The Bro-Country era soiled and deeply stained the concept of smart party music in Nashville. During its ascendancy, country music became reduced to its least compelling common denominator; the young male gaze myopically focused on farm fields, trucks, tailgates, women, and booze. What once previously felt gritty and rooted in the southern rural experience became cartoonish and painfully plodding. Regional character simply became tired cliche and a marketable placeholder ripe for exploitation and mass production by the Nashville Music Machine.
That David Lee Murphy could make music he calls, “Saturday-night-in-a-pick-up truck-with-the-windows-rolled-down-having-a-good-time-party-music” sound vital, real, and interesting on the radio is a testament to his skills as songwriter.
That Tony Brown could harness and guide such a blue-collar approach to songwriting to the top of the charts in the mid nineties was a testament to his skills as a record producer and another impressive plume in a cap already feathered with brilliant albums other by insanely talented artists from this era.
Apparently every record label on Music row had rejected Murphy after he came to Nashville from southern Illinois in 1983. It wasn’t until 1992 when MCA finally offered him a recording contract.
In the interim Murphy played all the honky-tonks throughout middle Tennessee and Nashville with his band Blue Tick Hounds.
“When I came to town, there wasn’t a whole lot of rawness on the radio,” said Murphy.
Murphy was a deliberate and disciplined songwriter. In 2023, he was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame along with Keith Urban, Kix Brooks, Casey Beathard, and Rafe Van Hoy. He said, “ I feel like I worked really hard. You sit there all day at the coffee table and labour over songs…I’d write every single day to try to see what I could come up with.”
What sprung up through all the high weeds and rust of being out in the field so long was his 1994 MCA debut album Out with a Bang.
Murphy said, “ I think it was really good that it took me so long. I needed time to ‘season.’ In a way, I think I was prepared for this. As far as humility, I was prepared because I had been drug through the streets of Nashville for so long. It was a long time coming for me, but that’s how you really develop a strong sense of appreciation. And I think people recognize that you are a survivor.”
The appeal and allure of Out with a Bang is elusive. Murphy is not a great singer, but he has a ton of charm and charisma. He is a convincing story teller who naturally honours the sincerity contract between a country music artist and the country music audience. He is believable without having to fetishize authenticity or tradition. Humility hangs over the entire project.
These songs are not songwriter–ly in their poetry or thoughtfulness. Murphy is not Lyle Lovett or Steve Earle. More importantly, he doesn’t try to be. Rather Murphy’s songs are rugged and well-constructed compositions about having fun. Robert K. Oermann said, “It’s a sound that was forged the old-fashioned way, on dusty back roads, in raucous roadhouses, and alongside the railroad track at 3:00 am, a few beers over the limit.”
It’s party music with character driven songs. Whether it be Creal Williams in “Dust on the Bottle” or bartender Sally Cantrell in “Fish Ain’t Bitin’ ” there is something of a Tom T. Hall awareness to his narratives. People matter. If Murphy stands shoulder-to-shoulder with another Tony Brown protege it would be Marty Brown, except Murphy seemingly always had a stronger mainstream sensibility and intent.
Murphy was inspired by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The first concert he saw was Lynyrd Skynyrd. He admires the songwriting of Harlan Howard, Kris Kristoferson, and Billy Joe Shaver.
Those influences perfectly converge in “Party Crowd,” a deceptively simple smash radio single. It is a driving and pulsing song about misery looking for some company and a throbbing party crowd. The song was co-written with Jimbeau Hinson, the pen behind the magisterial Oak Ridge Boys 1981 hit ”Fancy Free,” Radio & Records celebrated the top-five Murphy hit as the most played song on Country Radio in 1995.
Murphy even worked a 1995 conversation he had with Minnie Pearl into a tremendously entertaining song titled ” Why Can’t People Just Get Along.” The inspirational meeting happened while Pearl and Murphy were on set of Nashville Now, the country music talk show hosted by Raph Emery that ran on TNN for a decade.
Real life experience flow throughout this album and are what makes it land with such credibility. Interestingly, in a 2009 interview Ken Morton asked, “Looking back on those MCA years, would you have done anything different on your releases if you had the chance to do it over again? Murphy said. “I’m sure I would have done a lot of things differently. Looking back on that first album, it was a different time period than it is now. Everything worked differently those days. There’s probably things I would have done differently. Yeah. That’s kind of water under the bridge, now. I’ve always tried to write the best songs I can write and just believe that everything works out for the best and for a reason.”
Creative freedom-regret and hindsight aside, this album quietly still stands out as a great party album from the ’90s.
Oddly enough I find the title track the only weak link here. It’s just too slow and laid-back for its title, much like Ricky Van Shelton’s “Wild Man” in that regard.
“Dust on the Bottle” is rightly a classic, and neck and neck with “The Road You Leave Behind” as the best song he ever wrote. He’s got this mix of thoughtfulness and gravel that reminds me at times of a harder-edged Hal Ketchum. However, you could tell as early as “Genuine Rednecks” that DLM was starting to run out of ideas. That said, his second wind as a songwriter has been pretty fruitful and led to some really solid songs, and I’m glad he got a couple more fluke turns behind the mic with “Loco” (which was improved with the now out of print “Muy Caliente” mix) and “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”.
And allow me to insert my obligatory grumbling that DLM does not have a picture in his Wikipedia article, nor have I found anyone who might have one. Commenters — any of you happen to have a pic?
Also my turn for a Bonus Beats: “High Weeds and Rust” was originally cut by Doug Stone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml1PKVCabdA
I remember “Dust on the Bottle.” It stuck out because it didn’t really seem to fit the country format at the time: It sounded like a rock song–like something from Mellencamp or Jon Bon Jovi or Springsteen. It went to #1, but it didn’t open the door to other similar rock songs being played. It was kind of a one-off.
…interestingly, this series of albums highlighted by mr. saros so far corresponds by and large with albums in my collection that i’ve always cherished as “precious solitaires”. among them the ones by james house, bobbie cryner, mandy barnett, lyle lovett or this one too. beyond those, i hardly ever bought/found any other records of those artists this side of the atlantic most likely.
whenever i see that picture above of david lee murphy i can’t help but thinking: what a good looking guy, like a rockstar actually. perhaps this favourable superficial impression might have worked more like a curse than a blessing in his case. at the time there was marty stuart, who fit that “rockstar” image in country already to the t. on top of evertything there was dwight yoakam who was the coolest of the sexy ones and of course billy ray cyrus. it could be that david lee murphy was just too good looking for his own good – i.e. putting him up against very strong “peer group” competition. and we haven’t talked about the attractive hunks from the hat act side of things back then. what a time of abundance in every aspect it was there in the 90s.
Was Barnett’s I’ve Got A Right To Cry not issued internationally? It didn’t make a dent at radio, but it made a bunch of mainstream press year-end lists and had a fairly high profile, at least on the scale of Mandy Barnett’s albums.
Indeed it was, Sire Records released it internationally and she definitely had some awareness there. In 2006 they even re-issued it and her first record as “The Platinum Collection.”
I would’ve been surprised if it hadn’t been released at the time! Wondering if that’s the Barnett album Tom was mentioning, rather than her debut.
Also, hello friend!
David Lee Murphy has been a favorite of mine for a while. I like that he’s not a gifted vocalist but that he knows how to use his voice. I love that he got a chance to put out a fifth record in 2018 and was “allowed” by country radio to have another hit with “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.” That song became my “mantra” in a turbulent time in my own life and like all great country songs, it connected. With me. While his second and third MCA albums gave diminishing returns with radio and commercial success, DLM then found success as a writer for others (Particularly for Kenny Chesney). In reality, the fact that he had ANY career as an artist himself is a remarkable achievement given he was pushing 40 in the late 90s and then nearly 60 when he had that final #1 hit as a singer with “…Alright.”
“Everything’s Gonna Be Alright”. Great song, horrible production.
I hated everything about it.