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Cowboy singer-songwriter Murphey plans concert at Cortez Elks Lodge

Grammy nominee will perform benefit for hospice program

Murphey

From visions of a ghost horse running across a field to his grandfather's stories told on a Texas porch, Michael Martin Murphey wrote hits like “Wildfire" that have endured through the decades.

Along with his classics like “Carolina in the Pines" and “I'm Gonna Miss You, Girl," Murphey plans to offer his latest collection of cowboy and bluegrass music at his next concert in Cortez.

Murphey will play the benefit for Hospice of Montezuma hot on the heels of a Grammy appearance in Los Angeles, where he was nominated in the Best Bluegrass Album category for “Buckaroo Blue Grass."

“It was a smackdown - I was floored. I've written a lot of songs but had never done a completely all-acoustic album," Murphey said, adding he was new to the genre of bluegrass.

He may be new to bluegrass, but he isn't new to awards. Murphey was nominated for a Grammy once before for best dual vocal performance with Holly Dunn. Twelve years after his first hit in pop music in 1983, he was awarded Best New Artist by the Academy of Country Music, beating out George Strait for the honor.

Murphey has received awards from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum and Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

His now-platinum “Cowboy Songs" album was the first cowboy music album to hit gold since Marty Robbins.

“In 1989, I just thought that the trend in country music was moving away from tradition," he said. “I had always wanted to go back to my roots, so I did Westfest, a tribute to cowboys and Indians and mountain men."

Murphey founded and trademarked the Western cultural festival in Colorado in 1987, also breaking ground with a concert series called Cowboy Christmas, which now tours 40 cities annually.

His son produced not only the Grammy nominated album but Murphey's latest, “Buckaroo Bluegrass II," due out in mid-February.

“I used a lot of the same pickers that were on my cowboy album," Murphey said, adding he has turned his attention back to cowboy music, which he hopes will eventually claim its own category at the Grammy Awards.

“Cowboy music is a huge cultural item in the history of this country, and if polka, based in the European culture, has its own category, then certainly music that is indigenous to this soil should have a category."

Murphey said he tried to show the overlap of bluegrass and cowboy music.

“Since the buckaroo part of bluegrass got nominated, that's proof that we succeeded," he said. “People are getting the message that the two genres are close."

Murphey said the genres share a common root of Celtic and Hispanic origins, but cowboy music precedes bluegrass by about 60 years. He added people often confuse cowboy and country music as well.

“They think cowboy music and country music are the same, but they're not," he said with a laugh. Murphey said the big difference between cowboy and country music is a mixture of black, Celtic and Hispanic influences.

“One-fourth that went up the Chisolm trail were black," he said. “So you get an interesting mix. Also the subject matter is different. The songs are about horses, cattle, open range and the American West."

Murphey even sings on horseback, at the National Western Stock Show in Denver, the San Antonio Livestock show in Texas and the American Quarter Horse World Show in Oklahoma City, among others.

Perhaps it's fate that one of Murphey's most famous songs, “Wildfire," was about a horse.

Murphey said singers like him, John Denver and John Fogerty were getting on the pop charts, far from today's pop artists from heavy metal or hip-hop.

“I grew up in a cowboy culture. All through my career I always wore cowboy," he said. “That song carried me through a lot of hard times.

“I was living in Los Angeles at the time but living in the mountains and driving back and forth, working in Hollywood as a songwriter. So two or three nights a week I'd sleep on a friend's floor and drive up to the mountains on the weekends just to get out of the smog."

Murphey said he was up late one night and his co-writer, Larry Cansler, had already gone to bed.

“About three o' clock in the morning I woke up. I had completely dreamed that song. So I just got my guitar and yellow pad and wrote down what I dreamed."

Murphey wrote most of the lyrics, and Cansler helped him a few hours later with the melody.

After Murphey had performed the song for a few years, he realized there was something deeper to the dream.

“My grandfather told me stories," Murphey said. “He was from Kentucky, and one of the stories is one of a ghost horse that could never be captured. I was only 3 or 4 years old and didn't know that grandpa had told that story.

“He left the coal mines to be a cowboy, so he loved to sit around and tell stories - stories that die and come back to save people."

Murphey said when his mother showed him an old book they used to read called Wildfire, he realized that was where the name came from - but the book's version of Wildfire was completely different than Murphey's ghost horse.

“Your dreams are always mixed up elements of things," he said. “About 50 percent of (my songs) come from dreams, and they're usually the best ones. The ones I try to sit down and calculate out, they don't have that mysterious, real visionary, artistic connection that the songs that come from dreams do."

Reach Hope Nealson at hopen@cortezjournal.com.