Some Biographical notes on Michael Hurley
What Some Folks Have Said About "Snock"
Discography for Muchael Hurley
Michael Hurley, the legendary 35 year veteran of the rock/folk otherworld, who has just completed his first UK tour, will be heading west for a series of shows this fall. This will be his first west coast tour in almost ten years. Michael Hurley is currently putting the finishing touches on his first album of all new original songs in many years. Tentatively titled "Weatherhole", the album is to be released in January [1999] on a new label called Field Recording Co. "Weatherhole" was recorded in Richmond, Virginia and New York City in the summers of 1997 & 1998 and features a stellar crew of musicians including the bass playing of long time Hurley cohort Dave Reisch (Holy Modal Rounders, Golden Delicious), and Paul Watson (Sparklehorse), crack drummer Johnny Hott (ex-Cracker, Gutterball etc.), and the steel guitar of both Kevin Maul (Robin & Linda Williams) and the illustrious David Mansfield (Dylan, Lucinda etc.), who also plays mandolin on a few tracks. The songs are some of the finest he has ever written.
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 UK. There are currently no plans for a US release of this historical document, but it is finding it's way to US fans through Hurley's official Snocko News website.
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 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
A much more detailed source of biographical info may be found here!
First Songs (Folkways) 1965 LP/1997 CDR
Armchair Boogie (Raccoon/Warner Bros.) 1971 LP
Hi Fi Snock Uptown (Raccoon/Warner Bros) 1972 LP
Have Moicy ! (Rounder) 1975 LP/1992 CD (w/Unholy Modal Rounders & J.F &
The Clamtones)
Long Journey (Rounder) 1976 LP/1998 CD
Snockgrass (Rounder) 1980 LP/1997 CD
Blue Navigator (Rooster) 1984 LP
Watertower (Fundamental) 1988 LP
Land of Lo Fi & Redbirds (Bellemeade Phonics) 1988 Cass.
Excrusiasion '86 (Bellemeade Phonics) 1988 Cass.
Growlin' Bobo (Bellemeade Phonics) 1991 Cass.
Woodbill Brothers (Bellemeade Phonics) 1992 Cass.
"Wildegeeses" b/w "Coloured Birds" (SOL) 1992 7"
"Nat'l Weed Growers Assoc." b/w "Slippery Rag" (Carnage Press) 1993 7"
Wolfways (Veracity) Germany 1994 CD
Wolfways (Koch) U.S. 1996 CD
Parsnips Snips (Veracity) Germany 1996 LP
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Modified Oct. 1998