Bob Frank and John Murry:
Produced by Tim Mooney:
Mastered by Matt Pence
Influences
Heaven, Hell, and High Water
Sounds Like
"World Without End" CD Release Show, Berkeley, CA, 10/26
Photography by Diana Elliott, www.dianaephoto.com
"Harvey Logan, 1904"
Live @ The Freight & Salvage
Berkeley, CA 10/26/06
Filmed by Paul Marcus
Live @ The Make-Out Room
San Francisco, CA
Filmer by Subina
"World Without End" was released on October 26th through Bowstring Records. It is a collection of ten murder ballads co-written by Bob Frank and John Murry that was produced by Tim Mooney of American Music Club and mastered by Matt Pence of Centromatic. It contains the contributions of an enormous group of musicians on a multitude of instruments. The songs are based on true-but-forgotten tales of murder, death, and suicide. For more information read the early press below or visit www.bobfrankandjohnmurry.com:------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Many moons ago, while playing guitar for my guru of voodoo: Jim Dickinson, he pulled out a song called "Wild Bill Jones"... a killer tale of blood and lust. When I asked who wrote it, he said, "That's Bob Frank. The greatest songwriter you never heard-- long since disappeared from the face of the earth." I filed that away and kept an eye out for Bob's debut (and only) record originally released by Vanguard in 1972. One day at a used record store, I scored big when Bob..s face looked right back at me from the bin like a dope-running, Jesus loving, Davendra doppelganger. Eureka!
In 2002, Bob broke his silence and released Keep On Burning, his first album in 30 years. I got wind and ordered it straight from the source, Bob himself. Bob and I talked a bit and I sent him a check. I learned that Bob no longer lived in Memphis and was actually living just over the bridge in Oakland. He even came by one of my shows. God-damn! Bob Fucking Frank! I was struck by his good humor, youthful appearance and the fact that he rarely wore shoes. We chatted each other up and made big plans to play some shows together.
The shows never really came together.
Presently, I rent a shoebox-like office space above Closer Recording Studios, a kind of underground studio collective run by my old pal Tim Moony. Turns out that Bob Frank and his sidekick John Murry have been in the studio below me toiling away on another record of Murder Ballads. New Murder Ballads. Interesting. Bob Frank was getting less and less obscure. I poked my head down there one night when Bob, John and Tim were working and was floored by what I heard coming out the speakers. Bob and John had been rooting around in the muddy shadows of American history for long-forgotten true tales of murder, suicide, and death. The goal was to create a CD of songs that are a dark reminder of the skeletons in our nation's closets. And the singing and playing are pretty good too.
Bob and John celebrate the release of World Without End with a rare live appearance backed by a group of musicians so big they could induce vomiting from Lambchop. The show will include a multi-media slide show replete with images and crime scene evidence. A gig not to be missed. They will be appearing live at the Freight and Salvage on October 26th. Opening the show will be the Stephanie Finch duo with yours truly on guitar... quite the honor. --Chuck Prophet, www.brink.com-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past." --William Faulkner.
World Without End is a séance. With each song a ghost rises up. Some speak of misdeeds. Some speak of misdeeds endured. The songs drip with blood, but it's not the cornsyrup and food dye of Hollywood. No, there's no exaggeration. No need for melodrama. The ghosts dispense their tales of woe with an almost objective eye to factual detail. They are merely distilling the crimes, sometimes with regret, sometimes with bravado. Stories of death, dying, and almost always revenge. The bitter agony of injustice. The profound agony of justice. World without End is a history lesson of violent America.
Fittingly released on the Day of the Dead, when the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest, and when the dead can communicate most easily, these ghosts tell their deadmen's tales. And ghost stories always have a moral. On the ten song record, some are easier to spot than others. Such as the revenge dictum --if you hurt my family I will hunt you down and not only kill you but desecrate your body. There's the Southern gothic prognostic: if you screw my husband, I'll wall you up in the chimney with a jeweled dagger in your chest. In one song, a brother kills a sweet-talking guru for seducing his sister.
American lore idolizes criminals and vigilantes, and World Without End is filled with anti-hero anthems. We cheer for the unrepentant outlaw who kills himself so the sheriff can't brag that he killed him. We admire the heinous criminal who says, "Drop the trap door I got nothing to say." We all want to live like that, without explanations, and let our actions, right or wrong, speak for themselves. In the lightest song, Bubba Rose, a dock worker, wakes up one morning and goes to work and shoots his boss. The chorus professes "nobody knows why Bubba Rose shot his boss," but we all know why Bubba shot his boss--we all want to shoot our bosses. Each song reminds us we could kill for love or malice or for some perceived slight given half the chance. World without End unleashes these ghosts to warn us, to save us, from ourselves.
The settings of some of the songs are more than a hundred and fifty years old, but there's immediacy in them. The past rises up to warn us about our future. With the song about the Reconstruction of the South, one can't help but think about an occupying army currently in the Middle East trying to reconstruct a land that doesn't want to be reconstructed. And when the record talks about the battle of Shiloh, it reminds us about how the present-day United States is divided and unsure of itself. World without End breathes the air of these unsure times. Just as during the Civil War, America is unsure of who and what we are and what we will become.
Without shame, World without End looks unflinchingly into the history of racism. Without moralizing, two of these songs look right into the past and own up to it. One song lets a Klansman speak about lynching. Another song lets the man who was lynched speak. The lesson of each ghost is that this could happen to you. From being on the receiving end of mob violence, to being caught up in the mob that unleashes the violence. The warning is that the grotesque and horrible is never far off, and is, truly, in each of us. The moral is that there's murder, justified or unjustified, in each of us given the right circumstances. America will always be a violent nation. There's guns in all our trunks. But if you listen to World without End, you might rethink going on that rampage.
--Dustin Wells, San Francisco, California, 9-28-06
How are things,John?Droppin' by to promote nothin'as we've sweet F.A to promote...just to say love the e.p and wonderin' if you and Bob have any plans to visit us again in Ireland anytime soon..we hope so..
John B. Murry 1908–1988 Born in Sandersville, GA Having no formal education, J.B. Murry labored from childhood to the age of sixty-five as a tenant farmer in rural Glasock County, Georgia. Murry married Cleo Kitchens in 1929 and with her raised a family of eleven children. At the time of his death Murry had sixteen grandchildren, thirteen great grandchildren, and three great-great-grandchildren.
In 1977 Murry had a vision in which he was charged with spreading the word of God through the creation of "spirit-script." After the vision, Murry produced and brought reams of "script" to Rawling's office. A deeply religious man, Murry avowed the arcane script that he produced while in a trance represented direct communication with God. A session of prayer always preceded Murry's deciphering the spirit script, which he accomplished by viewing the script through a glass of well water.
Initially Murry produced the script on market receipts, bank calendars, or whatever material he had at hand. Eventually adding abstract linear figures representing human beings to the script, Murry produced stunning calligraphic drawings always concerned with good and evil, heaven and hell. Becoming increasingly interested in Murry's creations, Rawlings provided him with a small sum of money to purchase drawing supplies in 1979. From that time on Murry drew continuously with obsession zeal. The drawings were shown to artist Andy Nasisse, who considered them marvelous and made available to Murry a variety of drawing materials, including colored pencils, watercolors, pastels, and marking pens,
In the ten years before his death from cancer Murry produced hundreds of abstract drawings, all imbued with a gentle and ethereal beauty.
Source: Barbara Freeman, Biographies of Outsider Artists in "Parallel Visions: Modern Artists and Outsider Art," Copyright 1992 by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Princeton University Press,
hey love.what you doing?well my situation a lil better did a lilttle redoing the house and i got in nursing school(that means i can be responsible for your life if im your nurse one day)and i have to have people to practice i.v.'s on..so come on down mr.murry!!well i miss you!!and i got hair extensions..see!!
If you are going to be in Nashville for the Americana Conference, be sure to check out the Gram Parsons Petition Party at the Nashville Palace over by the Opryland Hotel Fri Sept 19 It's on 2611 McGavock Pike
"...He already had two volumes of poetry, Neon Poems and Apocalypse Rose out when in 1971 City Lights published his seminal novel, Last of The Moccasins. This novel grips, gleams and glistens with his hobohemian prose-style; spinning tales of his life in and around Wichita, his road trips to and from the West Coast along the Rt. 66 Benzedrine Highway and beyond, his crazy Hipster years and the boho life of his elder sister Betty..."
"World Without End" CD Release Show, Berkeley, CA, 10/26
Photography by Diana Elliott, www.dianaephoto.com
"Harvey Logan, 1904"
Live @ The Freight & Salvage
Berkeley, CA 10/26/06
Filmed by Paul Marcus
Live @ The Make-Out Room
San Francisco, CA
Filmer by Subina
