Snock talk

>>The odd but infectious outsider art of
underground legend Michael Hurley

DITTIES AND DOODLES: Michael Hurley

by BYRON COLEY

I’m sitting in a dark Brooklyn apartment with Michael Hurley, aka Mr. Snock to some. We’re supposed to be talking about Ancestral Swamp, his 20th album, recently released by Devendra Banhart’s Gnomonsong label. But we keep getting sidetracked. Hurley’s current story involves a fantastic, Rube Goldberg-style invention from the late ’60s.

“I developed this Applause Pedal when I started playing the hippie bars in Cambridge,” Hurley says. “I made this thing, it was a sign on a six-foot stick. It would lie flat facedown on the stage, and it was rigged to a foot pedal, so when I hit the pedal it would erect into the air, this sign that said, ‘Applaud!’ I’d go into a solo then hit the Applause Pedal, and the applause would occur in the middle of my solo. I always liked that effect on jazz albums.”

It’s unlikely that Michael will be bringing this device to his Montreal gig, but one never knows. Michael Hurley is a legendary drifter and full of surprises. He and his songs and his cartoon wolves and his beat-up cars have existed at the peripheries of popular culture for over four decades.

HOWLING WITH LAUGHTER: Hurley comics

TB and ESP

Hurley spent his youth in rural Pennsylvania before moving to Greenwich Village at the height of the ’60s folk scare. He busked with Jesse Colin Young, subsequent founder of the Youngbloods, before falling ill and spending six months in Bellevue Hospital. “The reason they kept me for so long was because of TB,” he says. “It was just something in the TB medicine that was aggravating me. I was actually pretty chipper the whole time. I’d just roam up and down the hall.”

After his release, he headed back to the woods. There he hooked up with Fred Ramsey, who recorded Hurley’s debut album (1965’s First Songs) for the Folkways label, using the same tape rig with which he had recorded Leadbelly. A follow-up album was planned, but it never happened and Hurley went to Boston, where he worked selling pretzels on the street before finding a steady gig at a cookie factory.

He didn’t play much during this time, but did try to start a band with Martin Mull. On the advice of the Holy Modal Rounders’ Peter Stampfel, they sent a demo to ESP Records, but got turned down.

Hurley recalls the reaction with a laugh. “The label president heard the mock trumpet and he says, ‘What’s this guy trying to do? Sing with his mouth closed?’ He asked, ‘Why is everything so slow?’ Stampfel said, ‘Well, he’s kind of like an amphetamine head in reverse.’ They didn’t go for it.”

A few years later, the Youngbloods scored a huge hit with “Get Together” and were given their own record label. One of the first things they did was sign Hurley, who recorded two classic albums for Raccoon, Armchair Boogie and Hi Fi Snock Uptown. The lazy, smoky genius of these records combines elements of folk, blues, hillbilly and early jazz into an unbeatable alloy. The music is laid-back and rambling, with Michael’s cracked and easy vocals laid on top, spilling the beans on werewolves and rounders of every variety. In the 35 years since the records were issued, Hurley’s legend has slowly grown and spread, largely by the testimony of those few people lucky enough to have seen his shows and bathed in his exquisite aura.

Words and wolves

Every so often, Hurley releases a new album. The latest, Ancestral Swamp, mixes new songs with old. It’s easy to hear why people like Banhart, Cat Power, Espers and Yo La Tengo have been drawn to Hurley’s flame. The songs’re just great and funny and tuneful in ways you don’t see coming until you find yourself humming them later.

Over the years, Hurley has also created a bizarre world of paintings and cartoons. He has generally provided the art for his own albums as well as doing covers for the Holy Modal Rounders and others. His stock characters include the lecherous beatnik wolves Boone and Jocko, and the cantankerous mutant Kornbred (who has been known to hijack live gigs on occasion).

“I started drawing when I was a kid,” he says, “but after I quit school, there was no pressure to draw, no boredom driving me. So I didn’t draw much for a couple of years. Then I was taking a bunch of drugs and I started doing it again. The characters Boone and Jocko were different when they came back.”

Hurley has collected four volumes of his drawings into booklets he sometimes sells at shows, and grab ’em quick if you see ’em, ’cause they always go fast. Montreal publisher Benoît Chaput also plans to issue a volume of Hurley’s lyrics via his l’Oie de Cravan imprint, and that should make for some fine damn reading.

If you’re tired of carreerist fucks and trust-fund bohemians, you should check out Hurley. He is the real damn deal.

With Sandro Perri and Tradition
at la Sala Rossa on Monday,
June 16, 8 p.m., $15