Murphy takes stage as himself
Impersonator of stars releases his own album
Kieran Martin Murphy When: Monday at 7:30 p.m. Where: Arden Theatre Tickets: $20 plus service charges at Arden Theatre box office, 780-459-1542, or Ticketmaster.ca Tom Jones. Joe Cocker. Pavarotti. Elvis Presley. Art Garfunkel.
For more than a decade, St. Albert actor and tenor Kieran Martin Murphy has impersonated these stars in Mayfield Dinner Theatre’s musical revues or Fringe plays.
He’s about to step on stage as himself — with the release of his first album of pop, country, Celtic and even flamenco-flavoured tunes, The Painter’s Hand, on Monday, Dec. 9, at the Arden Theatre.
“When you perform other people’s music, for some reason, you throw yourself so fully into those characters because they’re so defined,” he says. “When you start to do your own stuff, it’s a totally different thing. I’m not a caricature. I’m finding my own voice, in a sense. It feels fantastic and SCARY AS HELL, but it’s so rewarding. Everything about the process has been rewarding. A lot of these songs have been sitting on the shelf, in a sense, waiting to come alive.”
As an actor and (former) stay-at-home dad of two children, Murphy never had the time to solely focus on The Painter’s Hand, and so, the album features 11 songs written over a span of 17 years. He describes his solo debut as a storybook of his life, including chapters about growing up in small town Alberta (Westlock Summer), his wife (Love at a Glance), expecting the birth of their daughter (You & Me), celebrating his mother’s love (The Painter’s Hand), the tumult of divorce (The Storm), the power of friendship (Mi Amado), and parties with fellow Mayfield actors (Lurid Acres).
“I have been inspired or healed by someone else’s music because whatever they had written at the time struck a chord with me and meant something to me,” says Murphy, who counts Billy Joel, Elton John and Trooper as some of his favourites.
“You want to share that with someone else, you want
e dmonton journal .com Listen to Kieran Martin Murphy sing a snippet of Don Mc Lean’s Vincent at edmontonjournal.com/entertainment
to be able to give that gift as well, so I think that’s why I’ve always felt it was important to write these songs. It’s invigorating, too.”
He spent the last two or three years, on and off, recording these songs with producer/bassist Wes Caswell and musicians including guitarist/Mayfield veteran Harley Symington, drummer Steve Hoy and cellist Martin Kloppers. Murphy admits some listeners might feel The Painter’s Hand dabbles in too manygenres—“Whoa!How can you have a country tune and pop ballad next to each other and why is this guy singing in Spanish now?” — but he says the album reflects his own versatility as a performer, not to mention his “weird, wonky path” into show biz.
As a child, Murphy was always singing around the family’s Westlock home, much to the chagrin of his siblings — until he recorded his voice on his father’s reelto-reel player.
“You never forget these moments in your life,” he says.
“There was a Beach Boys’ tune and I grabbed the microphone, and with my whole heart and soul, sang into the thing. I couldn’t wait to hear it back, and when I did, it was the WORST sound I had ever heard. From then on, I would only sing privately. I would never do it publicly.”
Thankfully, he gave it a shot in high school, learning to sing Don McLean’s Vincent for drama class.
“We were singing it as a group, then all of a sudden, the girls stopped singing and just started looking at me,” says Murphy.
“So, I sort of had an inkling: ‘Maybe I do have a voice.’”
In college, he joined the choir and studied drama — but only after an injury forced him to quit the school’s basketball team and rethink his plans of becoming a physed teacher.
“I sort of stumbled into everything,” says Murphy, who went on to sing with Pro Coro Canada and an a cappella group, VOCE, before getting his first Mayfield gig.
“It was kind of a happy accident. I can’t even believe it — as a kid, I always dreamed of being on stage. It’s pretty fantastic to have your childhood dream come about.”
Even his stage name is a happy accident. He was born Martin Murphy, but there’s a playwright and two other actors with the same name, so he decided to tack on his son’s first name, Kieran — after paying him for the privilege.
“I bought the name off him, fair and square, for $5 when he was four years old,” laughs Murphy.
“We shook hands, I gave him five bucks. He’s pretty bitter about it because he feels he should’ve got more, but five dollars when he was four years old was a lot of money.
“He’s Mr. Musical Theatre now — he’s in Grade 12, he’s going to be 18 right away. He’s very good at what he does so I wouldn’t be surprised if he becomes a professional someday. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes. I said, ‘Hey, by that time, you can be Martin Kieran Murphy. You can be whatever you want to be!’”