Michael Hurley's Long Journey

love this one to pieces. voted 'you got to find me'.

might be my favorite Hurley ... "in the garden" always knocks me out. "hog of the forsaken" is hard to deny, though. hmmm. and "polynesia"! and "portland water"! ok, might have to listen, before I vote.

not my VERY fave Hurley (that would probably be Wolfways or Hi Fi Snock or Growlin' Bobo or my own homemade comp of unreleased tracks) but "In The Garden" absolutely slays me,and Portland Water is fantastic as well

xgau:

Michael Hurley: Long Journey [Rounder, 1977]
Fingers trembling, the oft-cynical critic opened the new LP by the playful, sardonic folkie recluse. Without the Rounders or Jeffrey Fredericks to change paces, there was no way it could be another Have Moicy! (Aw.) But it might be woozy and charming, like Armchair Boogie. (Hey!) Or cute and dull, like Hi-Fi Snock Uptown. (Duh.) Also, the critic might fall asleep before finding out. Four months and many snoozes later, he arrived at a verdict: sardonic, charming, playful, cute, woozy, and only rarely dull. Highly recommended to Have Moicy! cultists. Hitbound: "Hog of the Forsaken." Whoopee. B+

I am prob the only Hurley fan who prefers Hi Fi to Armchair, I am OK with that

some other reviews:

"You could call graying folkster Michael Hurley one of the most respected singer-songwriters to ever be underappreciated in this great country of ours. But it might be more precise to cast him as contemporary acoustica's most poignant absurdist. Casting his subjects in both droll and sorrowful settings, he regularly makes the improbable seem like a sure bet. He's a naturalist, too. Smitten with hollow logs, snoozy dogs, and the mists rising from a pond as evening drifts down, Hurley's able to find some kind of profundity in every corner the great outdoors. Long Journey, originally released in 1976, is one of his best records, and a great place to enter the singer's ever-quixotic world. --Jim Macnie"

"Singer/songwriter Michael Hurley walks a thin line between camp and absurdity. On this 1976 Rounder album, he aims his satirical sights on the weird collisions of nature and popular culture ("Monkey on the Interstate") and on more-timeless themes of memory, nostalgia, and the blues. As a singer, Hurley will make no one forget Bill Monroe, but he's affecting, in his own John Prine-esque manner. The musicians who gather round his surreal narratives, including Holy Modal Rounders Peter Stampfel, Dave Reisch, and Robert Nickson, are as witty and colorful in their electro-bluegrass playing as Hurley is in his lyrics. --Roy Kasten"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Thoughts on latest listen for polling purposes: this is a deep and consistent record, real committed to its particular approach, to the extent that when I'm not on a Snock bender, it's forbidding! Whereas when I *am* Snocking it up, it's nonstop wonderful. Being on the outside at present, it was hard to make a fair choice. But went with The Portland Water. I think about that song a lot. It's an example of the thing that Hurley does better than anybody: accept the world just as it is, with gentle awe.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

aw, "Long Journey" deserved at least one vote

True that. So many good songs, and so few of us.

As someone who really doesn't know Hurley but has fallen hard for Have Moicy! based on the previous poll, anyone want to offer a S/D or a good pathway in?

there are a lot, but my fave albums are Hi Fi Snock Uptown and Wolfways, the one with Ida (Ida Con Snock) is great too and maybe closest to the HM vibe since it's a collaboration?

also the first disc of this 5-disc compilation of unreleased tracks: https://shardsofbeauty.blogspot.com/2018/06/michael-hurley-40-years.html

Great thx!

As someone who Moicy'd his way to Hurley fandom too, Long Journey and Snockgrass are what I'd recommend -- they're what came after Have Moicy, and have a similar sound. Blue Navigator, which followed Snockgrass, is wonderful too, but more monochrome, despite the gorgeously colorful cover.

Growlin' Bobo is an awesome live document of the fruitful post-Moicy era, with some songs that never made it to the studio and the definitive Whiskey Willey, hypnotic and endless-seeming.

The celebrated early-'70s albums for Raccoon (Armchair Boogie and Hi Fi Snock Uptown) have a rougher -- I'd say harsher -- sound than Moicy / Journey / Snockgrass, and I've never really heard the appeal, but some folks swear by them.

So I didn't expect much from the *even* earlier Folkways work, but when I finally checked it out, the debut (First Songs, re-released later as Blueberry Wine) turned out actually to be exactly my kind of thing. Quiet, drifty, holy-sounding songs. There's a really profound one about tea.

Post-Blue Navigator you can try anything at all and won't go wrong, but there are lots of covers and re-recordings (generally inferior, if always innaresting), and not so many new original songs. Like sleeve, I love Wolfways dearly, but (slash, because) it's basically a re-recorded, self-curated Best Of. I'm not sure what I'd have made of it if I heard it early on.

He veers lo-fi, he veers hi-fi, but the Hurley spirit gleams through everything, no matter how murky or clean.

+1 for Growlin' Bobo, that thing is great

Excellent. I’m excited to dive deep. I’m overdue for a dip into the arcana of a guy like Hurley.

Do y’all have similar primers on the HM Rounders or Jeffrey Frederick? The Rounders seem particularly opaque and intimidating to get into, and I can’t find much Frederick stuff at all

for Frederick just go with Spiders In The Moonlight, his only solo album

later today I will link to my fave Rounders show but it's important to remember that they were basically two separate bands (east coast Unholy, west coast Holy I think)

Have Moicy is essentially a collaboration between three units of songwriters, Michael Hurley / Jeffrey Frederick / Antonia + Peter Stampfel co-writing. So it's really just the Antonia + Peter thread you need to follow. Peter loves switching band names so it does all sound confusing, but as long as he's involved, you're safe. And you'll always recognize him by his voice.

The "Holy Modal Rounders" were Peter Stampfel and someone named Steve Weber, who was legendary in his time, but I can't figure out why. I think he had immense charisma in person, which (as far as I can tell) didn't translate to the studio or live recordings.

I'm not big on the Holy Modal Rounders records for three main reasons: 1. half the songs are performed by Steve Weber, 2. they prioritized covers over originals, and 3. I don't think Peter Stampfel hit his stride until Have Moicy!, at which point the Holy Modal Rounders were pretty much over, because -- as Sleeve points out -- Weber led the other band members to Oregon (including their other good songwriter Robin Remailly, who dried up completely after moving west) and settled down there, while Peter and Antonia stayed behind in NYC.

That was around '75, and that's when Peter formed the "Unholy Modal Rounders," a five-piece with Antonia as a non-performing song co-writer. Have Moicy! credits the Unholy Modal Rounders, but only half the band went up: Peter, Antonia, and guitarist Paul Presti (who sings and wrote the music for Jealous Daddy's Death Song; lyrics by Antonia).

The Unholies split in 1977. From then on into the present, Peter -- who loves collaborating and, until very recent years, has despised the idea of being a solo artist -- released lots & lots of music but under continually different guises, with different collaborators. There were a few reunions with Weber (Going Nowhere Fast, recorded in '79 or so; and Too Much Fun from '98).

He did a really good record with the Oregon Rounders MINUS Weber -- this was called Last Round, and has several songs you're pretty much guaranteed to love if you like the Stampfel songs on Moicy (namely: Poison Sugar, Oriental Lady, August 1967, and Romping through the Swamp; as well as the two Peter/Antonia co-writes, If You Want to Be a Bird and God What Am I Doing Here).

The Stampfel catalogue is one of the greatest treasure troves I've found my way to. I like Hurley and Frederick a lot but Peter Stampfel is my man. There's so much wonderful stuff to go through. If the Last Round songs sound approximately as good as the Moicy songs to you, then the next station is an album called Dook of the Beatniks, one of the only true solo albums Peter has out, stuffed full of excellent originals, plus a few of the best Antonia co-writes ever (New Adam in the Garden, Laura the Horse).

Antonia's 11 is another worthy station. It's a compilation of recordings Peter Stampfel made of Peter-Antonia co-writes -- lotta different sources (live & studio), lotta different sessions (from 1978 to 2006), but every song on there is excellent. Fucking Sailors in Chinatown and Going to See the King are two of my favorite Peter-Antonias.

My single favorite Peter-Antonia song of all is Places Where You Never See the Snow, but that one's never had a definitive version, definitely not the messy one on Antonia's 11. You could try the ramshackle but awesome live version from 1977, by the Unholy Modal Rounders, or this well-meaning but probably overly solemn bedroom psych-folk cover. The version that made me realize Places is one of the best songs ever written was a solo acoustic live-for-radio take by Charlie Messing of the Unholy Modal Rounders, here.

TheNuNuNu, thank you so much! I suspect this post is worth its weight in gold and Ilook forward to exploring. And yeah the Stampfel songs are probably my favorites on Moicy though it’s hard to pick. I have my 5-year-old walking around the house singing “Griselda” lately…

(Sorry too muck up the Long Journey thread, obviously should have posted this Q in the Have Moicy! one, oops)

lol we're good. I personally resonate way more with Hurley than Stampfel (as my 5CD Hurley comp linked above indicates), but I love hearing the deep dive knowledge here. I LOVE the Weber live sets with the Rounders in the 70s. Part of this might be because I live in Oregon and knew people who knew him (RIP Wally).

sorry that would be the split sets that Frederick and Rounders did together in the mid 70s

late to the link but this is essential imho:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/vfejikva0zokljvwnkmuv/AFECGVb_gceAC00oNGAp3FM?rlkey=c4lnoh8xfnjlsrrk9mwn3yi1u&dl=0

(Clamtones Holy Modal Rounders 1977-12-10 SF Shady Grove SBD_Mic_Reel_master_FLAC)

Portland Water must be one of the top three songs to play when it's raining. Swirly and cold...

xgau actually doesn't suck when considering the Rounders, Hurley, and Have Moicy!,and subsequent Stampfel down through the ages---he's a fan, the kind who doesn't love it all, and good guide,even though as another fan I of courses don't always hear it as he does, though he's right about The Unholy Modal Rounders 2024 release of a live set, Unholier Than Thou: 7-7-77 (spoiler: it's awesome). See also comments on this thread:Holy Modal Rounders. Classic or dud?-

I of course, I meant

TheNuNuNu's dimmer view of Stampfel def the minority report, as I think you'll find, Lavator.

I own Last Round, gotta relisten

btw Mississippi just reissued this extremely rare lathe-cut 7" from 2020, Hurley covering Dead Moon on the A-side

https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/dead-moon-night

(one of the only Hurley items I don't have, still looking for Bizeeto's Faves and the two video releases and one of the Chadbourne collab CDrs)

Holy Moly, didn't know about none of that! Thanks!

Yeah, I like Weatherhole and this 2021 gift, as I tried to describe on blog:

Michael Hurley's The Time of the Foxgloves sounds like an evening houseparty or afterparty conversation of seasoned singers, vintage songs, and newly arranged banjos, fiddles, a xylophone, a baritone ukulele, a pump organ, an upright bass, and, my favorite, that bass clarinet: not all in one track, but not too far apart, and likely as not to be along the route of Hurley's Wurlitzer A200, in which the stately, rippling tumble of "Blondes and Redheads" leads the way of summer and autumn imagery, with a little breeze, li'l chill (Foxgloves bloom in July, I first heard this in October, ah the power of prompted association, big thing in music always). https://michaelhurley.bandcamp.com/album/the-time-of-the-foxgloves

sleeve,thanks also for the added Clamtones etc link (I had your great blog trove already). And TheNuNuNu, sorry that I didn't already take in your distinction between pre-Have Moicy! Rounders and later Stampfel (yer Rpunders take is the minority report I had in mind, however](but we all make such persona; distinctions: Cow Art dismisses any Lou Reed album with fretless bass, I dismiss any Soft Machine w/o Wyatt, several people I know dismiss the Dead after Pig Pen, several others dismiss any Andy Griffith Show ep minus Don Knotts)(Andy tended to agree).

man not digging any post-Pigpen Dead is a real harsh toke, not my bag

sry for derail, and glad u dig the blog

I think the Soft Machine take is the harshest toke, but I do agree with your friends about post-Barney AGS

Oh I agree about unfairness to post-Pigpen Dead, and dismissing post-Wyatt Softs may well be my loss, but yknow seems like we gotta draw the line somewhere (budgeting listening time to all that music, music, music), or anyway it happens---

Byron Coley is reporting that Hurley has passed

https://bsky.app/profile/byroncoley.bsky.social/post/3llwb77wk3c25

nooooo

Oh, damn.

Well, if ever anyone was ready...

Open up, eternal lips, and swallow me

Eerie, I weirdly "felt" like this was going to happen soon. Just a coincidence obviously.

He was the best!!!