May is the month for shows! First, I’d like to re-acquaint you with Tattered Dress (above), my folky-fiddley band with violinist Pamela Margon. Tattered Dress has a lot of shows coming up in the Washington area.

Friday, May 4th – Olympia Farmer’s Market – 11am-2pm
Saturday, May 12th – Little House on the Perry (124 Perry St NW, Olympia) – w/ Kendl Winter, Joe Capoccia, and John Ludington – 8pm
Thursday, May 17th – Honeymoon Meadery (Bellingham, WA) – 8pm
Friday, May 18th – Orca’s Island House Concert (write for address) – 7pm
Saturday, May 19th – The Galley (Lopez Island, WA) – 8pm
Saturday, June 16th – Proctor Farmer’s Market (Tacoma, WA) – 9am-11am
Thursday, June 21st – Olympia Farmer’s Market – 11am-2pm
Thursday, July 5th – Olympia Farmer’s Market – 11am-2pm
Friday, July 20th – McMenamin’s Spar Cafe (Olympia, WA. This is the start of ongoing Spar gigs on the 3rd Friday of every month!) – 8pm
Saturday, July 21st – Proctor Farmer’s Market (Tacoma, WA) – 9am-11am

As far as my solo project, check out this month’s exciting line-up:

Wednesday, May 9th – The Northern (Olympia, WA) – w/ AgesandAges and John Heart Jackie – 8pm
Thursday, May 10th – Ella Street Social Club (Portland, OR) – w/ John Ludington and Chris Bigley – 8pm
Friday, May 11th – The Maxi Pad (12033 12th Ave NE, Seattle WA) – w/ John Ludington and Plack, Smith, and Unicorn – 7pm
Sunday, May 27th – Folklife Festival at the Folklife Cafe (Seattle WA) – 5:20pm

Last but not least…my brand new rock band, Antarctica, will be having it’s debut performance Wednesday, June 6th at Le Voyeur with You Are Plural and Young Hunter (AZ)!

love ya’s,
eleanor

Well, I can say it’s been a true blessing to spend this past month in Fairfield, writing new songs and teaching workshops. I’ve written and recorded seven new songs and am eager to share them with you in the near future. I’ve also taught some fun workshops on songwriting and DIY tour-booking and met so many sweet, inspiring people through this experience. Thank you everyone at The Beauty Shop for this wonderful opportunity and ROCK ON, FAIRFIELD IOWA! There will be videos and recordings from Iowa coming soon!

Now, it’s time to tour back home and there are some LAST-MINUTE ADDITIONS to the schedule:

TONIGHT! 4/4 – CHICAGO – Cafe Ballou w/ Sundance Kids, Julie Byrne, and Maw Wirt (7pm)
4/7 – DENVER – House show (3114 Champa) w/ Laura Goldhamer, Natalie Tate, and Stelth Ulvang (5pm potluck, 7pm show)
4/8 – BOULDER – House show (781 17th Street) w/ Golden Ghost (8 pm)
4/10 – RENO – Jungle Vino w/ My Flag is on Fire (7:30pm)

If anyone has any help to offer in a show in the BAY AREA, your help would be greatly appreciated. We’ll be there Apirl 11th, 12th, and 13th. Write me: eleanor.c.murray (at) gmail.com . Thank you!!

That’s it for now.
love,
eleanor

Well, this is my last week here in Iowa and I’m sad it’s almost over. It’s been a wonderful opportunity and I’m really excited what has come out of it. I’ve written a group of songs that resemble what Fairfield has breathed through me, in a sense. They’re not literally about Iowa, but I feel they are a photograph of the energy, emotions, and ideas I’ve experienced in this place. I’m glad to take this with me. Some themes in my writing included exploring chapters of the Tao Te Ching, “character” songs (where they’re not directly/literally about me), song-share songs written for my workshops, expanding on a Townes Van Zandt song, and more. My time here is not up yet, though, there’s still things to be done! I’m planning to go into the recording studio tomorrow and record some of these new songs. I’m also planning to make some videos of these songs throughout the week. Also, for those of you in the area, my last performance will be on Thursday, March 29th at 7:30pm at Cafe Paradiso, and my last workshop (on diy tour-booking) will be on Saturday, March 31st at 3pm (song-share will be at 4:30pm) at The Beauty Shop.

I also have some shows coming up that are not in my calendar yet. I’ll be playing in Denver on Saturday, April 7th and in Boulder Sunday, April 8th. I’ll be posting the details soon about the whereabouts and whenabouts. Some other shows I’m trying to book are:
Monday, 4/9 – Salt Lake City – TBA
Tuesday, 4/10 – Reno – TBA
4/11-4/13 – The Bay Area – TBA
If anyone has any help to offer in setting up a show in one of these places, I’d greatly appreciate it! Write me at: eleanor.c.murray (at) gmail.com.

Thanks friends for stopping by. Check back soon to hear a new song or two written in sweet ‘ol Fairfield, IA! I plan to post a video or videos recorded here.

love,
eleanor

Ahoy from Fairfield, Iowa! Here is my studio space that I have for the month to write and sing and play. It’s been an absolutely wonderful experience so far. I’ve been busy writing new songs day and night, pretty much. Last Saturday, I taught my first songwriting workshop here and I could not have asked for a better class. For next week, we’re all going to work on a new song that’s about one or more of the five elements (fire, earth, water…)! It was a fantastic suggestion by one of the workshop attendees. How awesome. Very awesome.

I’ll be teaching another songwriting workshop next week and then the following weeks I’ll be teaching DIY tour-booking workshops. And as far as writing, I hope to be sharing some video of what I’ve been working on later this week. Stay tuned!

love ya
eleanor

Hello from Omaha, NE! The road has treated me well so far and I am now just four hours away from Fairfield. So far, I’ve traveled through Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado, and its been gorgeous. My car (once white) is now probably more like a textural beige. I’m a little disappointed that this picture (above) is the only one I took, considering I just traveled across the Rocky Mountains. But hey, Nebraska is cool too! The hovering white specks above the trucks is actually a giant swarm of birds. Driving across Nebraska, I’ve never seen so many birds. I’m pretty sure one actually hit my car when I was parked taking this picture. But the little guy was fine and flew off.

Tonight I’ll reach my destination in Fairfield IA just in time to play a show at The Beauty Shop with Laura Goldhamer. And tomorrow I’ll teach my first workshop. So excited.

Thanks for stopping by.
love,
eleanor

I made some new demos of some of my new songs! They were recorded last week by yours truly in the comfort of my own home (which happens to be a recording studio). These are unreleased and I hope to re-record them at a later date, but I’m very happy with how they turned out. I really like simple recordings where you can hear the room and these are definitely in that aethestic: a creaky chair, birds chirping outside, and at some point, there was a really loud frog right outside the window…

These demos will be available for purchase at my next shows and on the tour back from Iowa (which dates will be posted soon). If you’re interested in a copy and are unable to come to the shows, please send me an email: eleanor.c.murray (at) gmail.com .

This time next week I’ll be reporting from Omaha, NE on my way to Iowa! Until then, stay cool

love,
eleanor

…I made a video! Here is a home recording of a new song I’ve been working on. You can also view it on YouTube if that fits your fancy. And if you’re feeling generous and want to encourage me to make MORE videos, I made this nifty button:

In other news, I’m heading off to Fairfield, Iowa for the month of March to do a music residency at The Beauty Shop. I’ll be there writing new music, teaching workshops, and recording my new material. The plan is to tour on the drive back starting in Chicago and so if you’re in or west of Chicago, check back for tour dates! Be sure to join the mailing list too if you haven’t already to stay updated with music news. Also, the website will resume its weekly blog updates so come on back to hear about the great state of Iowa!

And speaking of websites, there are NEW FEATURES! You can now listen to my entire discography on the website for free. You can also now easily buy the digital downloads of my albums if you’d like to take them home with you.

Stay tuned for news about Iowa and who knows, maybe another video!

love,
eleanor

Well, it’s been a little while now, hasn’t it? I’ve been taking a little break from some things, including performing and updating this website (eek!). I apologize for being out of touch. But in the meantime, I’ve been working hard at writing new material for the next album.  It’s coming along great! In the near future, I plan on testing out some of these songs at shows here and there. And speaking of shows, there’s one coming up next Tuesday, December 6th at the Alamingo House (1705 Prospect Ave) with Letters, Luna Moth, and Blue Valley Farmer. Should be a good ‘ol time.

Other news, the store on the website has been updated with lots of new goodies. You can now purchase my new LP, Thunderling. Also, I now have stickers and posters for sale. Take a look!

Thanks for stopping by.

love,
eleanor

We’re home from tour! And we’re alive, happy, exhausted, and still ready to rock n’ drive. Our final tally for our Thunderling National Tour this summer is 51 shows in just 58 days. We passed through more than half of the fifty states, totaling 34 states in all. The tour involved six incredible musicians in various combinations: Peter Keller played drums for us on the west coast, Pat Maley drummed on the east coast, my brother Patrick Murray fluted from Georgia to Massachusetts, Pamela Margon shredded on violin from Tennessee to Washington, Abigail Peachtree sang back-up and dazzled the country with her songs through the deserts of the Southwest into Georgia, and Joshua James wailed on the bass for the entire haul. Though it was hard work and stressful at times, I could not have asked for a better result. I’m thrilled to have met so many kind and generous people and talented musicians, to have visited family and old friends, and I honestly don’t know how I’ll be able to sit still until the next tour. I guess that’s what songwriting and recording is for.

Below is a gallery of some pictures we snapped along the way and recordings of some of our performances. I’ve discovered I tend to be camera-inept, so thank you Patrick Murray and Pat Maley for capturing so much, in addition to Joseph Traina, Ben Henderson, Tyler Reinhard, and Ashley Heeney for their beautiful camera-work. Below each picture is a description and arrows on the bottom-right to the see the next picture.

pictures from tour

[Show as slideshow]

videos and recordings from tour

Electric Sky performed live on KHUM in Ferndale, CA.

Come Alive performed live on KHUM in Ferndale, CA.

Cathedral recorded live at The Beachland Tavern in Cleveland, OH by Ashley Heeney.

Here The Whale, Scream, and Little Warrior are recorded live in-studio on the No Love For Ned online radio show in Chapel Hill, NC. To find the recordings, check out “Murray, Eleanor” in the in-studio sessions and it’s about one hour into the radio show.

We are 29 shows, 17 states, and 4 radio shows into our tour…and we’re only halfway done! In these first few weeks we have…

run out of gas and had a flat tire in the middle of the desert, had a dancer come out in a whale costume for “The Whale” and do a 7 minute dance performance, had 10 days of 100 degree plus heat, spent a couple days driving through the 500,000 acre fire in Arizona, had Woody Harrelson in the audience at one of our shows, got food poisoning, got checked for retinal hemorrhaging, played an NPR affiliate, stayed in giant tent/yurt-like things in desolate southwest Texas, played a pop country showcase in Nashville, been surprised by time zones more than once, opened for an 8 piece Chicago-style soul band, drove through amazing thunder and wind storms, been pulled over at a border patrol checkpoint, stayed with a man whose apartment was decorated completely in tribute to Janis Joplin, got poison ivy, learned to be the backing band for a singer-songwriter 10 minutes before we did a live radio show with him in the Knoxville Visitor Center, got horribly lost/stuck in traffic and arrived 3 hours late to a show, had a retreat in the mountains of Georgia, got sunburned, drove away with bags on top of car a couple times, lost glasses and cell phones and had them mailed to us, snuck into an apartment complex’s hot tub in the middle of the night, among other things.

In short: we’ve had a ton of amazing shows and been put up by some of the most hospitable people the world has ever known. Our gratitude to the hosts, bookers, promoters, and bands is immense. We would be a sad shell of our current selves if it were not for them. We are truly blessed.