In Philly, Hurley played at hippie coffeehouses a couple of times, but says he didn’t like to practice, so decided it would be better to just work at Sam’s Grocery in what was then the Polish neighborhood in town. He got an apartment for $25 a month, and illegally hooked up both gas and electric, so the living was easy. He had converted to a macrobiotic diet following his experience at Bellevue, when someone told him it would be an alternative to taking the horse pills they’d prescribed for his post-release therapy. Sam’s was just around the corner and he spent his days making kielbasa sausages until he got fired for being weird. A new career as a life model for art classes stalled out as well, so Hurley and Pasta split for Cambridge, MA.
In Cambridge, Hurley settled down into a series of jobs. He and Pasta were new parents (they would have one daughter and a pair of sons), and he decided he’d try his hand as a more serious breadwinner. This was not something that came easily to him. He had a long series of oddball (as opposed to merely odd) jobs. He sold hot pretzels on the street from a cart decorated with paintings of Boone and Jocko (more on them in a minute—hang loose). He made slats for venetian blinds. The only one he seems to remember fondly involved wheeling around carts full of cookie dough, for an industrial baking set-up. “I liked a job like that,” he says. “Where you could kind of space out all day. That one I kept for a long time.”
Early in ’66, Hurley decided he should go down to NYC and try to get that second Folkways album going again. But Folkways had moved its offices and studios, so he said “screw it” and left. A bit later, the Holy Modal Rounders got signed to ESP-Disk for the album, Indian War Whoop. They did a couple of Michael’s songs on that LP and recommended that ESP-Disk sign him as well.
“ESP said, ‘Have him send us a demo,’” Hurley says. “So I sorta put a band together. Martin Mull was in it. And Lenny Capizzi [who co-wrote Bobby Pickett’s ‘The Monster Mash’] had a big orchestra there. I was getting musicians out of his band. Like his drummer, Bill Elgart, plus Robin Remaily. We just rehearsed, but it was a very professional group. We were working on ‘Give Me the Cure,’ and ‘Hoot Owls.’ But in the end I just sent them a solo demo. I figured I was ‘in’ with ESP. I just needed a band for when they’d bring me down to NY. Then it comes back that ESP doesn’t want it. Bernard Stollman heard the mock trumpet and he says, ‘What’s this guy trying to do? Sing with his mouth closed? And why is everything so slow?’ Stampfel said, ‘Well, he’s kind of like an amphetamine head in reverse.’ Stollman didn’t go for it. So I never finished organizing that group. I just said, ‘Forget it guys.’ But it’s too bad. Could have made another one. I still like that mock trumpet. Three of the songs on that demo I also sent to Karen Dalton. I didn’t hear back from her, but years later she did play ‘O My Stars’ for me on her old guitar.”
In 1996, the songs from this demo, as well as some tunes left from the second unissued Folkways LP, ended up as Parsnips Snips, issued initially on LP in Germany by Veracity. Recorded at home on his trusty Wollensak, the music on Parsnips is an obvious evolution from the earlier recordings. Hurley’s guitar is more prominent and he does lots of the funny little single string runs that marked his later work. And there’s a bit more obvious swing to the music. There are very different versions of some songs that would show up again later, and the mock trumpet on ‘Give Me a Cure’ is some of the best you’ll ever hear anywhere. What was Stollman thinking?
After a year in Cambridge, Hurley moved to nearby Brookline and continued working an unusual sequence of jobs. More importantly, he began drawing a comic strip in The Broadside of Boston and doing a radio show on WTBS-FM which was then the station at MIT (before Ted Turner bought those call letters for his own use). The show was called “The Swamp” and featured a theme song by Allen Toussaint. Hurley played bluegrass, old blues, old jazz. “All the same stuff I still like now,” he says. Eventually “Rube” started coming on the show as well and they’d play live. He’d also invite up folkies he met at the Broadside office when he was dropping off his comic strip. Whether or not airchecks of these shows exist is unclear. As to the Broadside comic strip, it ran regularly during ’69-’70, the final year of the Broadside’s existence.
“The Broadside started out as just a folk music thing, but then it got into radical rants,” Hurley says. “It had started out as one piece of paper. Just something that said, ‘Bill Staines is playing Club 47.’ By ’69 it had become an incredible collection of Dave Wilson’s rants. I delivered my cartoon every other week. It was a lot of work, but I was getting published. Which was good. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. After about a year, I showed up to deliver my latest installment and the door was closed. That was the end of the Broadside. No one had ever told me they were thinking of closing. Just got there and it was no more.”
The strip usually starred Boone and Jocko, a pair of delinquent, beatnik cartoon wolves who have recurred often in his visual art as well as lyrics. They have been an important part of Hurley’s gestalt over the years.
“I started drawing them when I was in about 10th grade,” he says. “We had these two collies. My brother and his friend used to sit around and make up stories about these dogs, based on their characters. We liked this guy Boone, this dog, he was kind of outrageous. He had a very different character from the other dog, whose name was Count. Count was blind in one eye. That’s why he’s got those dark glasses. But I changed his name to Jocko because there was this show on TV. It was an alternative to Dick Clark. It was the black version, called Jocko’s Rocket Ship. Jocko was the Interplanetary DJ. He had this show and it was really cool. So I changed Count’s name to Jocko. Then I blinded him in the other eye.”
In Massachusetts, Hurley mostly eschewed attending concerts, unless it was Sam & Dave, or old friends like the Holy Modal Rounders or the Youngbloods. Fortuitously, the Youngbloods had managed to turn Dino Valenti’s ‘Get Together’ into a surprise hit at the end of their RCA contract. A bidding war for the band ensued, with Warner Brothers winning. As part of their signing deal, they were given a custom label to curate—Raccoon Records.
Jesse Colin Young had long been a fan of Hurley and his music, but could never figure out quite how to present him to anyone who hadn’t come up in the same rural hipster scene. Now he had the chance. He visited Hurley in Brookline, with his special roadie, Earthquake, in tow to assess the scene.
“One night we went out somewhere and we were coming back kinda late to my house—Jesse, me and Earthquake,” Hurley recalls. “My neighbor had gone nuts. He came up to my place with a carving knife. He couldn’t stand that Earthquake and Jesse were hanging out. It was too many hippies for the street. He always knew that I was horrible, but now I had Banana and Earthquake and all these guys going in and out. He had this long carving knife and he came into my yard, he said, ‘You guys are peace farty.’ He was pointing this carving knife at me, Jesse and Earthquake. We said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘You want to call the cops? There’s a cop right across the street.’ He knew that the cop hated us, too. He thought it would be a hilarious joke if we asked this cop, Red, for help. That was his best friend. He’s pointing this long knife at us. Earthquake looks at him, and he kind of rummages around in our yard and picks up this big hunk of wood, all full of nails and barbed wire. He comes over to the guy and says, ‘Hey! Hey, you! Get out of here!’ Whoosh! Earthquake was a large fellow, with long red hair that went all over the place.”
Despite problems with neighbors, Young decided to record the album in Hurley’s bedroom, which was equipped with a piano. Michael was working as a janitor at the Paris Cinema at the time. And Young would show up when he could to record the album that would become Armchair Boogie.
“The sessions were great,” Hurley says. “Michael Kane played bass on it ‘cause he had the apartment across the hall from me and we both brewed a lot of beer. And I brought in my old pal Robin Remaily.”
Armchair Boogie is a thoroughly wonderful album. Homemade sounding, but much more evolved than the earlier stuff, there’s great fiddlin’ by Rube, and other gentle accompaniment that gives the album a stellar feel. There are also classic tunes here, like ‘Light Green Fellow’ and ‘Sweedeedee’ (so memorably covered by Cat Power on 2000’s The Covers Record).
Wash your clothes Sweedeedee
And hang them on the line
I can tell by the way you wash your clothes
Your cookin’ must be fine
The album didn’t sell all that well, but it got good reviews and Hurley decided it might be time to start playing live again (his first shows since Philadelphia). He began playing some of the newly arisen hippie bars in Cambridge and Somerville.