Interview with Kevin Murphy – Slow Moving Clouds – Part 2
by Killian Laher

No More Workhorse caught up with Kevin Murphy just before the world changed to discuss Slow Moving Clouds, Blind Stitch and a few other anecdotes. 

This is part 2 of the interview, part 1 is available here.

What are your musical influences?

Well I suppose there’s a lifetime of influences in it at this stage.  These conversations are easier when you’re about 20 and you can kind of follow a ‘track’ but I don’t really know any more.  The key things that would have driven me would have been: I was a metaller when I was a kid so I would still listen to Black Sabbath fairly regularly and I listen to some Motorhead.  Some I can’t deal with, but even Cliodhna my 4-year-old she keeps on screaming for Ace of Spades and I oblige her no problem – she calls it the jazzy one, give me the jazzy one! Poor old Lemmy would be turning in his fucking grave now if he heard that described as a jazzy one.  My Bloody Valentine would have had a massive influence on me, Velvet Underground before that I suppose, Cocteau Twins in there somewhere, those are the main things, I suppose. Obviously I’m into traditional music as well.

I can tell that from hearing you play and you sort of brought that into Slow Moving Clouds to a degree as well.  

I suppose of the three of us, I’m the one who’s the imposter.  Ultan has a lineage and before him Danny Diamond has a lineage as trad players, trad families, that kind of thing.  Aki is from Helsinki but he has been playing Irish traditional music, and that’s why he moved to Ireland, he loved it.  I met him in the mid 90s in Helsinki actually. He was organising or helped to organise an Irish festival that used to run there every year.  So their pedigree is a little bit more genuine than my own, although I did play trad from a very early age as well. We were kind of a ‘classical music family’ but there was loads of trad instruments in the house and my older brothers would have been listening to The Bothy Band, Horslips etc so we played trad as well.

Are you guys looking at doing another album? 

We’re in the middle of it, yeah. I’d say we’re about halfway.

As well as your own one (Blind Stitch)? 

My own one’s done, my own one’s been done for a couple of months but I wanted to shop it around, or at least feel that I tried.  I’m waiting for the rejection letters now any day, sob, sob! I just wanted to throw it out there to record companies that I exist and this is what I’m doing now.  It’s really difficult to attract their attention these days, but you can do it on your own anyway. I’m expecting that but sure we’ll see. So that’s ready, and I’m starting to write a new one already.  But with Slow Moving Clouds we’ve about half of it recorded and the rest of it is written. I think next week we’ll go in and record three, that’ll be eight, and then we’ve maybe another four to do, so we’re looking at getting it done in the next two months.  We should be able to do that, with a view to getting it out in September.

Are you still doing bits and pieces with other people, on their albums?

Much less now I have to say.  I’ve no real interest in it. Every now and again something comes up. We went on tour with Jenny Lewis last summer, so they’re collaborations with Slow Moving Clouds I suppose. On my own, I don’t really, friends I suppose.  They’d be like “come down tomorrow if you can”, it’s all fairly informal. I teach now and I prefer that to being a session musician to be honest. Nearly all the music I do is just my own thing.