Knoxville ex-pat Mick Murphy scores with My Ruin
by Mike Gibson
When former Knoxvillian Mick Murphy moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, life went wrong in all the right ways; his rock band Movement broke up after three years of struggle, only to see Murphy himself find success in Ruin. Not just any ruin, mind you, but My Ruin, a four-piece hardcore metal outfit which features Murphy as both guitarist and a principal songwriter.
Remaining in California after Movement's demise, Murphy shied away from the band scene and spent nearly two years delivering take-out food to the wealthy and well-known of Laurel Canyon before he met the woman who is now his girlfriend and musical co-conspirator, a sexy, exotically-tattooed LA rock chick named Tairrie B.
Tairrie already had a record deal under her own name with the British indie label Snapper, and she had produced one album for Snapper under the My Ruin moniker. When she and Murphy met at a Hollywood party one fateful evening, their chemistry—musical and otherwise—was almost combustible.
"Tairrie and I pretty much hit it off instantly," says Murphy in a recent phone interview. "It was like we started a relationship and a band all at the same time. Tairrie has the heaviest female voice in metal as far as I'm concerned, and she's been doing it since 1993. She's one of the pioneers of women in hardcore."
A little history might be in order for those who don't remember Murphy's Knoxville oeuvre. An ex-Bearden High School thrash metal guitar fanatic with monster chops and rock-star looks, Murphy gained a measure of recognition hereabouts in the early '90s as a member of Hypertribe, a propulsive hard rock outfit with elements of thrash-funk and experimental underground metal. In 1996, Murphy and the 'tribe adopted a new moniker, Movement, and departed for the Left Coast in search of a record deal.
Murphy says he was spiritually drained and more than a little gun-shy after Movement finally called it quits in 1999, until the night in 2000 when he found his new calling in meeting Tairrie B.
Together, Murphy and Tairrie evolved My Ruin from one woman's vision to a full-fledged band on the 2000 release A Prayer Under Pressure of Violent Anguish (Snapper). Produced by former Movement buddy Nick Raskulinecz, the album also featured the talents of bassist Meghan Mattox and drummer Yael.
This year has seen the four-piece release their second and third efforts as a full band, August's The Shape of Things to Come... EP and the subsequent full-length The Horror of Beauty (Century Media).
Now in his early 30s, Murphy established himself as a rock guitar hero of the highest order during his tenure in Knoxville, a fast, athletic lead player and a metal rhythm ace; a precocious kid who often took top honors at guitar-slinger contests held at local watering holes during the zenith of Metal excess.
But if his prowess was extraordinary then, it's positively lethal now, especially since he paired with Tairrie B. A raw-throated, almost demonically visceral singer, her kinetic shriek is the perfect foil for his leviathan riffing and solo squall.
On Horror, his playing is alternately savage and virtuosic, so much so that Guitar Player editor Michael Molenda heard the album and was moved to showcase Murphy in a three-page article in the December 2003 issue of the magazine.
"I think there's still a place for good rock guitar playing," says Murphy. "I think there people who are hungry for that, because when we play people take notice. They come up afterwards and say 'Wow, you've got leads, and there's some real rock 'n' roll in there.' I've been playing guitar 20 years now, and I've got a lot of things to say."
Murphy relates that Tairrie's first Snapper Records incarnation of My Ruin already had a following in the United Kingdom when he joined; thanks to her earlier legwork, his first trip to the U.K. with the band (around Christmas of 2000) included the luxury of a tour bus, in-store record shop appearances, and sell-out shows at 500- to 3,000-seat venues.
Perks were scarce, however, on a subsequent tour of the U.S. in support of all-girl metal group Kittie, but it was that trip which ultimately convinced the band that their music was connecting with fans on this side of the Atlantic as well.
"We went up and down the East coast, driving our own van along with a bunch of bands that are in tour buses," Murphy remembers. "It was pretty rough, but it was a lot of fun. We sold more merchandise than any of the other bands, and we proved to ourselves we had a pretty good underground following in America. It was good for us to see that."
That tour led to My Ruin's signing with Century Media, one of the world's largest independent metal record labels. The association has enabled the band to remain self-supporting through touring and merchandise sales, yet maintain the creative control infrequently granted to fledgling major label acts.
"We did not want to sign with a major," Murphy says. "Everyone I know in LA who signed with a major label ended up not having any control over what they were doing.
"We wanted a deal where we kept control of everything we do. We do all our own merchandising, because that's how we live. Tairrie manages the band, and our apartment is My Ruin headquarters. We live and breathe this stuff every day, and we couldn't turn it over to someone who doesn't know what they're talking about."
Though Murphy has long since departed from Knoxville, his hometown still has a place in his heart; there's a small network of former Knoxville musicians now residing in LA, and Murphy has maintained relations with fellow expatriates since moving. Chief among them is Raskulinecz, now a notable LA record producer/engineer, and who produced four tracks on The Horror of Beauty as well as the entirety of Prayer. Ex-Knoxvillian David Teague, now pulling double duty as a member of seminal '80s punk bands the Dickies and the Angry Samoans, is also a close friend, as is Weezer guitarist and former Beardenite Brian Bell.
And Murphy still keeps close ties with a few current Knoxvillians as well; after a series of dates in Europe, he will visit his parents, Sam and Peggy Murphy, over the Christmas holiday, as he has done every year since moving to Cali in '96.
Come early 2004, the Ruin crew plans to hit the road stateside. In an effort to raise the band's profile domestically, they've already issued a song off The Horror of Beauty to U.S. radio. A screaming, hyper-adrenalized riff-rocker, the single "Made to Measure" has more moxie and gut-punch force than any three songs currently in rotation. But Murphy, for his part, refuses to sweat the band's prospects for airplay.
"I have no idea whether we'll ultimately get any spins," Murphy says. "What's considered 'radio friendly' is constantly changing. There's always some kind of formula, and I have no idea whether we fit into that formula right now or not. We're definitely not trying to. If it works and we get some airplay, fine. If not, we'll just keep on doing what we're doing. It's working so far."
December 4, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 49
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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