Search - Lee Murdock :: Great Lakes Chronicle

This 2-CD Set contains 118 minutes of live performance material by Lee Murdock, featuring songs about the Great Lakes and the people who live, sail, dive, work and play along the Great Lakes. In the twenty songs on this live collection, Murdock has captured the magic of a live performance. Murdock has long been recognized as the leading interpreter of music of the inland seas, but it is the stories, intermingled with the songs, that makes this recording special, and so different from any of his earlier releases. By including some of the stories and background information as given in concert, this recording truly does provide a spoken word chronicle to parallel the musical muse. Eight of the twenty songs are from solo performances, and the other twelve feature Lee with The Blue Water Band. Ghost stories are a Murdock specialty, and this CD does not disappoint: "The Ghost of Red Monroe" is delivered as a arresting recitation, and another song celebrates The Bannockburn, ghost ship of Lake Superior. Included are songs of famous shipwrecks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the Lady Elgin, The Persia, The Rouse Simmons (also known as "The Christmas Tree Schooner"), the Coast Guard Cutter Mesquite, and the chilling story of the Daniel J Morrell, as told by the sole survivor, Dennis Hale. Murdock's view of the Great Lakes is far from maudlin, however, and the listener will delight in his musical celebrations of the lighthouse keepers, fishermen, sailors, life savers, navvies, racers, revelers, outlaws and everyday heroes whose stories put a face with the history of these great inland seas.