Mal Murphy has a message to all the folks who have come up to her asking for a CD or album or some other possible way they can listen to more of her music.
“It’s finally here!” she says, joyously. “People would ask me and I’d have to say, ‘I don’t have anything yet.’ It’ll be nice to be able to have something that I can hand to somebody.”
The “it” would be “Grow Up,” the EP she’s spent the better part of two years crafting, and now it’s finally ready to be released to the world. Releasing the EP is uncharted territory for Murphy.
“It’s my first,” she says. “I’ve never released anything. Not even a song.”
Murphy, born and raised in Minnesota Lake, already has played at a pair of events celebrating the EP’s release, with a third coming this weekend at The Wine Cafe in Old Town Mankato, where she happens to be employed.
The album consists of five songs. Two are Murphy originals, one comes from fellow Mankato musician Ben Scruggs, one is a Bob Dylan cover and the last is a traditional song.
Why an EP and not a full album? Well, there were those frequent askers; she really did want to have an answer for them and the shorter nature of an EP just cuts down on the asks. But it wasn’t just about that.
“I also wanted to just have fun doing it. I wanted to record it and put together a cover and everything,” she says. “To me it kind of feels like (a full album) of my own music is the next thing. I feel like maybe that’s like a challenge I’m going to continue to reach for. But as of now, doing this EP was kind of like proving that I could just do something.”
Murphy’s mid-range, smooth vocal is the star of the show on “Grow Up.” But it might be her songwriting that steals the show on “Grow Down,” a title borrowed from the album’s title or vice versa.
Found myself in love at age 19
Got his news from the papers
And ate Clays candy
I tried out for the part
Of the handy housewife
But he said “Babe,
I already got to live that life, and not
Even you is gonna bring me back this time.
Why do I have to grow up?
Why can’t they grow to me?
Are we finally getting close now?
Are you gonna find someone better than me?
I’m sure he’s had something better than me.
Murphy says she hopes to broaden her skills as a performer, and that includes continued improvement on guitar. She says she’s always relied on her voice because, justifiably, it’s a unique sound that sets her apart.
Still, she says she’d like to become a better instrumentalist and even expand her repertoire to fiddle. Doing that, she says, may require adding even more skills.
“I’ve always relied on my voice because that’s what I believe is the best thing of all of this: I can sing and I can organize. And the guitar just supports it,” she says. “But one of my goals is to become a better guitar player. I think I can keep doing without knowing how to read music, but I do think I’m going to eventually have to learn that.
“I’m kind of on the edge of learning scales or knowing what notes go with what. And I’m on the brink of trying to learn the fiddle through Krista Bohlman. I bought a fiddle and we’ve done like two lessons, but it’s going to be impossible to learn fiddle without reading music.”
As for the takeaways from “Grow Up,” Murphy says she hopes people listen to her music, hear her story and learn that it’s OK to not do everything by yourself. She says without help from fellow artists such as Ben Scruggs and Kaleb Braun-Schulz and her producer, Scott Helgerson, this project wouldn’t have happened. She got out of the way when she needed to, and the project was the better for it.
One of her personal takeaways was that putting your soul on display isn’t always pleasant. And making this EP wasn’t always pleasant. She says she almost named it “Bittersweet” because that’s sort of how she felt along the way.
“The album is kind of sad,” she says, reflecting on the songs and their messages. “But then there’s also these like pulls of ‘It will be OK.’ So I kind of want people to maybe either reflect on that way they felt when they were young, or if someone my age or younger is listening to it knowing like, ‘Oh, people feel the same way, people go through these awful situations with boyfriends,’ or not knowing what the next step should be.”