American Boogie (2009)

Michael Hurley is a legendary singer/songwriter, who was very popular in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the late '60s and '70s. Lately, he has been championed and covered by artists such as Lucinda Williams, Cat Power, Son Volt, the Violent Femmes, Devendra Banhart, and many others. In 2008, Hurley decided to pick up a video camera and document his concert tour across the high plains of the USA. This was his first experience filming anything. He shot and narrated the film in the naturalistic first-person style giving lackadaisical and poignant musings on small town life, the open road, antique radios, and traditional American folk/blues music. Hurley anchors the film with nostalgic rural American symbols such as the water tower (the name of one of his albums), trains, windmills, old radios, dogs, guitars, and the western landscape. The film set out to document the music of his traveling companions Ralph White and Amy Annelle, but like most things Hurley the universe expands to include things such as his affection for the weird, John Fahey, off-kilter observations, John Fogerty, nature, his urinary habits, and his alternate identities: Elwood Snock (his supervisor), Kornbred (a green mutant), Boone and Jocko (two cartoon hipster wolves).