Ho! Ho! Home Again! Well, its finally getting a little frosty up here on the North Pole of Paris and I’m wrapping presents for both the naughty and nice and thinking about this past year and all the shows I’ve played and all the fine people I’ve met and how much I have to be grateful for. I’m especially thankful for my musical partner and guitarist extraordinaire Olivier Durand who has always stood by my side through thick and thin. And for my wonderful musicians: Alan Fatras and Laurent Pardo of the Normandy All-Stars, keyboardist Kenny Margolis, talented ex-bandmates Ernie Brooks and Danny Montgomery, great players like Patrick Riguelle and Florent Barbier of Studio Franklin who contribute so much to my recordings. And I’m thankful for my faithful record labels and distributors: Last Call, Bang!, Blue Rose, Dock and Venus. And for my hard working agents: PBox, Serrano, Bizz, Nada, JTC, Frame Events, Roots Music and the CEM in Le Havre. And for Steve Wilkison who has done such a beautiful job with my new website. Thanks so much to you all for keeping the Murphy Music Machine running.
I don’t know what the next year will bring but as long as the Rainy Season Fans and The Spirit of Beauregard Fans keep coming to my shows well I guess I’ll have to show up myself! And to everyone who this past year has bought a ticket for an Elliott Murphy show or bought one of my CDs or downloaded one of my songs from iTunes I want to express my profound gratitude as well. You all light up the dark road I travel more then you will ever know. I once wrote “I believe in love I believe in birth I believe in giving something back to the earth and I believe in God by the way” which is not to say I’m a religious man but when I look in the face of any of you standing in front of me when I’m on stage I see God looking back at me because I’m blessed with your grace and I thank you all from the bottom of my many-times-broken but good-as-new heart. Your love is the medicine for my particular malady. But I think you know that already …
So all the best for 2007 to every one of you. My Christmas wish is that you’ll enjoy listening to Coming Home Again as much as I enjoyed making it. And remember we got a date somewhere down the road. I’ll be waiting for you guitar in hand and hat on head!
Elliott Murphy
Sometime around Christmas
Paris 2006
Photo: Marc Ginot