MICHAEL "BIG DOG" MURPHY

THE MUSIC

Michael “Big Dog” Murphy has been carrying a guitar around for most of his life. More than five decades of songs, bars, bands, mistakes, miles, good nights, bad nights and stories have left their mark — on the man and on the music.

The music is rooted in blues, but it never stayed there. Rock & roll, folk, Americana and the old songwriters all found their way in. Murphy performs solo with an acoustic guitar or plugs in with Michael Murphy & The MOB, a three-piece band built around the same idea: play it like you mean it.

A HARD ROAD

The road here wasn't particularly straight. Broken homes, broken promises, bad decisions, drugs, booze, scars — some visible and some not. There were years worth bragging about and others better understood than celebrated.

Through all of it, one thing survived: the songs.

Murphy got clean from drugs in 2010 and alcohol in 2016. The years since haven't erased what came before. They've simply given him enough distance to write about it. Songs like Bottom of the Bottle, Hellbound, Dixie and others don't come from an invented character. They come from somewhere.

A DIFFERENT SHADE OF BLUES

Murphy calls what he does blues-rooted, because the blues is where much of it begins — but not necessarily where it ends. There is rock & roll in there, folk, country before somebody polished all the dirt off it, and the influence of songwriters who understood that three chords and the truth can still knock somebody flat.

Solo, the room gets the songs and the stories behind them. With The MOB, those same roots get louder, dirtier and considerably less well behaved.

No loopers. No backing tracks. No clicks.

No tracks. No tricks.