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In the heady, heated days of the early Sixties --when Joan Baez was beginning to make her reputation, Bob Dylan signed with Columbia, and Washington Square was awash with folk music every summer Sunday--a 16-year old Canadian named Bruce Murdoch left home and made his way to the City to become a singer-songwriter.

He became known as a contender in the basket houses and the folk centers of New York, singing at Gerde's Folk City, making a name and writing songs. He recorded with Patrick Sky and Richard Farina on Elektra, was discovered by Richie Havens and signed for an album with Stormy Forest records. He played at the New York Folk Festival, the Rheingold Festival in Central Park, knocked them dead at the Mariposa Folk Festival back in Ontario, and graced the stage at Carnegie Hall and at the record-breaking Newport Folk Festival of 1968. He played for SNCC, and he played for Eugene McCarthy. He was known as "the angry Canadian" by some, but others called him Canada's answer to Dylan himself. As the Sixties approached the Seventies, Bruce Murdoch's star was on the ascendant in the work he loved best. And as the Seventies began, for reasons that have never been identified, Bruce dropped out, left the recording studios behind, and returned to Canada.

He made his living laboring, selling, and eventually as a teacher and school principal. He has taught in the most remote regions of Canada near the Arctic Circle, and on Indian reserves, and in small towns on the edge of lonely Alberta rivers. He has been a counselor, a civic leader, and a first-responder and fireman putting his boots on the ground to protect the lives and property of others. Except for a single eponymous vinyl record in 1980, music was behind him for the most part. As far as New York City was concerned, Bruce Murdoch had vanished into the great, cold Northwest.

But Bruce's heart never stopped beating in time, and his ear for genuine human expression never faltered. As the century faded out and the "'aughts" began, a conspiracy of friends evolved which coaxed him from his self-imposed exile and brought every kind of tinder and kindling to bear they could think of to unfreeze his musical genius. And as that process gradually built up heat, Bruce began again to write the deeply honest, straight, purely alive and human songs for which he is known.

(Photo courtesy of Andrew Gryn)

In the last two years, he has re-appeared as a musician, giving a concert at La Sala Rossa in Montreal, appearing on Canada's CKUT radio, and performing on the main stage at the Branches and Roots Festival in Ormstown, Quebec, a town on the banks of the Chateauguay River an hour south of Montreal and twenty minutes north of New York State. Working with a brilliant producer and guitarist, Ron Bankley, Bruce wrapped up a new CD, Matters of the Heart, through an incredible stint of dexterous coordination and timing, and it entered the public arena in August of '08.

Bruce and Ron have already started the recording work for their even better 2009 CD. And Bruce still doesn't know why he walked out of a rising career and left it in cinders back in 1972; but his new work gives new life to the tale of the Phoenix bursting forth from old ashes.

Research and brief bio done by Amos Jessup.
(Thank you, Amos.)

To order a copy of 'Matters of the Heart' either contact Bruce direct, via email at:
irishancestry@gmail.com

...or, go to the
Main Site
click on 'Add to Cart' then details of how to order by 'Paypal' are clearly displayed.

Below are three songs taken from 'Matters of the Heart' interspersed with a few more words from Bruce, taken from the CD cover:

'I CAN SEE YOU NOW'

"There is one person I must thank yet again, Ron Bankley is a friend from decades ago and he has been the driving force behind this CD (even while he was working on one of his own). All I did was write and sing the songs; he turned them into a reality."

'YOU MADE MY HEART BEAT FAST'

"This is a rather public place to be telling y'all how much I love you, but then maybe there isn't enough of that - telling people you love them."

'AS SOON AS POSSIBLE'