| 2/25/2009 9:55:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Some
people have said Mike Murray sounds a bit like Johnny Cash or Burl Ives
with a twang. He performs in concert on Friday, Feb. 27 at Quimper
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. |
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Murray melds storytelling and song in concert Feb. 27
Mike
Murray, singer and songwriter in the acoustic tradition, fingerpicks
his way through a solo performance at Quimper Unitarian Universalist
Fellowship on Friday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m.
Murray has been
performing on the Olympic Peninsula since 2002 and in the Puget Sound
region since 1991. Over the years, he has played with several bands
from Juneau to Portugal, but lately he has been stepping out solo,
playing his own accompaniment on guitar and banjo, mostly in a unique
two-finger, syncopated style. Murray's songbook ranges from
mid-19th-century songs by Henry Clay Work through 1920s songs by
Charlie Poole and on through the '40s and '50s.
The songs Murray
writes tend toward ballads, often with startling, macabre twists. The
late Seattle musician Jim Bicknell once compared Murray's original
songs to Ray Carver's short stories, although Murray says he takes more
inspiration from O. Henry.
Murray grew up in a musical family in
the northeast corner of Montana, where his father was an old-time
fiddler, playing for dances from the 1920s through the '40s. Murray
says his own vocal training consisted mainly of singing over the racket
of a 1949 John Deere diesel tractor while summer fallowing as a kid.
Tickets,
$10, are available by calling 360-531-1599 or at the door. Quimper
Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is located at 2333 San Juan Ave.
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