Behind the music in Birmingham: Brian T. Murphy and Red Mountain Music
We launched Birmingham Box Set to offer you even more local music coverage, and that’s something I’m especially excited to do when our featured CD is by local musicians. The featured album in this month’s magazine is the seasonally-appropriate Silent Night, a collection of Christmas hymns by Red Mountain Music. It’s the sixth album by the musicians and friends of Birmingham’s Red Mountain Church.
In 1999 RMC Chief Musician Brian T. Murphy began recording hymns set to new music with Reformed University Fellowship at Auburn. The group’s first album sold more than 10,000 copies, and since then hymn rewrites have grown in popularity. The nationally-known Indelible Grace series followed in 2001, growing out of RUF at Nashville, Tenn.’s Belmont University. The first CD from Red Mountain Music was 2003’s Depth of Mercy, and now when they travel to other cities the musicians regularly draw crowds of several hundred. Last week Murphy and I chatted about this unusual niche, the history of Red Mountain Music and recording Silent Night.
Birmingham Box Set: You record with a variety of musicians from album to album. Can you tell me more about the folks you work with?
Brian T. Murphy: Yes, definitely, a lot of musicians. I’d say we’ve probably had over 50 people contribute to our records, from literally all over the country, but there’s also a really strong community of musicians right here in Birmingham and I’m really thankful to pull from that. There’s really too many people involved to start listing. I’ll end up leaving somebody out. I will mention Clint Wells though, because he plays almost all of the guitars on our records, as well as co-produces. He and I have logged a lot of hours working on these projects together.
BBS: Let’s for a second talk about the pace Red Mountain Music has established, because you record a lot of music.
BTM: I’m itching to get back in the studio to start working on our next project. Our pace is a record a year. That’s been our pace; since 2003, we’ve put out six records. I don’t know, we just have a lot of music. It’s not all on me. There’s a lot of people that contribute to the work and write.
It’s relatively easy to bring a record together as far as production of it. We have the studio just sitting there now and it’s all paid for. The challenge now is figuring out how to get the music out because CDs don’t sell. And I hate to give it away because we’re not touring, so it doesn’t make sense to give it away to support a tour. I don’t know what that’s going to look like for us in the future. I’m a little worried about it.
BBS: Do you guys have plans to get back in the studio soon?
BTM: Yeah, we do. We have a lot of songs that we’re real excited about that we sort of put on hold for the Christmas project. But we’ve already actually recorded probably 25 percent of our next record. I’ve got songs that I want to do that I’m really excited about.
BBS: Why hymns?
BTM: I’m careful about this because I don’t ever want to say that it’s because I’m against any other type of music. That’s not it. I just really like the hymns. … The time period I’m working with is 1650s to 1850s and specifically a lot of William Gadsby, Anne Steele, William Cowper, Isaac Watts … I just feel like, there’s a sort of Christianity described in that poetry that I resonate with. It describes a Christianity that describes doubt and real suffering and real trials, and it’s not glossed over, and it is dark. But it’s also incredibly hopeful.
To me, most of the hymns kind of include the whole story of how dark it really is here and how hopeful the Gospel really is and how big God’s work really is. I think there are modern writers that hint at that, but not as consistently. So I just really love these hymns. And to me, they make me feel like I’m not so crazy. My Christianity is not glossed over Christianity.
BBS: You recently left your full-time job to focus on freelance photography and music. Will that affect the output of Red Mountain Music?
BTM: I think if anything, we’ll probably have more output. I have more time now to work on it, assuming photography doesn’t get completely ridiculous—which it might. …
I really envision the output staying consistent. The biggest issue for me there isn’t time so much as it is … what do most people want to hear? I’m not convinced that most people want, really, even a record a year. I just think people get overwhelmed. There are certainly people that, everything we put out they love. They have even the B-sides.
It does cost money to make the records. We’ve got to send them mixed and mastered. Even though we own the studio, you’ve got to get them pressed. I’ve got to pay musicians. … So our typical cost on a record is between nine and $14,000 to make. That’s real money that has to be produced. If we can’t make that back in sales, it’s hard to know what we’re doing.
BBS: Let’s talk a little bit more about Silent Night in particular. An obvious change is that, instead of using a variety of vocalists, Ashley Spurling sings everything. Why did y’all decide to do that?
BTM: You know, the longer I’ve worked with her, the more I’m convinced that she’s just—she’s really that great. I think her voice, it’s very unique, it’s very endearing. It’s really strong and yet it’s understated. There’s a sort of humility that comes across, I think, in the way she sings that makes people think they can also sing. When I hear her sing, I feel like, almost like she’s carrying me through the song. I can sing with her and I can sing well—and I can’t sing well. … It kept it simple to work with her only because she made it easy to arrange for her voice.
BBS: On “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” I find myself belting it out with her, and that does not sound pretty I promise you. But her voice does make you feel like you can do it, too—which is fine when I’m in the car by myself.
BTM: We’re singing in church and there is something about being carried in your faith by other people in church. I don’t understand that, but I do think there’s something to it. And then there’s something really mysterious about the singing in that people who don’t sing well literally are being carried by people who can sing well. … It’s like they’re singing for you and they’re singing with you, and together it all sounds good. To me, there’s something very beautiful about that, there’s something very redemptive about that. It’s hopeful.
BBS: How did you guys choose which songs to use for this CD?
BTM: I wanted to do all familiar, traditional Christmas hymns. I didn’t want to invent anything new. We’ve written some original Christmas stuff, but whenever I listen to Christmas CDs that’s always kind of obnoxious. … And then you have these classics. I’m not that arrogant to think that my stuff can stand up against some timeless melody.
So yeah, we just wanted to keep it really simple and just do some timeless old melodies. We probably had about 11 or 12 we were originally working on, and then as always we cut the ones that didn’t seem to be working as well. So we cut three of them and ended up with eight. It’s a shorter record. Nine including our riveting version of Little Drummer Boy.
BBS: Sequencing is always an important part of the finished product, and it feels like you really hit it right on this one. How do you make those decisions?
BTM: Sequencing is always really hard. [It’s] trial and error. We wait until a record’s done because you never know exactly how a song’s going to sound until it’s mastered. … We would just send playlists around to each other and listen to it in our iTunes for a day and then we ended up on that one.
BBS: How long does that process take altogether?
BTM: Like with everything, it can take like a year and you end up just having to say like, OK, let’s just finish this thing. I think this time we spent three or four days on that. I knew I wanted it to end with “Come Thou Long,” and the hardest thing is knowing what to open with. I still think maybe it would have been better to open with “Joy to the World.” Oh well.
BBS: “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” is a perfect conclusion. It gets me every single time.
BTM: It’s a big song. And then it just sort of washes out. I love it, I love that song. When we were working on it in the studio, Clint [Wells] really did breathe new life into it. Those guitar parts gave it this energy and we just built off that.
BBS: Red Mountain Music is playing at WorkPlay on Dec. 22. What should people expect?
BTM: Drew Holcomb is coming down. He is a friend of mine. He’s been on most of our records, a singer/songwriter based in Memphis, now he’s in Nashville. Real authentically Southern. His wife sings these amazing harmonies with him. He’s going to play with his band and they released this amazing Christmas CD last year. The whole thing was kind of his idea. So he’s doing a 45 minute set of all Christmas music and then we’re going to go on after him.
My plan is to kind of play the record and big band—I’m going to have two guitar players, bass, drums, and me and Ashley, two violinists. I’m real excited about the sound. I think it’s going to be really warm. … I think Drew’s side of it will be a little raucous. I think ours is going to be very somber and very chilled out and very, kind of our style. I think it’ll be really cool.
Preview tracks from Silent Night and purchase albums at redmountainmusic.com. Tickets for the Dec. 22 show are available at workplay.com.
