Howlin Wuelf Media :: Michael Hurley

Ida Con Snock is the 21st full length album by legendary rambler, cartoonist, and “outsider” folk singer, guitarist Michael Hurley. The new album features Hurley accompanied by NYC’s premier acoustic experimentalists Ida. Ida Con Snock was recorded at Levon Helm Studios in Woodstock and Brooklyn Studios in Brooklyn engineered by Justioan Guip and Andy Taub respectively. Ida Con Snock is his second for the Gnomonsong label distributed by Revolver USA. It comes in just in the nick of time for the rabid Snockophile!

Ida’s less-is-more finesse shines through brightly on these rich studio recordings, melding perfectly with Michael’s inimitable playing, singing and songwriting. While many of his contemporaries have expired or are long past their creative prime, his muse is still at full strength. Many of these songs are already familiar to Hurley devotees: there are seven originals and five loving covers of 50’s rock ‘n’ roll chestnuts, C&W and folk vintage here. They all bubble with laid back ease and tremolodic goodness.

Hurley's unique gifts as a songwriter are something that hasn't gone unnoticed by new a generation of respected musicians. In recent years, Michael was invited to tour with alt-country heroes Son Volt and Lucinda Williams. He's also shared bills with Smog and Palace Brothers; played with the Giant Sand rhythm section; and has appeared with and played on and been covered by Vetiver on record and onstage. His songs have also been covered by indie stars Cat Power and Yo La Tengo among many others. His last release, and label debut for Gnomonsong garnered a wealth of critical kudos:

He calls his style “baroque blues,” but there’s nothing baroque about Michael Hurley’s minimal acoustic songs, which turn thoughts of the uncomplicated rural life — sign painting, clear water — into poignant, existential meditations. Ben Sisario/New York Times 11/16, 11/30

Although it's difficult to think of the staccato guitar plucks on "Streets of Laredo" or the hounddog howls on "1st Precinct Blues" as anything other than musical serendipity, these are exceptionally crafted and thought-out tunes, the work of a master of the spontaneous and the shambolic. .. He may be folk's Boo Radley, but Hurley is also the sage of mountain: He'll tell you the secret of life, but you'll be puzzling over it for the rest of your days. Stephen M. Deusner/Pitchfork.com 1/15/08

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Like most of his past work, Hurley's 20th album is a relaxed, ramshackle affair that meanders along at its own shambling pace and under its own rickety power. Hurley's homely, brambly voice - cracked, conversational, ancient - and the spare instrumentation of plucked acoustic guitars and banjo give standouts like "1st Precinct Blues" and "New River Blues" the spontaneous feel of a campfire session... Jonathan Perry/Boston Globe 10/7

Its rambling tales of gamblers, cemeteries, and other sources of the blues are fairly timeless, and Hurley's off-kilter warble and guitar plucking will remind some listeners of the equally quirky Vic Chesnutt. Doug Wallen/Philadelphia Inquirer 5/23

"Knowing Hurley since the 1970s, music journalist Byron Coley agrees:"To go to a Michael Hurley concert or listen to one of his records really is to enter another kind of universe where time moves a little more slowly, and narratives develop at their own pace," Coley says. "But they develop very fully. His songs are an unusual combination. The lyrics can be very funny. " ---- Joel Rose, Weekend Edition Saturday, NPR

Elusive singer-songwriter Michael Hurley talks about a family devoted to opera and his sometimes dark, often humorous disaffected songs about the mysteries of modernity and werewolves. Nick Spitzer/American Routes, NPR

Hurley's debut album, First Songs, was recorded for Folkways Records in 1965 on the same reel-to-reel machine that taped Leadbelly's Last Sessions. He had been "discovered" in '64 by blues and jazz historian Frederick Ramsey III, and subsequently championed by his friend from teenage years Jesse Colin Young. Young released his second and third albums on the Youngbloods' Warner Brothers imprint Raccoon in the early ‘70’s. In 1975, Hurley -- who’d spent much of the prior decade living as a hobo, jumping and robbing trains and getting into trouble with the law -- moved in with Peter Stampfel of The Holy Modal Rounders, thus beginning 15 years of fruitful if fitfull collaborations. His 1976 LP Have Moicy, a collaboration with the Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick & The Clamtones, was named "the greatest folk album of the rock era" by the Village Voice's Robert Christgau and one of the top 10 of the ‘70’s by Rolling Stone magazine. Hurley went on to release three albums through the Rounder label in the late ‘70’s and thereafter self-released consequent releases up until finding a comfy home and releasing his label debut, Ancestral Swamp, with Gnomonsong.

http://www.snockonews.net/