Singing for his soul: as always, the conferences in Caux were graced by the performances of several richly talented artists. Among them was American song-writer and guitarist Scott Christopher Murray

For A Change, Oct-Nov, 2001 by John Williams

How many million kids grab hold of a guitar to strum a few chords, dreaming that sometime they will make great music? But it's not that easy, of course. It requires a talent that can't be denied, and decades of hard work.

Scott Murray's father, Fred, bought him a $75 guitar when he was 12 and mad keen on the songs of John Denver. By the time it was replaced its neck was bent sideways. He had to content himself with strumming in the local music store on the $800 guitar he really wanted, until he heard by chance that he could get it for $240 in a liquidation sale. Now in his 40s Murray still has it.

In 2000 Murray was nominated for a Grammy award in the Contemporary Folk category. He calls his songs `a moment in time for me, snapshots taken in living rooms, warehouses and studios all across Nashville'. He lived in Nashville, `Music City', but his inspiration flows more from growing up in small country communities scattered around the 150-mile long Shenandoah Valley, deep in Western Virginia.

He has shared the stage with an impressive list of performers including Willie Nelson, Chuck Pyle and Kathy Mattea. His friends tell him his lyrics are `introspective', but he resists being charged with self-centredness. `I want to give people a key to a door,' he says, `so they can come in and discover my music, as opposed to having it thrown out to them.'

Murray was born in 1960 in Pensacola, Florida. His mother, Jean, of Irish descent, was a nurse. His father, Fred, from a Scots background, was at that time a sportscaster, describing football, baseball and basketball on TV. As a small boy watching TV re-runs, Scott found it hard to reconcile the fact that his father was on the screen and at the same time sitting beside him.

Such simple human dilemmas provide him with subject matter. One of his songs is about Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem for Jesus to be born. The traditional picture of that journey is peopled with shepherds and angels. Murray wonders to himself what they thought and talked about as they travelled, and how Mary and the baby survived being bounced around on donkey-back. `I wouldn't want to travel that distance on a donk,' he says, `and if you're pregnant ...'

Scott has an older sister, Tracy, and after his brother, Grant, was born, Fred came to feel that their `here today gone the next' life in the entertainment industry was too chancy. So he decided to study dentistry, and when Scott was five, took his family from Florida to the Virginia town of Broadway.

Scott was a quiet boy with a pronounced stutter, which worried his parents greatly. The cause, they discovered much later, was a violent first-grade teacher who beat her students and grabbed their attention by wrenching their ears. None of them complained to their parents because they took it for granted that this was what school was like.

As a result of such treatment, Scott `quit talking totally' for three months. Conquering his stutter required long periods of speech therapy. He had to learn again the rhythms of talking, breathing and making the right sounds as he spoke. The experience drove him deeper into shyness. When his sister and brother got angry they would yell at each other. Scott just looked on. But in his own way he worked quietly at getting his own balance. `I kept myself to myself, but I had friends in all the cliques, the walks of life, in that school community.' He just watched people--their behaviour, what they made of their lives.

He graduated in the class of '78 with some 120 others, and one of his first decisions on leaving school was to become a volunteer firefighter: `I loved the excitement of that, and of helping somebody. I'm a sucker for the underdog.' He was raised `not to see colour' and got into the habit of `weighing people on merit'.

He enrolled in Elon College, North Carolina, on a loan, and worked nights, weekends and summers to pay for it. Then from 1981-5 he used his own traumatic experience to take a bachelor's degree in Speech Pathology at Harrisonburg, Virginia. This was when he started singing publicly, doing gigs in taverns, bars and acoustic clubs.

When Tracy left home, Scott moved into her attic room where he couldn't be heard by his parents. In fact they first heard him sing when he was 25.

Religion was a central part of his upbringing. His mother was Catholic, his father Methodist; he was baptised Episcopalian and worshipped in a Methodist church. From this experience he was able to sense where he belonged in the wider community. Today he has a strong Christian faith, he says, though he doesn't `call himself a Christian writer per se'. He just hopes that what he sings may be `meaningful to people. I don't write it: it comes through me.' Often with wry humour.

Appaloosa Andy, for instance, works in a circus, renting pony rides to children. His wife Jean, the popcorn girl,

Dreams of a house you can't drive down the road,

Flowers in the garden and washing on the line

And a weatherworn triangle that she rings at suppertime.