“There should be a song about a werewolf”
An Interview with Michael Hurley

by Nick Jaina

Michael Hurley has been writing and recording songs since the early '60's. He was born in Pennsylvania, lived in Vermont for twenty years, and currently lives in Astoria, Oregon. He has made up a lot of songs, forgotten a lot of songs, made up better ones, forgotten those, and then remembered them again. If you haven't heard his own recordings you might have heard one of his songs covered by Cat Power, who recorded two of his tunes on her Covers Record and another one for her album You Are Free. Violent Femmes and Devendra Banhart have also recorded versions of his songs.

Michael Hurley is a kind man who initially answers a question very abruptly. The conversation falls silent, you think to yourself that maybe you didn't ask a very good question, and then you look at him and he has this far-off look in his eyes like he still has more to say. If you give him an extra moment, he'll keep going.

Nick Jaina: What was it like playing music in the late sixties and early seventies? Did the gigs pay well? Were the crowds more receptive than they are now?

Michael Hurley: They didn't pay too well. Not where I started out. I had played before in Boston and California and New York City. I was like a solo folkie, but I'd never played up in the boondocks where I kind of had to improvise my methods. But no one was making a living. After a while a few of us were, not me, but a few of my friends were kind of making a living, but now here in Portland I know a lot of people that are making a living from music, but I never made a living at it or expected to. All the 20 years I was in Vermont I just never expected to. It was just fun.

NJ: How did you keep food on the table?

MH: Just many other things... painting houses, selling stuff, growing stuff. A lot of odd jobs. Where I really started to get ahead was when I started to sell my paintings. It was after I started going down to New York City in the early 80's, and I brought about 12 of my watercolor paintings in these gallery frames, matted and under glass, and I hung them up behind the stage. And I sold eleven of them. So I left with more money than I ever had in my pocket, in New York City, leaving a gig. So after that I was always bringing paintings to my gigs and that was a big difference in my life, financially. I guess it was a year or two after that that I stopped painting houses and doing farm work. If someone said that they wanted a painting and they couldn't buy it right then or maybe I didn't have what they wanted, I'd take their name and address and follow up on it. I'd find them and say, "I've got a painting for you now."  I think the music moved ahead of painting somewhere along the line. Anyway, I'm painting less. There's a big demand for my paintings, but there's no supply.  (laughs)

NJ: Are you just less interested in it now?

MH: Less interested now, I guess. What I do now is cartoons and albums covers and posters, and a few paintings. I do just a few, but I'd much rather play music. And then, since that takes me out of my home, when I get back to my home I kind of relax. Instead of painting I goof off, or I write more songs or learn more covers. I think that's the most active creative thing for me is music. I'll do it no matter what. Just alone in my home, I'll be doing it.

NJ: You've been writing songs for over forty years. When you sit down to write a song, do you feel like all the songs you've written are standing over you shoulder? Is there a pressure to do something different, or is it just "I'm gonna write another song."

MH: Not really. Usually, I catch something, something runs through my mind. I figure well, I'd like to do a song with this, or develop this into a song. It could be words, some phrase. Or it could be some piece of musical notes. Sometimes it's a whole melody that just runs through my head. I think it was once last year, I dreamed a song. I woke up and sang it into a little recorder early in the morning as soon as I got out of bed so I wouldn't forget it. And then I listened to it later, and said, "What's that melody about? From that melody, what is this song about?" Sometimes I just pick up an instrument and start strumming a whole verse and a melody. I just make it up right there. The song "Light Green Fellow," I wrote that a long time ago, about 1965. I had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and I think I just thought, "Well I'll record something" Click, well it's on. I just started playing and I played the entire "Light Green Fellow," and that's it. That's what it was.  

NJ: Is it weird to have something that you didn't put relatively that much time or effort into be something that everyone likes? Does it make you think that you shouldn't work so hard sometimes?

MH: I don't know. I like the song myself. Some of these tunes I probably would've forgotten if people hadn't kept asking for them.

NJ: Is that the only time you had that experience where a song came out in one shot, or has that happened again?

MH: Well, "Werewolf" was like that too. We were sitting around, a bunch of people jamming, about six people in a little circle playing all these songs. And we figured we don't know any more songs. We had played for probably three or four hours and we didn't know any more songs. And we figured there should be more songs. We figured there should be a song about a werewolf. And I just rattled that one out.

NJ: And now there's a song about a werewolf.

MH: Yeah.

NJ: And other people have recorded that song. Cat Power recorded it. What did you think of that version?

MH: It's very cool. It's really a different entity. It employs a different ... there's kind of a yodel break in there, and when she does that it's totally different. The chord progression is different. When you actually look at the notes she's doing, they're different too. One time I heard her on the radio in San Francisco and she said, "I'm going to do a medley of Everly Brothers tunes now." And she starts singing them and she's not singing the right tunes, and she's not even playing the right guitar chords for what she is singing. But it's totally okay, the way it comes out. It's just fine. Although, why do you call this the Everly Brothers? Why aren't you playing guitar to go with your singing? Anyway, I like that version of "Werewolf." It's in a movie now, "Powder Blue"... I haven't seen it yet. I just heard about it. I was told that the Cat Power version of "Werewolf" was on there, and the actress in the scene is doing a pole dance, like she's working in a strip joint. 

NJ: How do you generally feel when you hear that somebody has covered your song and you listen to it? Is it weird, or flattering? Does it seem like someone is reading pages of your diary?

MH: No, it always feels good. I've never really been unhappy with someone singing one of my songs.