New Guru

ok, staring at this screen. Surely I have something to say. hmmm....

My friend turned me on to this folk singer named Michael Hurley. This guy is a fantastic songwriter. Apparently, he's been playing and recording for a long, long time, like since the 60's, but somehow he slipped past my radar.

I like all kinds of music, but for some reason, I'm drawn most strongly to guys with acoustic guitars singing poetic lyrics that they've written. I like it stripped down and dirty (insert joke here). So, this early Michael Hurley record that my friend gave me definitely fits that category.

His songs are already changing the way I write. Even though the songs are pretty simple (3, 4, maybe 5 chords), he uses really interesting rythms, which is not something you hear that much in folk music. He sings a lot of long, drawn out notes and fairly loose rhthms, which makes the songs really unpredictable (at least for a person like me who's understanding of the technical aspects of music is very limited).

He's got some wonderful lyrics, too. Here's one of my favorite lines from The Werewolf Song (it's about a werewolf):

Once I saw him in the moonlight when the bats were a flyin
All alone I saw the werewolf and the werewolf was cryin

Cryin nobody, nobody, nobody knows
How much I love the maiden as I tear off her clothes
Cryin nobody, nobody, knows of my pain
When I see it has risen that full moon again

What a wonderful grappling with the relationship between good and evil inside all of us. "How much I love the maiden as I tear off her clothes." Wow.

He's got another awesome song about drinking tea...called The Tea Song, I think:

"Before old Buddha turned into stone
That's why I drink tea alone
Buddha's made of stone and his eyes are rubies
But his thoughts and dreams are distilled in the tea"

(this is much more potent if you can hear him sing it)

The Tea Song affected me very deeply when I heard it last week for the first time. It has a very potent zen melancholy quality that helped me feel at peace with the world just when I was feeling particularly not at-peace with it. So, thanks Michael Hurley!