DeKalb, Ill. – Holmes Student Center - Thursday, January 18th at 4:30pm.
Picture yourself wandering along the docks of an old forgotten harbor of Lake Superior. Bits of worn rope and old rusted bolts are strewn about your feet. As you walk, you wonder what it must have been like to have traveled and tamed this lake.
Lee Murdock, Great Lakes folk singer and storyteller, could sing you more than a few of these stories. “I'm interested in trying to find the life in these songs; in making music that's exciting to people today. I am looking for the songs and the interesting stories, not only for the people who already enjoy folk music, but for those who think they don't like folk music,” says Murdock.
Murdock, who has been called the “premier interpreter of songs and stories about the Great Lakes,” started his musical career in Chicago in the mid 1970s as a blues and pop musician. After a week long residency at the Philadelphia Folksong Society, Murdock found his identity as a folk and traditional maritime musician. He now performs over 150 shows a year in the U.S. and Canada, and has to date released twelve album-length recordings.
Lee Murdock is also an educational enthusiast. His “Sea Shanty Workshop” is geared towards elementary and junior high school students. The students can learn the history of the people who first settled among the Great Lakes.
Almost anyone can find incitement and inspiration in Murdock’s music, not because of its folk style, but because his songs are treasured stories of sailors and fishermen, lighthouse-keepers, ghosts, shipwrecks outlaws and everyday heroes.