Michael Hurley + special guest Darren Hanlon

Wednesday, Sept 26: The Rockwell, Somerville, MA
Doors: 7:30, Showtimes: Darren Hanlon: 8:30, Michael Hurley: 9:15
Tickets: $15/$18

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Michael Hurley
Michael Hurley grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. As a teenager in the 1950s he fell in love hearing the music of Fats Domino, The Everly Brothers and Bo Diddley blast from the radio, and was enthralled by the records of Blind Willie McTell, Hank Williams and Uncle Dave Macon that he sought for his own. This love for music, true and unvarnished, supplied him with a finely tuned musical compass he has not wavered from for 50 years and counting. Hurley’s music sounds old, like it has always existed, and simultaneously singular, like something you’ve never heard anyone else play quite like that before. This timeless quality ensures that Hurley’s audience constantly renews itself. From the the beatniks in the NYC Village where he started in the early 60s, to the hippies in Vermont, to the Americana fans, indie rockers and freak folkers from the last two decades, Michael’s music never fails to find fresh new ears. Pressed for a description, Hurley has called it “jazz-hyped blues and country and western music”.

Hurley’s early records were released on Folkways, Warner Brothers/Raccoon, and Rounder, while in recent years stalwart independent labels like Gnomonsong and Mississippi have been carrying the torch. The great news is that there is no stopping Michael Hurley. An album with brand new recordings, Bad Mr. Mike, was released on the Mississippi label last year and another new one with archival 1990s live material recorded in Lublijana is due on Feeding Tube Records this summer. Besides being a truly unique musician, Hurley is also a cartoonist and watercolor artist of note — the instantly recognizable results of which grace his album covers.

Hurley now resides on the west coast, so east coast appearances have been scarce the last decade. Old and new fans should not pass up the rare opportunity to catch Michael in action on various New England and New York state stages.

Michael Hurley makes a great cameo and performs his classic “Oh My Stars” in Leave No Trace, a swell movie that promises to be one of the indie hits of the summer.

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Darren Hanlon

After years of touring the far flung corners of Australia and the greater world, Darren Hanlon has carved a sacred place in the hearts of many who cross his path through his idiosyncratic folk songs as well as his candid and charming storytelling. With five acclaimed albums and many Australian radio singles under his belt he is currently touring his latest release ‘Where Did You Come From?’

Throughout the years he’s been invited on tour by many other great artists who’ve discovered his music: Billy Bragg, the Magnetic Fields, the Violent Femmes and Courtney Barnett. In fact Courtney Barnett has often cited him as a major influence on her writing and inspiration for her becoming a singer.

http://www.darrenhanlon.com/

http://www.yeproc.com/artists/darren-hanlon/
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MORE INFORMATION ON MICHAEL HURLEY AT:

http://tinyurl.com/hurleyOnAllMusic

http://www.snockonews.net/

http://tinyurl.com/HurleyBostonGlobe

http://tinyurl.com/HurleyOnNPR

http://tinyurl.com/SnockOnNPR

http://www.bluenavigator.net/docsnockdisc.html

WHAT SOME FOLKS HAVE SAID ABOUT MICHAEL HURLEY:

“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. Michael Hurley 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 Michael Hurley is. After all, we can always turn around and come back. He can’t.”
– Nick Tosches

“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

“Whether weaving a yarn about a mysterious hog or comparing the human heart to a mechanic’s toolbox, Mr. Hurley create(s) elaborate vistas in a musical version of outsider art”
– Ann Powers / New York Times

“Hurley remains one of the elusive masters of American folk”
– Chris Morris / Billboard

“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

“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

photo credit: Sarah Taft