cover, maybe Blind Wille McTell or Tom T Hall, some of his songs like ‘English Nobleman,’ wildly off the mark about the subject but great fun nonetheless.
Working, recording and playing right up until the end, he was rushed to hospital but died before he could get proper help. His album title ‘Land Of The Lo Fi,’ summed him up neatly. He played lo fi music and lived in lo fi, out of the way places where he could disappear as easily as he could appear. Always unique.
The Snockman is gone. What is snock? ” It’s a sharp sound like hitting a wood block on a metal pipe. I just came up with it to describe the sound. I wanted a good, clean, hard sound in my shows, so I became the Snockman,” he told me. Yes he’s passed. Snock no more. Micheal Hurley was a distinctive individual loaded with character and just a touch of mystery.
