Logan Murray CD release

Jeff Green | Oct 13, 2016

CD release concert set for Saturday, October 22

Logan Murray is a gadfly, a sometimes politician, a cabinet-maker, musician and music lover. He has lived on a farm on Elm Tree Road near the far western edge of Frontenac County with his wife, Andrea Jones, since the early 1970s. There, he built a recording studio and over the years has recorded musicians from near and far. He has also been jamming and practising harmonica and guitar and playing and writing songs.

With the encouragement of friends and neighbours he decided to put his skills and musical journey together to record a CD of his own songs, and that idea has become reality in “Ninety Five Acres”, which is being released this month.

Murray describes the 10-song CD as “eclectic roots music”. It features some tunes that can be described as country, with some rockabilly, barrel-house blues, rock & roll and honky tonk thrown in. So calling it Americana or eclectic roots music is pretty accurate.

The first song is the title track, a country song that is rooted in the location that has been at the core of Murray's life for all these years.

From there the CD meanders from a rockabilly sound (Gadget) to Blues (Plain Talk, Occupy), southern rock (Play with Fire), Chicago Blues ($100 or The Strange Relative of Human Endeavour and Snake Charge), and Honky Tonk with the cheeky (Cell Phone Blues).

There are echoes of early Rolling Stones blues songs, Bob Dylan and the Band, and even Lynyrd Skynyrd in Ninety Five Acres. Murray's voice has a gravelly sweetness that works for the styles of music on the album.

In addition to clearing brush, cutting wood and doing all the things people have to do when living on marginal rural land, Logan Murray took an early interest in the Internet, seeing it as a way to connect with the world without having to drive all the time.

He has become connected with sound engineers on a couple of websites over the years, many of whom have been working in the music industry at a high level and are top-notch musicians as well. When he decided to do a recording, they wanted to participate.

Much of the music on Ninety Five acres was recorded in studios around North America and beyond and sent back electronically to be mixed at Murray's own studio. Local musicians were involved as well and that's why the band credit on the record is “Logan Murray and the International Bandits”.

The result is an album with a lot of variety, as the songs were written over a long time and Murray is not bound by genres. The music is all high-tempo; it rocks quite a bit, and the lyrics often feature a turn of phrase that surprises.

Here are two examples. From $100 or The Strange Relative of Human Endeavour - “I had a ‘49 Mercury, boys that was a cherry ride, 'til some yuppy with a Lexis, ran into the passenger side. A hundred dollars ain’t gonna fix that stuff.”

And from Cell Phone Blues, which was inspired by the lineup at a Tim Horton's – “LOL, you’re such a clown, you can't seem to put that gadget down. OMG, WTF, nobody’s got any privacy left.”

Now that the record is complete, Murray has put together a show featuring two bands to encompass its breadth at a release party at the Tamworth Legion on October 22.

One of the bands features mostly local musicians, and the other features musicians from the Peterborough area.

Tickets for the show are $20, which includes a CD of the album. For more information and to purchase tickets or CDs, go to Loganmurray.net, phone 335-2599, or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

(Note - in the paper version of this article the date of the cd release in Tamworth was listed as October 24)