Michael Hurley - "Ancestral Swamp"

Michael Hurley - "Light Green Fellow" (Gnomonsong 2007)

Michael Hurley – Ancestral Swamp / Gnomonsong

I’ve been searching for just the right way to place the minimal folk of traveled songwriter Michael Hurley in context with contemporary music for a good hour now. I don’t think it can be done, at least not snugly. Ancestral Swamp, the folk veteran’s twentieth LP and first for the Devendra Banhart-helmed Gnomonsong imprint, acts as a sort of wormhole in music. Though his voice reflects his mid-60s age and wavers with the wear of some forty-five years in and out of the music business, the warm, unassuming recording quality, mellow-paced and rustic instrumentation, and general nod toward Delta blues can’t differentiate too much from the music being captured by Folkways Records in the mid-60s where Hurley recorded his debut album – in fact on the same reel-to-reel that taped Leadbelly’s Last Sessions nearly twenty years prior. It must be quite the curious thought for Hurley to connect just how exactly he went from being the budding star of the rebellious Greenwich Village folk scene of the mid-60s to presently be recording with the core of a group looking to emulate just that in their rural Northwest homes, and somehow dodging significant – or at least widespread – reverence all the while.

It’s hard not to be swooned near instantaneously by Ancestral Swamp, a collection of songs – five original, five covers and one a lyrical duet with, curiously enough, Edgar Allan Poe – culled over the last eight years. Album opener “Knockando”, as my roommate just put it, sounds a lot like the soul-tinged, blues-derived Americana of Will Oldham, though he obviously got the roles reversed. Hurley slips into a soft falsetto as the electric-tinged guitar scuffs and struts. His compositions are deceptively simple, unflinchingly patient and near impossible to ignore despite their unassuming nature.

“Dying Crapshooter’s Blues” follows and features Hurley showing his age, that is to say, following his instincts into traditional folk, at least from a songwriter perspective. His odd, concerned-only-with-storytelling phrasing teamed with the slow gurgle of electric guitar recalls Delta blues at its finest, right down to the hummed coda. Keeping the listener guessing, the song is succeeded with “Lonesome Graveyard”, a duet between Hurley’s downtrodden, trembling voice and a moonlit electric piano. The soft wavers in volume do nothing to dissuade my mental picture of Hurley rocking back-and-forth painfully in front of the mic as he sings.

Though the show here is all Hurley, he is joined by three multi-instrumentalists that skillfully accompany his vocals with equally intricate musicianship: Dave Reisch, Louie Longmeyer, and earnest indie-rock innovator Tara Jane O’Neil. As well as being responsible for a bit of the recording, O’Neil also provides subtle background vocals on “El Dorado”, the previously mentioned track in which Hurley trades verses with Poe. She later captured an off-the-cuff improvisation during “Light Green Fellow” by leaving the tape running without his knowledge. The result is a slightly rollicking folk song that echoes as much blues and early gospel as it does Johnny Cash.

Released in September of 2007, Ancestral Swamp is a slow-burner, an album that resonates patience if only that it is the result of forty-five years of craft perfecting. Hurley’s sound, a comfortable mesh of folk, Delta blues, Appalachian country, rural Americana and bare-bones soul, is somehow idiosyncratic despite its deep traditionalist heritage. It’s charming and comfortable, inviting and lulling. A lesson of passion-via-patience and wisdom that so many of us need to learn.