Phil Murray
I'm an amateur with no plans to be anything else. I don't write much these days, but in my younger, less stable days I felt moved to write songs to express what was in my head.
Tell me about your history? How did you get where you are now?
I played with a mediocre cover band called Half-Life back in Cincinnati in the late 1980s and then with a mixed covers and originals band called The Piranha Brothers in Boulder, Colo., in the mid-1990s. It's a shame that digital recording wasn't affordable in the 1990s, because I think we had good chemistry and could have put out some interesting stuff.
Have you performed live in front of an audience? Any special memories?
I haven't played live since about 1996. The band I was in at the time played at a combination Chinese restaurant/bar. However, the first time I ever played live was with a cover band at a fairly big club in Cincinnati called Bogart's in 1987. It was a surreal experience to begin that way.
What equipment do you use?
* an Ovation electric/acoustic guitar from 1995
* a Westone bass guitar from 1985
* a Shure SM58 mic
* an M-Audio Firewire Solo with Sony Acid Music Studio
* some picks, which I don't use because I have terrible pick technique
Anything else?
The songs I've recorded for inclusion here were all written at least a dozen years ago and are of the more somber variety lyrically. I'm not as much of a downer as my songs suggest! I also wrote a bunch of goofy tunes but don't have any digital recordings of those, at least not yet.
