A singer/songwriter in the subversive Greenwich Village folk scene of the late '60s and '70s, with several songs lent to the Holy Modal Rounders, Michael Hurley maintained an infrequent solo career into the '90s but was more famed for his writing credits. Born on December 20, 1941, in Pennsylvania, he migrated to Greenwich Village by the early '60s and was ready to sign a major record deal when he contracted mononucleosis; after spending several years in the hospital, Hurley returned to music and released a Folkways album in 1964 titled First Songs. Though he was inactive through the rest of the '60s, several songs from his first LP were borrowed by both the Holy Modal Rounders and the Youngbloods, who signed Hurley to their Raccoon label in 1970. He delivered two albums for Raccoon, Armchair Boogie and Hi-Fi Snock Uptown, but was inactive again by 1972.

Four years later, Holy Modal Rounders' leader Peter Stampfel recruited Hurley for a 1976 project, Have Moicy. The group's self-titled album was critically praised, landing recommendations for Album of the Year by the Village Voice and Top 20 LPs of the '70s by Rolling Stone. Hurley's prominent place on the album — guitar, fiddle, several lead vocals — gave notice that he was ready to resume his solo career, and he signed to the folk label Rounder in 1977. Hurley released only two LPs for the label (Long Journey and Snockgrass), spending most of his time on his farm in Vermont or playing sideman on several albums. He resurfaced occasionally, recording LPs in 1984, 1988, 1995, and 1999.

The question of whether Michael Hurley (aka Dock Snock) is a neglected national treasure or a mildly amusing pseudo-folky aberration is one that must be resolved in the ear of the individual listener. The fact that the question meets different answers in just about every quarter probably explains both Hurley's legendary status among American roots musicians (he has played with everyone from the Youngbloods to Son Volt) and the fact that this album was released on a small German label more usually devoted to historical curiosities. On Sweetkorn, the aging Hurley evokes the sound of middle-period Tom Waits, though he comes by his junkyard instrumentation and ugly voice more honestly than Waits does. Same with the aggressively lo-fi production quality, which is a longstanding Waits affectation and, one senses, simply a reflection of the way things are for Hurley. Hurley's "Ohio Blues" is spare and beautiful, as is his eerily lovely rendition of the pop classic "Mona Lisa"; he brings nothing particularly new or noteworthy to "Barbara Allen," but "The End of the Road" sounds like a sly undermining of "Mommas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys," while "Negatory Romance" opens with this deathless couplet: "He's wantin' her more than he's wantin' his wife/Now buddy, that's a good way to screw up your life." Bard, sage, screwup, whatever — Michael Hurley's generally worth hearing, and that's certainly the case on this weird but charming album. [Biography by John Bush.]

Songwriter Tara Jane O'Neil dove into her musical career in 1992 at the tender age of 20, playing bass for the influential Louisville, KY, art-punk ensemble Rodan. Though the group lasted only two years, releasing just one full-length, O'Neil's status had grown enough to land her a prominent role in the film Half-Cocked, a fictitious account of a Louisville punk band featuring faces from several other bands such as June of 44, the Grifters, and Rachel's, but a lasting connection was made between O'Neil and Ruby Falls guitarist Cynthia Nelson. O'Neil and Nelson formed Retsin and released several long-players between 1995 and 2001, including a 1998 collaboration with Ida titled The Ida Retsin Family Album, Vol. 1. Both O'Neil and Nelson stayed busy outside of Retsin during this period; O'Neil, after moving from Louisville to New York City, formed the Sonora Pines, which lasted 1994 to 1996 and recorded two full-length records, moved back to Louisville, and recorded as a guest on recordings by Danielle Howle and Come. In 1997 O'Neil again relocated to New York City, which was about the time she met the folks in Ida and began working on her first solo recording, Peregrine, a lo-fi album mostly recorded in the bathtub of her flat that was released early 2000. She continued to keep her hands full, engineering and playing on the debut album by k., before again moving to Louisville as well as guesting on recordings by Papa M and Naysayer and releasing Music for a Meteor Shower, an improvised collaboration with Daniel Littleton of Ida, in 2002. O'Neil also released her solo follow-up, TJO, in 2002 and once again moved, but this time to Olympia, WA. She continued to guest on recordings, including Saturday Looks Good to Me's All Your Summer Songs as a vocalist and Victory Park's Antietam, before offering up You Sound, Reflect in 2004. On top of her hectic musical schedule, O'Neil is also a notable painter. Her paintings, as should be expected, grace each of her solo releases. [Biography by Gregory McIntosh.]

Songwriter-singer-multi-instrumentalist-improviser-engineer Samara Lubelski is not what anyone could call 'pigeonholed' in the climate of contemporary music. She has split her time between Germany, where she works with the psychedelic group Metabolismus, and her Lower East Side home base, playing and recording with a who's who of the art-punk and freely-improvised folk scenes (Tower Recordings, Hall of Fame, Matt Valentine), for she has been brewing a rich cup of aesthetic ingredients. Her first solo outing, 1997's In the Valley (Child of Microtones) was a major installment in the recorded legacy of experimental string music, a dense exploration of drones and resonance. Lubelski followed this last year with a full-band recording of lush psychedelic folk-rock for The Fleeting Skies (Social Registry/De Stijl), a seeming - but not unheralded - about face.

The Sanctuary for Independent Media is a media arts center located in a an historic former church in Troy, NY. The venue is an intimate and acoustically excellent space which seats about 120. The Sanctuary hosts screening, production and performance facilities, training in media production and a meeting space for artists, activists and independent media makers of all kinds. The Sanctuary is located at 3361 6th Avenue, three doors down from 101st Street in north Troy. Call (518) 272-2390, email info (at) TheSanctuaryForIndependentMedia.org, or visit www.TheSanctuaryForIndependentMedia.org for more information.