Kaz Murphy loves a challenge, so when he was asked to be nice to states that seem to have turned not nice (or, as the modern speak has it, “where only not good happens bigly” he immediately rose to it, as he told us: “People in my circles were just putting these states down. They’re filled with MAGA folks voting for Trump. So, instead of continuing to hate on them, my pal asked if I could write something nice. And I said, ‘Yes sir, I can.’ I picked those states because they’re significant, of course, but I really like how they sound together. It’s almost like one long word: Iowa Ohio Arizona.”
The result is a song that encourages the people of these states to recognise the beauty they inhabit and perhaps find some more beautiful thoughts to live by whilst they are doing that. It’s a song about future voting as well, as Murphy sings the catchy refrain “Iowa Ohio Arizona / In my heart, I think you’re feelin’ blue / Iowa Ohio Arizona / Oh, my darlin’, I love you.” And Kaz Murphy is putting his money where his mouth is: 50% of his new album’s proceeds will go to Field Team 6, whose mission is to register more democrats to vote. The new album is Making Noise: Songs Of Rebellion & Redemption, and it is out Sep. 18th via Green Monkey Records.
Murphy was born in Camden, New Jersey and raised in Cinnaminson on the Pennsylvania border – his was a musical family, and he seemed predestined to have a wandering life that is so full of incident that we’d need a thousand words to fill you in completely; noteworthy touchstones are that at one time he wrote novels and short stories. Murphy told Captain Beefheart about one of these stories, and he turned it into his song Bat Chain Puller. Drums were an early instrument, and Murphy played percussion for beat poet Allen Ginsberg for a series of shows.
And if you’re thinking the name and that face look familiar, well, you’re not wrong, and sometimes that’s just the way things fall out. It’s fate, man; kismet, if you will. Or maybe we’re just in a collective protesting mood. It could be that.
