Redemption songs are Murphy’s chapter and verse now
AFEW albums ago Stefan Murphy spoke about how he struggled with aspects of his mental health. It wasn’t something unusual but he would be the first to admit that in recent times things got darker.
He had moved back to the States with his American wife and young daughter and was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder at a time when he was enjoying a life of sobriety.
‘It was always easy to put it down to drinking too much or being hungover or not doing enough gigs and I was always thinking when I get this gig right it will be better but when I moved to the States I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder which helped me make a lot of sense of things that had been happening since my teens,’ he says.
‘One of the big things with any mental health diagnosis especially if you are going to be taking medication for it is you have to look at your habits,’ he explains.
‘At the time that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder I was sober but as the years went on living out there, especially when Covid hit, I reverted back into old habits.’
Covid was an issue for so many working musicians and for Dubliner Murphy the issues he faced basically blew his life and his marriage apart as he descended into old habits and found himself with some new ones.
‘But at a point I realised some of those old habits were things I couldn’t solve by myself.’
Murphy says he started to look for help and found it over two hundred miles and four hours away from where he had been living in Atlanta.
‘I literally moved cities to Nashville to get help for myself in a treatment facility in a place called Cumberland Heights.
And it was while I was in there that I started to write the songs on Hospital Verses. I was lucky enough that the whole treatment process was really helpful for me and really good for me. I was one of the lucky ones as I got help and I gained an understanding of addiction. And as I speak to you today I am two years away from that in the right direction so life has been incredibly good since then.
‘When I got out of the treatment centre I had a choice whether to move back to Atlanta or stay there and get my bearings and that. I reconnected with an old friend of mine called James Meechan who I met in Ireland when he was doing backline for Stiff Little Fingers. He had his own studio in Nashville but I hadn’t spoken to him in years. But I messaged him and said “For whatever reason I find myself living here in Nashville do you fancy doing some music?”. And through him I ended up in a new band, The Sleeveens on the side and also working on what became the solo record.’
Hospital Verses is, as is befitting an album coming from Nashville, a kind of country rock record that deals with a deep level of darkness before coming back into the light.
Murphy is most proud of The Story of Agnes which tells of a young woman who falls victim to addiction, telling the narrator: ‘Hold on to love, don’t strike out on your own. There is no comfort in singing alone.’
But there is pure heartbreak too in Crystal Chandeliers as Murphy sings of a son who disappoints his mother, stating ‘My failure to be ate into me like a cancer.’
But eventually the singer notes in Athletes of Seoul that from being stone dead in the water, ‘I found my way home.’ Hospital Verses is an album of struggle and redemption with an emotional punch so it must now be tough for Murphy to sing.
‘A lot of the stuff is pertaining to my own struggles with mental health, with addiction, with trying to keep my family together but for me it was glorious to get to write songs about that kind of stuff when I was moving away from it. It felt good to write about it, to sing about it and then let it go. I can’t see myself wanting to sing those songs forever but for now I am quite proud.’
The lot of a musician is a tough one as any will tell you but Murphy has also learned to manage this and The Sleeveens have been signed up to a record label and are about to go on a US tour. He’ll sing but the others do the organising as he insists being a band leader is where the madness starts.
He has since moved back to Dublin, following a move by his family and is on a journey to reconciliation with his family.
There are progressive and omnipresent considerations he says.
‘I have to constantly work on it and work on my condition and ensure that I am in good mental and physical health to make sure I am still on the road to recover from it and that’s my main focus in life at the moment. The music coming back into play has been a really nice bonus but I just want to be okay. I just want to live a life that is free from worrying about all that.’
He has already played the songs from Hospital Verses out in Dublin in two powerful concerts, followed by a tour in Scandanavia and Murphy says though the audience told him these songs of addiction and redemption needed to be sung, he’s well able to handle the emotion that’s within them.
‘I have sat with the emotion of them long enough that I have dealt with it and I am in a safe space now where I can sing them and it’s ok,’ he says.
Hospital Verses by Stefan Murphy is out now via Sweetime Records sweettimerecords.com and in selected record shops.