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INTERVIEW WITH JON MURPHY
How did you start playing guitar?
When I was 13 I picked up my dad’s old beat up acoustic. It only had like 4 working strings and I had no idea how to play it but i fooled around
with the low E string. A couple years later, a friend gave me a Squire Strat and a Roland Jazz amp. I bought a couple pedals and just played every day after school for at least 5 hours or until
my mom got home.I learned how to play cover songs from bands I liked through online tabs. I did this throughout my teenage years.
Can you talk a little about your unique guitar style?
I am not a technical guitar player nor am I classically trained, so my style is mostly derived from the music I enjoyed growing up (The Cure,
Radiohead, Brand New, Converge, New Order, Sonic Youth, Mount Eerie, etc). I became a gear nerd and would invest my time learning how pedals interacted with each other and with my instrument. I
amassed a pretty decent collection of pedals and throughout my 20s, bought a better guitar and better amp. I got a good deal on a dark red 1970s Japanese Electra SG and bought a Fender
Deluxe.
From my late teens through my 20s, I enjoyed experimenting with drone sounds, looping, distortion and delay. At times, I would overdo it and just
make noise. It took a long time to learn when to pull back or when to embellish sounds based on context. I’m always learning and trying new methods.
You have been in a variety of bands, from Cave Days to Makeout Club to Dad. What do you see as uniting those projects?
If you look at my work as a whole, there isn’t a lot tying it all together. Cave Days started from songs that I wrote between 2007 and 2009 by
myself. That project was heavily influenced by British Punk and New Wave, as well as Shoegaze and Indie Rock. It was my baby. I wrote all the music and lyrics and eventually got a full band
together. After doing that around Bushwick and Manhattan for a few years, I disbanded the project. There were a lot of signs telling me it was time to move on. As if there was some kind of black
cloud following Cave Days around. People enjoyed the music, but there were logistical and personal reasons for why I called it quits.
I almost quit playing music altogether, but then I got a phone call from a childhood friend, Jamey Lacey. He told me he was starting a band and
needed a guitarist to go on tour with them. Immediately, I thought this is an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up. His brother is well known frontman, Jesse Lacey, from Brand New and I knew that we
would be playing to larger crowds than what you’d see at a Bushwick bar/venue. We toured around the North East and I realized that I prefer just playing guitar over being the frontman, like I was
in Cave Days. When the tour finished, I parted ways with Coasta and joined my friend Robert’s group, The Makeout Club, as lead guitarist.
The Makeout Club was a huge learning experience for me. This was the first time I was pushed to play music that was outside of my usual style. It
was sexy, pop, dance music - and we wore makeup and weird outfits on stage. There was a lot of emphasis on performance with this project. The shows kept getting bigger and the playing had to be
solid so I grew with the band and adapted to the sound.
It wasn’t until about 3 years into The Makeout Club that I realized I was missing something. I wanted to play harder and louder. I wanted to write
abrasive music. Music that I touched on as a teenager but did not flesh out. I never had the chance to play in a punk band in high school like most of my peers. Then one night, at one of my local
dives, I bumped into James Watson and David Flick (from Hounds Basket and Misdemeanors, respectively). We had talked about playing music together over the years, but something made it stick this
time. I showed them demos I recorded over 10 years prior of nasty metal guitar riffs. They looked at me and I could tell they were serious now. It wasn’t a couple weeks after that we started
Dad.
Dad is full on thrash punk and metal. It is the music I have always wanted to play live. There’s nothing but energy and emotion in it. I feel like I
am thriving in Dad and couldn’t be happier with it. There is a mutual respect and equality in creativity put in by each member.
I guess if you’re looking for something that unites these projects, it would be that I do not like to stay in a box. I like to jump around from
genre to genre and see what I can contribute.
You recently scored a film. Can you describe that experience?
Scoring a film is something I have always wanted to do but had no idea how to do it. I’m lucky enough to have friends who are great artists that
work in the film industry. One such person is Luis Alarcon. He approached me one night and proposed that I score a short 15 minute film he has been working on. At the time, I was dabbling in
experimental ambient arrangements and trying to make “sleep tapes”. I was also working on some short scores for test scenes that my friend, Kelley Brannon, needed for her feature length project
entitled “Empty Spaces”.
Luis had heard my music with Cave Days, Makeout Club and some of the short scores I did for “Empty Spaces”. He was impressed enough to ask me to
take on his project, “Undone”. What I didn’t know was that his short would be part of a feature length anthology of short films that was being submitted to film festivals all over the country.
The project went right along my trajectory of creating more ambient music and I love a challenge, so I happily agreed.
What I learned from scoring a film, is that you should get as much information about the film as possible. Story, character development, mood, etc.
You should always take in the actors movement and pace of dialog as well. This information serves to help generate a sonic palette which will help you find what direction to take the
score.
Luis’s film was a drama that centered around two characters who had a falling out of sorts, so I decided to reference Jon Brion’s “Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind” and Johnny Greenwood’s score from “There Will Be Blood”. I wanted to utilize minimalism and classic instrumentation to bring a sense of tension, sadness and dread to the
film. The score relied heavily on acoustic guitar, violins, airy synth pads, and bass drones to move the story forward.
Upon finishing his score, I was asked by Lee Peterkin, who was working on the feature length anthology with Luis, to score the opening title
sequence and ending credits of the whole film. Since these sections did not have actors or dialog to reference for sound, I sat and took in the visuals and imagined what I would hear. Lee wanted
to convey a sense of gloom and doubt, since the overall theme of the feature film was Dark Love or how love can lead to loss and so on. I started imagining gothic church organs and brass horns
heard from a distance through a fog, or over a mountain. I thought this would make for a pretty dramatic soundscape. It took a few submissions to get the green light from Lee and the other
directors. The film, "Prism - Anthology”, premiered at the Art of Brooklyn Film Festival in June 2017. It won Best Ensemble Cast and is currently seeking distribution.
The best feeling was when I saw and heard the film and my score on a big screen in front of a sold out theater. During the directors Q & A, Luis
pointed out that I was sitting in the front row and that I scored a majority of the film we just saw. I received a round of applause from the audience and felt incredibly humbled and grateful for
the whole experience.
INSIDE MANDARIN
live inside a mandarin
for a week
contemplating size
juices being absorbed
through skin
refreshing
waiting for a bite to
fall onto an unkept floor
a strange week
clostraphobic at worst
colorful at best
a rest from tombstones
crossing eyebrows
which grow closer
everyday
as doctors request apples
shamans are lost within orange fields
mandarins
house people
whose heads grow
free with a body kissed
vitamin C - finally
nurished outside oneself
-Ryan Drag '17
https://ryandragpoetry.wordpress.com/
