Summary.
Michael Hurley was a bizarre folk-singer in the tradition of Holy Modal Rounders' acid-folk, who masterminded two demented masterpieces such as Have Moicy (1976) and Long Journey (1976), both disfigured by his quavering growl and haphazard guitar picking,
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Michael Hurley was one of the great eccentrics of American folk. A traveling companionfirst in his native Pennsylvania and then in Greenwich Villageof Jesse Colin Young, and already responsible for some recordings released on the spartan First Songs (Folkways, 1964), reissued as Blueberry Wine (Locust, 2002), containing his signature song Werewolf Song, in the early 1970s Hurley had the chance to record the better-arranged Armchair Boogie (June 1970 - Raccoon, 1971), with Sweedeedee and Light Green Fellow, and the more varied Hi Fi Snock Uptown (March 1972 - Raccoon, 1972), with Water Train, Twilight Zone and Mr Whiskerwits, works that earned him a loyal following.
Hurley specialized in lively rural sketches featuring offbeat characters. Each of his works is a sarcastic fresco of an imaginary country, born of overdoses and surreal fairy tales, yet firmly rooted in frontier customs (gamblers, killers, outlaws, hobos, adventurers), a parodic allegory of real society.
The fourth album, Have Moicy! (July 1975 - Rounder, 1976), lines up some of the most mischievous sprites of underground country, the Unholy Modal Rounders: the first side entirely by the troupe of Jeffrey Frederick, with crooked comic skits such as the ragtime Midnight In Paris and the tap-dancing bluegrass of Griselda, and the heartfelt What Made My Hamburger Disappear; the second side features Hurley clowning in the falsetto nonsense of Fooey Fooey, and the infamous fiddler Pete Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders lending his amphetamine-charged voice to Country Bump and turning the ensemble into a band of drunken pranksters for the ragtime Hoodoo Bash.
Long Journey (Rounder, 1976), again with Stampfel torturing the harmonies, expands the catalog of anomalous types who accept with resignationand sometimes even satisfactiontheir state of degradation: Hurley makes his way through ramshackle gospel (Long Journey, The Vt.Ore Floor), drunken country (Portland Water), hoarse honky-tonk (So You Say, You Got To Find Me), and triumphs in the somber exotic ballad 8-ball Cafe and in the demented reel of Hog Of The Forsaken.
Snockgrass (December 1979 - Rounder, 1980), with Dave Reisch on bass and Jill Gross on backing vocals, also delivers a kind of personal autobiography (Snock is his nickname), with Midnite Rounder, yet another honky-tonk with Caribbean accents, and Automatic Slim And The Fat Boys, one of his most moving ballads, amid the usual jumble of ramshackle gospel (Im Getting Ready To Go), swinging ragtime (I Heard The Voice Of A Porkchop, You Gonna Look Like A Monkey) and solemn waltzes (Jole Blon).
Blue Navigator (December 1983 - Rooster, 1984) is mystical and transcendent, yetas usualcompletely out of time, and the gallery fills with alien hitchhikers, prostitutes, werewolves, ghosts, etc. The highlight is Ghost Woman Blues.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
The mood is subdued on Watertower (Fundamental, 1988).
The elegiac The Revenant,
the tender, desolate You'll Never Go to Heaven,
the Caribbean lullaby I Paint a Design,
the lazy blues Lush Green Trees
and the waltzing singalong Moon Song
present a different man, a different kind of intelligence, preoccupied
with a different order of problems, an earthly being who lives among earthly
beings.
The conventional catchy country-rock Keep Rockin',
the soulful Broadcasting the Blues,
and the lively Indian Chiefs and Hula Girls, vaguely reminiscent of Steve Goodman's City Of New Orleans,
hint at an even calmer state of mind.
Hurley was largely forgotten after this album.
His anarchic, sardonic and nave folk found refuge in the mountains of Vermont, from where (amid general indifference from critics and audiences) Hurley continued, from time to time, to launch invectives against rationality.
Wolfways (Veracity, 1994 - Koch, 1995) reprised some of his classics and
added a few new compositions, including
Hog of the Forsaken and Ditty Boy Twang.
A number of covers were released as the
cassette series Land of Lo Fi & Redbirds (Bellemeade, 1988),
and
Woodbill Brothers (Bellemeade, 1992), with
She Got a Mathematic,
Excrusiasion '86 (Bellemeade, 1988) and
Growlin' Bobo (Bellemeade, 1991)
document live performances.
The cassettes will be compiled on
Bellemeade Sessions - A Return to the Land of Lo-Fi (Blue Navigator, 1997).
Parsnips Snips (Veracity, 1996) is a collection of home recordings from
1965-72.
Weatherhole (Field, 1999) was the first collection of new, original
material in a decade.
The calmer, pensive tone of Hurley's mature years became even more philosophical
on Sweetkorn (july 2001 - Trikont, 2003) and on
The Ancestral Swamp (Gnomonsong, 2007), recorded between 2001 and 2006, with
Lonesome Graveyard,
New River Blues,
Dying Crapshooter's Blues,
First Precinct Blues,
El Dorado (a duet with Jane O'Neill), several covers and a couple of
old songs revisited.
Doc Rake Vs Hurley-Man (july 2005) was a collaboration with
Eugene Chadbourne.
Then came:
Ida Con Snock (Gnomonsong, 2009), recorded between 2005 and 2007;
Blue Hills (Mississippi, 2010), recorded between 2007 and 2010;
the archival Fatboy Spring (Mississippi, 2011), recorded in 1972-1973 with the Fatboys;
the archival Back Home With Drifting Woods (Mississippi, 2012), that contains material originally recorded in 1964 for a canceled second album,
the single Wildegeeses/ South in Virginia (Mississippi, 2013), recorded in 1998,
Land of LoFi (Mississippi, 2013),
and
Bad Mr Mike (Mississippi, 2016).
Living Ljubljana (Feeding Tube, 2018) is a live performance of 1995.
His last albums were
The Time of the Foxgloves (2021) and Broken Homes and Gardens (2025).
Hurley died in 2025.
