Jessie Murphy

Jessie Murphy's sound combines her love of the blues with dynamic pop melodies and guitar driven grooves in both her solo work and with her band, The Hits. Born and raised in New York City, her lyrics are inflected with the edge and color of its streets. Jessie lends her guitar skills to many other artists in the Antifolk scene including both The Voices and Timothy Dark. She's also played with established blues artists Reverend Easemore and the Mojo Workers, and The Sly Gerald's Band and she's performed at the "Blues 2000" festival. You can also catch Jessie singing and playing with her brother, singer-songwriter, David Murphy. Jessie and The Hits released their EP Live at the Fun House this past June 17 and their CD release party at Makor was listed by the magazine, The New Yorker as required listening for that week. Two of Jessie's songs, Good Life and S.O.B will appear in the upcoming indie film release, Last Request starring Danny Aiello.

BUZZ

"Jessie Murphy is a winning singer-songwriter who wields a bluesy guitar" -New York Magazine

"It's great to hear of some twenty-something kid like Murphy knowledgeably idolizing blues men like Elmore James and musical love-and-loveless-ness experts like Etta James." -Penner Mac Bryant, Antimatters Magazine

"Jessie Murphy writes great lyric-driven songs with a fresh take on the bluesāshe's a hip, talented and funny performer." -Lach, Sidewalk Cafe founder of the Anti-folk scene

"Jessie Murphy rocks." -Laurel Hoffman, The Voyces

"Jessie Murphy stands where hundreds if not thousands have stood before her and has a better chance of being talent-spotted than usual." -Edward Helmore, The London Guardian

"Jessie Murphy has real talent and taste in music. She knows how to play guitar, not just strum out a few chords and her vocals prove that she's no ordinary singer-songwriter." -Carrie Crespo, Toolbox NYC founder

Jessie Murphy Explains the Anti

I am antifolk because I'm the chosen representative of the blues disco alliance straight from Outta Space! Here on this planet to play your damn pants off!!! No seriously... In my mind, Antifolk philosophy is akin to Kantian philosophy in which the ethical duties of the individual are determined by principles of universality. A moral obligation must be universal in so much as it is applicable to all people at all times in all places. The trick is that there is no specific law one can articulate, no one thing one should do, that does not in some way render itself inapplicable in another situation. Thus Kant reasons that an individual must govern himself according by what he must NOT do, the good, the golden rule can only be glimpsed by defining the negative space around it. In his Categorical Imperative Kant states, "Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a general natural law." Therefore, you must not do to another being what you do not want done to you. Antifolk defines itself by what it is not, what it strives not to be. The Folk it is "Anti" is in one sense the narrow minded, bland, and stuck up New York City folk scene that sent founder Lach running in the early 1980s and at the same time it is everything that sucks about popular music in America today, namely that it is too often overly processed, un-emotive, commercially driven pap. And while today's radio formatting dictates that there are only 6 acceptable styles of music, Anti-folk slices through this delusion with Kantian precision connecting itself with the vastness and diversity of the universal by recognizing what it is not, by recognizing that the universal is NOT bound or limited by any such "folk".