John Murry – California [Best Fit Première ]

“I’ve always felt hesitant about videos,” explains John Murry, “photographs, too, I guess. It’s hard for me to “see” myself and the music as a visual thing.”

Many know Murry for World Without End, the album of dark-themed songs he recorded with Memphis singer-songwriter Bob Frank (Big Star producer Jim Dickinson called Frank “the greatest songwriter you’ve never heard”). That was more than half a decade back and Murry has just released his first solo record The Graceless Age. We’re proud today to première the video for ‘California’, which is also Murry’s first ever clip.

“Jesse Brodkey and all the amazing folks at Temerity Films had this idea to make me appear to be moving slower and faster than the rest of the crowds in Chinatown and North Beach and the financial district areas of San Francisco,” Murry explained to Best Fit. “The concept was so well thought out, so well-conceived, and was based on such a perfect reading of what ‘California’ is really all about as a song, that it just felt right.

“In the video, I feel like I both look like an “idea” and I look like myself. I just think that those guys are brilliant; they gave me their idea and I just had to follow orders.”

“Half of what you hear on the song isn’t what you think it is. That’s half of why I love it. The record scratching sound is a snare brush being raked along a deep snare, not actually scratching. We got so entranced in the creation of it in the studio that we didn’t notice until later that other people might hear it that way. I guess. It was all a huge mistake that worked.”

Murry heads over to British shores early next year for a series of shows:

January

24 – Edinburgh, Voodoo Rooms
26 – Belfast, The Green Room
27 – Dublin, Whelans
29 – London, Borderline
31 – Oxford, Bullingdon

February

1 – Holmfirth, Picturedrome (supporting Steve Cropper)