One of the most interesting Memphis music stories of the past couple
of years has been the union — half a country away — of
a couple of expatriate Memphians separated by a generation.
Folk-era vet Bob Frank and younger alt-country survivor John Murry
came together in the California Bay Area a few years ago, releasing the
album World Without End, a collection of murder ballads that
became a cult hit and took Frank and Murry on a European tour.
The pair followed up World Without End earlier this year with
Brinkley, Ark. (And Other Assorted Love Songs), another
thematic, if less tightly knit, collection that pushed from folk
ballads into blue-eyed country soul. With a third duo album as well as
solo albums on the horizon, Frank and Murry will return to Memphis this
weekend for a rare local gig.
Murry, who has been splitting time between Oakland and his native
Tupelo since this summer, says the Memphis show was booked around other
business he and Frank are conducting in the area.
“It’s the byproduct of a couple of shows we’re doing in Nashville, a
couple of showcases we’re doing the weekend after [the Memphis show],”
Murry says.
The Nashville shows were booked around a planned drop-in at
folk/roots label Vanguard Records, for whom Frank released a celebrated
but long out-of-print solo album in the early ’70s.
“We’re going to go to Vanguard and ask them for the master tapes
back, with someone filming the whole thing,” Murry says. “They’re going
to say they don’t know where they are. People have been asking for
years for [Bob] to re-release it, and we’re trying to find a way to do
it where no one can get sued.”
In Memphis, Murry will deliver a collection of material for an
upcoming — and long-awaited in some quarters — solo
album to local producer Kevin Cubbins.
“I’ve been working on it for over two years now,” Murry says. “I
have a hard drive full of songs in their basic form, so I’m giving them
to Kevin, and he’s gonna finish it. He’ll mix it. Kevin has a deeper
understanding. There’s far less pretense and more depth to him than a
lot of [more well-known producers].”
While here, Frank and Murry also will go into the studio with
Cubbins to record a single provoked by an unusual request.
A couple of years ago, Frank received an e-mail from Dylan
Hartsfeld, an American soldier then serving in Iraq. Hartsfeld had
found Frank and Murry’s website and knew Frank because Hartsfeld’s
father had been a fan of Frank’s Vanguard album and had played it for
his son. The son ordered all of Frank and Murry’s records and had them
sent to his father.
“Later, Bob got a call from the dad telling him his son had been
killed,” Murry says. “He had been hit by an IED in Iraq, and his
shoulder was pretty much destroyed. So he’d been transferred to Walter
Reade and put on some heavy-duty pain medications.”
After his discharge, Hartsfeld moved to Kentucky to live with his
father. Then last September, he fell down some basement stairs. Fearing
his son had reinjured his shoulder, his father called 911.
What happened next in what has become a controversial case is murky,
but Hartsfeld was shot and killed by a local deputy, who claimed
Hartsfeld had threatened him with a machete. Other witnesses, however,
said Hartsfeld was carrying a broken hockey stick.
“The dad called Bob and said, ‘I know you did this record of murder
ballads. Could you do a record about my son?'” Murry says.
Murry and Frank have granted the wish by writing a song called
simply “Dylan Hartsfeld,” which they’ll record with Cubbins this
weekend and release online and as a vinyl single.
In addition to Murry’s upcoming solo album (which he expects to be
released sometime next season) and Frank’s upcoming follow-up to his
2008 Memphis International Records solo album, Red Neck, Blue
Collar, Murry and Frank have begun work on their next duo
album.
It will be partially in the style of World Without End
— story songs rooted in real events — but
divorced from the “murder ballads” concept.
“It didn’t have the effect it was intended to have,” Murry says of
World Without End. “The people who really liked that record were
the people who buy every Nick Cave record. That [kind of
sensationalism] wasn’t the point. The [new songs] are not that dark and
aren’t as folkie.”
In the meantime, Murry says he expects to play more Memphis shows
when he returns to Tupelo in January. Why decamp to Tupelo and not
Memphis? Murry says it’s not for family reasons.
“I don’t want to be in Memphis,” he says. “I felt like if I stayed
in Memphis, I’d either be forced to do something or forced to talk to
myself about why I’m not doing something. I don’t do much [in Tupelo].
I fish a lot. Nobody in Tupelo does much of anything. They’re just a
bunch of rednecks, really.”
