I'm just going under my own real name. Someone suggested once that I should have used the name my parents first considered for me, Keith, but to my ears "Keith Murray" sounds too much like a country singer, and I'm not one of those.

I've been playing the Niagara region for a long time, and still play regularly on weekends, and more often during the summer tourist season. I've had a lot of great times over the years, and the experiences have been fantastic, for the most part. It's nice to meet people from all over the world who enjoy my music. The memories are a bit fuzzy from my band days, but I'm older now and still having a great time doing what I love to do best.

It's changing things drastically. The biggest change that I see is the ability to focus back on "singles," which drove the music industry when I was a kid. Instead of 45 rpm records now, though, it's downloadable MP3's. It's also made it possible for artists to connect directly with their fans, and to sell their music independently online, and that's a good thing. The established music industry needs to embrace these changes and learn how to best take advantage of them, and to stop punishing people who are simply fans. No artist should want to hurt those who listen to their music and love it.

It's hard to say. I feel uncomfortable with the thought of handing over control of my life to some huge corporate entity, and the thing that I love the most, which is my music. I'm fairly good friends with Ron Sexsmith - we used to play a lot of the same bars when he was just getting started, and I've seen what he's been through with his three or four record deals so far. It's still taken him a long time to get the respect and exposure that I think he deserves. I think I'd prefer to go with a smaller label who would let me call more of my own shots and have more control over what I'd like to do with my career and my music.

I learned how to play the guitar when I was about fifteen, and started writing songs almost immediately. I'm completely self-taught. I don't know how to read music at all, except for chord charts. I entered a few talent contests and played a few highschool functions, and I was pretty much hooked. It changed my life and gave me something I could be proud of and believe in, and girls liked it, and the songwriting was a great outlet for me.

I started playing bars professionally in 1979, and things just took off from there. I got job after job, many of them in the tourist section of my city, and I quickly learned that people loved listening to my music. I started out solo, but soon got into a Neil Young/California rock trio called Decade, and we did really well for many years. That was all acoustic, with three guitars and three-part harmony vocals. Eventually we went our separate ways as we got older, and I formed a two-man band with a great local lead guitar player named Rich Morton. We called ourselves Desert Son, and that was mainly an electric act focusing on classic rock and some blues. I bought a telecaster and a Marshall amp, and rocked out for five years until a slump in the economy caused us to lose all of our regular gigs in the space of about two months, so I went back to playing solo. Except for some gigs with some seasoned buddies of mine in a band called the Funkings, it's been that way pretty much ever since. I did do a sort of one-man band thing for awhile after Rich and I quit, still using a Portastudio for the bass and drum tracks, and still playing my tele, but I found it to be too much work after awhile and I just prefered the simplicity of my acoustic and just myself, and it was more of a challenge to me too.

I love all kinds of music, and still listen to a lot of new rock, but my roots lie in the music of Gordon Lightfoot, who I grew up listening to, and the British folk-rock scene of the late 60's/early 70's, which included Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, Nick Drake, Cat Stevens and The Strawbs. I've been modelling my own recordings on the stripped down records of Lightfoot's early career, and the recent Rick Rubin-produced recordings of Johnny Cash. The Beatles, and particularly John Lennon, are also major factors in there somewhere, as is Jim Croce, artists who are now gone and who I sadly miss.

My two favourite places that I've been so far in my life are the Bruce Peninsula in northern Ontario, and Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. Both are majestic and spiritual and wonderful in their own unique ways.

My main stage gear right now is a Takamine G-series 12-string guitar, which I bought to replace my aging Ovations, one of which was stolen, and the other of which was causing me a lot of difficulty onstage due to the heat and humidity of so many outdoor gigs. One day I may go back to a new Ovation, or a Taylor. I run the guitar and my vocals, through a Fender Acoustasonic Junior amp with built-in effects, I find it is plenty loud enough for most of my gigs. I use two effects pedals, a Marshall Supervibe Stereo Chorus and an older model Yamaha Digital Delay. The second channel of the Marshall chorus is run through a small Fender powered monitor, which gives me a beautiful stereo chorus sound onstage. The delay pedal is mainly to add atmosphere and presence on certain songs. My microphone is the industry standard, a Shure SM-58, and there isn't a better mic out there for a working musician. My aim is to use the smallest set-up possible to get the biggest sound, and this current one fulfills that need for the most part. The only addition I can think of for a bigger sound is to use two of the Fender amps in tandem.

Please have a listen to my tunes, which are all based on personal experiences. I put a lot of myself and my recent tribulations into my debut CD, and I think many people will be able to relate to the things I express there. It's completely honest and from the heart.