Chris Murphy Music

On his latest 5-song EP, The Red Road—the 21st release of his wildly prolific career—stalwart LA-based violinist and songsmith Chris Murphy sets aside the grand Americana arrangements and star-studded musician rosters of his previous albums for a largely solo violin-and-voice affair that mirrors the kind of deceptively simple sleight-of-hand magic he creates in his many sought-after one-man shows across the US and Europe. At the production helm again is the immensely respected player-producer Ben Vaughn, a man known for capturing vital, visceral performances in virtually any musical setting.

Where epic full-length albums like the recent The Road and the Stars and Secrets of Navigation found their North Star in wide ambiances, rolling basslines, and rich percussive beds from the likes of Joachim Cooder, DJ Bonebrake and the Attractions’ Pete Thomas, here Murphy accents the fiddle’s natural rhythmic properties and leans on more immediate, familiar room spaces to create dimension around his resonant bow. Recorded in Hawaii, where “laid-back” is a distinct state of mind, The Red Road is a playful and casual offering from an artist who typically revels in more stylistically mischievous and ambitious climates.

Instead, steadying his instrument to deliver hypnotic, foot-stomping two-beat fiddle grooves, with hints of Celtic, Appalachian, and post-modern boho jazz topping the rhythms—think everyone from Clannad to pre-skronk Tom Waits—Murphy goes all in with his songwriting game. He takes a wry,
self-effacing look at what might be called “romantic fatigue” on tunes like “The Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe,” “Wore Thin,” and “Tara McKinley”; celebrates a little hippie free-love on “The Red Road,” and offers a vehicular self-satire on the danceable “Never Learned To Drive.”

There’s nothing flashy or histrionic about Murphy’s vocal delivery. He lets the words, his fiddle, and the musical context set the tone and shoots for a plain-spoken approach that might suggest the gentle glibness of a Garrison Keillor or perhaps the world-weary smarts of a Spalding Gray. Of course, those great raconteurs didn’t have the benefit of Murphy’s rich and roasted violin tone, nor did they have his distinctive musical Esperanto to draw on, a fusion of global influences that Murphy simply describes as “a unique fabric of world music.”

“My goal on this album was to make as much music as possible with the most basic tools,” he explains. “A violin, a voice, a bit of melancholy, and plenty of good ol’ fashioned foot-stomping. These are the kind of time-honored, tribal elements that can ably translate even the most ancient of feelings. I love ensemble work, but this is a special kind of artistic challenge that I really enjoy.”

-- JAMES VOLPE ROTONDI, Guitar Player Magazine, Acoustic Guitar Magazine