Michael Hurley wasn’t your typical singer-songwriter. So it would only follow that a concert dedicated to his music would be something a little bit different too.
“I thought that it would be really cool to pay tribute to him while also trying to recreate an old-time fiddle festival inside a venue,” says Michael Hirsch, the organizer of a multi-performer Michael Hurley tribute show scheduled for the Camel on Dec. 21. “We may not be out in the woods at a campground, but we can try for the welcomingness, the energy, of those kinds of gatherings.”
The idea for the concert came out of this past summer’s Appalachian String Band Festival in West Virginia, better known as The Clifftop Festival. Hurley, a.k.a. Doc Snock, was due to play Clifftop but sadly passed away on April Fool’s Day, at the age of 83.
“There were several people there that were doing little tribute pop-ups at their campsites for him,” Hirsch says. “It made me think, ‘We should do something like this in Richmond, where he once lived.'”
At the tribute, Hirsch, who leads the band Mead the Dear — its low-key country rock evokes the sleepy Hurley vibe — will be performing five Snock songs with a trio, Onions, which specializes in a wide variety of Americana, from old-time to Hank Williams and George Jones. Also on the bill will be Ditch Tea Steepers from Bloomington, Indiana, a trio of Hurley-heads that Hirsch met at Clifftop. “I think they are performing five covers as well.”
Joey Testani, from the band Drunk Mother, is also on the bill, as is Drew Bernocky, who normally plays drums with Mackenzie Roark and the Hotpants and Devil Coattails. Carter Burton from the band Night Idea will also take the stage, and singer-songwriter Will Harrison is also slated. Everyone will be performing specific Hurley songs throughout the evening, Hirsch says, something that has taken a little coordinating.
“We don’t want to do the same songs, so we have a little Instagram chat going with all of the musicians. Everyone makes their first pick and then once everyone does that, then there’s round two of picks and so on.”
There’s a wealth of great material to choose from — more than 60 years of it — as star devotees from Cat Power to Yo La Tengo to Will Oldham to Calexico will attest. An accomplished cartoonist and painter responsible for designing his own album covers, Hurley’s most coveted songs include near-standards such as “The Werewolf,” “O My Stars,” “I Paint a Design” and “Slurf Song.”
In 2021, a various artist collection called “Snocument” compiled some of the best Hurley covers in one package, including recastings from Cass McCombs and Steve Gunn and Jayson D. Williams. Hurley, who had settled in rural Astoria, Oregon, left a final album, “Broken Homes and Gardens,” released last September. “The texture of the music around Hurley is homespun and relaxed,” raved Jennifer Kelly of Dusted Magazine, “as warm and plush and fuzzy as a well-used blanket.”
Snock was born on Dec. 20, 1941 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and started playing guitar when he was 16. Early on, the admitted wild child and frequent alcohol user formed a band with future Holy Modal Rounders Steve Weber and Robin Remaily but was derailed by tuberculosis and liver damage. After a time in rehab, where he began honing his original songs on guitar and fiddle, he met Fred Ramsey, Jr., a folk archivist who had recorded Lead Belly’s final sessions. It was through Ramsey that Moses Asch, the founder of the Folkways label, signed “Mike Hurley” and released his debut album, 1964’s “First Songs.”
A few years later, he would sign to a Warner Brothers subsidiary label, Raccoon Records, started by his old pal Jesse Colin Young of the Youngbloods. The two albums he made on that imprint, “Armchair Boogie” and “Hi-Fi Snock Uptown,” are considered seminal works in the freak folk genre, exploring country, old-time and ragtime while also emulating the sounds of crows and performing mouth trumpet. When Raccoon disbanded, he joined again with his pals in the Holy Modal Rounders (now called the Unholy Modal Rounders) and recorded an album on Rounder Records now deemed to be a classic, “Have Moicy!” He would later cut two more albums for Rounder, “Snockgrass” and “Long Journey,” that are considered two of his finest.
By the time Hurley ended up in Oregon Hill, in the early 1990s, he was a bonafide living legend in the outsider folk world, and kind of laying low. He later told the Aquarium Drunkard blog, “I can remember when I lived in Richmond, Virginia with my drawing board. I had everything there. I had my hi-fi, my radio, my guitar. At the time I was making most of my money by selling my paintings.”
Hurley has been an inspiration to Hirsch, for his art as well as his music. “Once I realized that he was the one doing the art on his albums and so forth, it definitely made me even more interested and curious about him. I like to do the art for my music too, album covers and show posters.”
Despite his notoriety, Hurley never quite achieved mainstream fame, though his song “Hog of the Forsaken” was used in the opening credits of “Deadwood” and at the close of “Deadwood The Movie,” and there were a number of high-profile national stories published the last few years of his life, while audiences at his free, happy hour shows in Portland, Or. had grown packed.
Hirsch says that the slow-rolling music on display at the tribute should appeal to a wide variety of listeners. “Obviously, the people that love his music will like it,” he laughs. “And maybe some that are a little lost in life, too.”
The Michael Hurley Tribute takes place at The Camel on Sunday, Dec. 21 with Onions, Ditch Tea Steepers, Joey Testani, Drew Barnocky, Will Harrison, and Carter Burton. 7 p.m. $10. All Ages.
