Goodbye to the Godfather of Freak Folk
by Jennie Rose Halperin
I first heard Michael Hurley play in a small, mostly empty venue in Berlin in 2013. It was an early set; the bar was muted, brown, and dingy in dusty late spring light, but when he came in he lit up the front of the room, a tiny white-haired man with a big mustache and shaggy haircut hidden by a short-brimmed cap. Over the years I got to see him play several times, and the setup was always the same: Hurley alone in a chair with his guitar in his lap, cracking jokes and singing in his warbly, yodelling tenor. His sets were unusually captivating for a solo folk performer, and though he toured consistently for probably 20 years, he seemed thrilled to be on stage every time I saw him.
When I heard Hurley play at St. Ann’s as the headliner at the Brooklyn Folk Festival this fall, the cavernous space was packed with young, mostly white people in thrift store clothing. The majority took themselves too seriously to laugh at his schtick, and they were as hushed and reverent as they might have been at a church service. After a short solo set, during which he referred to himself as “the original hippie,” he invited a young woman in tap shoes onto the stage and introduced her as his “new friend.” She was an amateur dancer, and his music doesn’t lend itself to tap dancing, but it almost worked. Hurley was so delighted, and we ate it up.
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