Long Journey

Michael Hurley

Product Details

• CD-R (February 2, 2009)
• Original Release Date: 1977
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Rounder Records
• ASIN: B000005YVT
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #191,593 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
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

Product Description
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

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cult songwriter crosses country with weird, July 20, 1998

By	Eileen Gunn (Seattle) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Is it folk? Is it country? Is it old-timey? Is it blues? Well, it's not blues.... It's sui generis Michael Hurley. Chicken-skin music from the king of Relaxed Strange. Nobody sees the world quite like Hurley does, and this is one of the great Hurley albums. Buy it: it will change your life.

Related headspace: The Holy Modal Rounders; Jeffery Frederick and the Clamtones.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Primitive Genius - Smoking Something Good, August 26, 2007

By	Michael C. Stephens "motherfer" (charlotte, nc, usa) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Michael Hurley is a complete original in the acoustic folk field. A songwriter and singer with a strange, nonsensical feel whose lyrics skid off into areas beyond the range of nearly everyone you've heard. In his own way Hurley is up there with Hank Williams, Leonard Cohen and Dylan, although he is nothing like any of these artists. He yodels and meanders and wanders off the track, "Well I want to a place called the 2 Ball, I went to a place called the 8 Ball, I went to a place called the Pool Hall..." and never comes back. After each song you're going to be smiling a little wider and loving life a little more for producing a magician like Michael. If you don't get Hurley, you just don't. His songs are hilarious and mountain-stream-clear way over on the other side of sense. This album is Michael's best, apart from Hi Fi Snock Uptown, which is pretty much unavailable. There's nothing on here that will remotely recall all the predictable corporate crap you hear, so shut uppa ya face and buy it. You won't be disappointed.