By Sonny Smith

When I met musician John Murry, Memphis transplant, I naturally asked him about hometown. He told me: “When I first got out here I had to be told I couldn’t keep a pistol in my glove box.”

Murry has been here for four years - creating a music label, Evangeline Records; playing in a few bands; ruffling some feathers; and raising his daughter. “The thing is, people from Memphis are basically from Mississippi, or maybe Arkansas," he said. "Memphis is the capitol of Mississippi. There is a fair share of disputes settled by knives and guns.... The scene there is kind of beautifully dysfunctional - everybody chasing after everybody’s wives and stuff.”

He’s put a lot of records out in a short time with Evangeline. “My family was intertwined with William Faulkner’s. The Murrys and the Faulkners intermarried three or four times," he said. "My grandfather owned some property signed over by Bill, and when he died the grandkids got a little bit of money." His friend, artist Bob Frank, also brought some money to the project.

“It’s a ridiculously fair label," Murry continued. "I just built it the way I thought labels were supposed to be. I just don’t make anything. I don’t think artists should ever be in debt to a label. Artists are already in debt - spiritual debt. Without artistic freedom you don’t have art - there can’t be a compromise. I don’t tell the artists anything about how it should be or what would sell.”

Murry started playing onstage not long after arriving in San Francisco: he sang some murder ballads, some dark southern songs. “The scene was so ridiculously hip," he observed. "The smug look on everybody’s face made me wanna punch someone in the face. I guess I was feeling like aggravating the situation - or just aggravating myself, or shocking myself or someone. There was lynching in the lyrics and the word "nigger" and stuff - and so I just put this little confederate flag sticker on my guitar."

It got him tangled up with some local scenesters who were offended. “I grew up where it’s mostly black," Murry explained. "I know black people - it’s probably not something I’d do in the south, but here in San Francisco, it just seemed like something people need here. They’re so incredibly self-righteous.... There was some problem with the soundman, and they thought I had a problem with the soundman because he was gay or something. So I was kind of accused of being racist and anti-gay…”

The story of his arrival coincides poetically with his reason for leaving Memphis. “My wife got a job out here," said Murry. "She used to do a bunch of activism stuff, standing in front of bulldozers and stuff. When the human resources guy found out she was an activist he refused to let her teach in the public schools. We had to get out.”

Born in Tupelo, the man dropped out of high school at 15. “They just make you read horrible shit in the schools," he said. "My whole family was a little weird about literature cause of Faulkner being our cousin and everything.” He sat in with Mississippi All Stars when Duane Burnside was gone. He idolized Greg Cartwright of the Compulsive Gamblers. “I love all that pseudo ‘60s stuff,” Murry said. He did some sound work on the first movie of Hustle and Flow's Craig Brewer.

The city could use a little of Murray’s Memphis here in San Francisco. Take this story from the man: “There was this one time Bob Frank was in the studio, at Knox Phillips - that’s the old Sun records run by his [Sam's] son. Bob’s in there. They get in some argument with some guy. Bob says, “The confederacy is a lost cause." The guy flips out. They’d frisked him at the door, but I guess he had a gun hid in his boot. "The hell with that," the guy says, and he pulls the gun out and shoots it off somewhere. Everybody hits the deck. Everybody except Jim Dickinson who was at the board still trying to fiddle with the knobs. They tell Jim, 'Get down, man,' and he says, 'Nah, there’s not enough reverb on the pistol.'

"It doesn’t really matter if it’s true or not.”


BOB FRANK AND JOHN MURRY
With Jeffrey Luck Lucas and Silver Darling
Mon/25, 8 p.m., $10
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016
www.cafedunord.com