Nicole Knox Murphy has been on quite a musical journey these last ten years. Murphy became a lead singer for her father’s country band in her home state of Vermont when she was only 14. She continued singing with his very busy band until just after she got married. Then, her schedule was less busy and when her father retired, she was grounded. By then, she was living in her adopted state of New Hampshire. Raising three children and supporting her family took up much of her time, until her children were grown. Then, while spending a year recovering from back surgery, she picked up her old acoustic guitar and started picking away.
“Took my guitar out of the closet again,” she said. “That was part of my recovery, getting back into music. It heals you from the inside out. That’s what music does for me.”
It was around 2005 when Murphy found her way back into the music scene. In her home town of Candia, New Hampshire she visited a little music shop next to a gas station. After going in to buy guitar strings, she learned that the store held evening jam sessions. She then started going on country nights to the Henderson Picking Parlor. She met a musician named Joe Gibson who gave her a few lessons and who hired her to front his country band for three years, starting out as the Joe Gibson Band before renaming themselves Granite Moon Band.
“Then it kind of did not work because the strong personalities is how I’d like to have it known, and it wasn’t a good fit for me. Personalities didn’t match up,” Murphy said.
But, having been bitten by the music bug, Murphy wasn’t about to give up music even though she gave up that band. She would still like to be part of a band, but it hasn’t happened yet in the last six or seven years. She cannot find a group to adopt her or find a group to build around her and her songs. “Those people haven’t showed up yet, and I’m still hoping they do, but it’s a solo thing,” she said. “What was most comfortable for me when I went solo is like the background tracks. I like feeling like I have a whole band behind me.”
Murphy plays guitar while running a harmonizer so she can have extra vocals, which splits her voice when she needs a second vocal while playing and singing, giving her a full band effect, even though it’s just her facing the audience.
“I play in a lot of places that want to dance,” she said. “If you just do the acoustic thing, people don’t dance. That’s more of a sit and listen to.” This might explain why Murphy plays out every Friday and Saturday night; because she can front a dance band sound and play other gigs as a solo acoustic act.
Using her backing tracks has come with a price. She feels she is frowned upon in her local music scene for using them. Other musicians have been unkind to her because they feel she’s cheating the system by playing with those tracks. She also gets mockingly called a karaoke singer.
“That just makes me so angry,” she said. “I don’t feel I get credit where credit is due. I work very hard to put together a nice show and to be polished and to have it come off sounding really good. Even though I have background music, I’m still playing. I’m still singing. I’m actually juggling a lot of sound. I’m juggling harmony. I’m juggling a lot of things that are going on that I have to do throughout a song to make it come across professional sounding.”
Murphy did get a lot of support from the New Hampshire Country Music Association. A NHCMA official, who has since passed away, told Murphy that she should compete in a NHCMA event to get her feet wet and see how it works. Murphy, in 2012, did compete in the NHCMA but she only competed in the New Country category. A month later, Murphy found out at an award show that she had won. This resulted in a trip to Pigeonforge, Tennessee to compete in the Rising Star competition for Female Entertainer Of The Year, where she took fourth place among competitors from around the United States. During this same trip, Murphy drove across the state to Nashville to record two demo songs with producer Jerry Webb. Going back a year later to that Nashville studio resulted in her 2014 full length CD Full Circle. She decided to come back to New Hampshire and compete in the New Hampshire Country Music Association once more, just to be certain her victory a year earlier wasn‘t a fluke. She won all six of the awards she was nominated for.
“I got back down to Tennessee(after her huge six award sweep) and I decided only to send my music down,” she said. “I decided to take my money to go to the recording studio to finish my album as opposed to spend my money to go down to the competition.”
Her album Full Circle took years of actual work. Some of those song she wrote when she was in her early to mid-teens. Some of her songs where poems she switched to music. She revamped her early songs into more grown up material and she had a few more songs she had written closer to her recording session. In April of this year, Murphy will return to Nashville to again work with producer Jerry Webb. Her goal is to have ten songs on her next CD. She has already sent down seven songs to be worked on.
“I have two in the works already. They’re on paper. I have to add music to them. I have one I have to write brand new from scratch,” she said. “I’m waiting for the inspiration.”
Her title track Full Circle ended up winning second place nationally in the Pigeon Forge songwriting competition in 2013. After the full length was released, the Full Circle CD was well received, garnering favorable reviews in her home state of Vermont and in her adopted state of New Hampshire. “Quite a few papers picked up on it with an article,” she said.
Playing gigs every weekend is another testament to her talents. Her immediate goal is to release her second full length CD in April. “I guess what I’m looking for is to have people look at me and say ‘Oh, yeah, she is a good singer-songwriter, not just a karaoke singer,’” she said.
“I guess I take it as an insult when people call me that, and I would like to be known as a singer-songwriter. I don’t have to be famous. I’m happy doing what I’m doing singing on the weekend. Another one of my goals is I would love to have a small band behind me so I can just focus on singing and not have to worry about playing and having to manage the sound and managing everything I that I have to manage when I do a solo show.”
It takes a lot of courage for Murphy to get up on stage by herself and juggle all her technical gear. There is no band to hide a mistake. “There’s no forgiveness in that,” the singer said. “I just love what I do, and I just hope that people who do listen to me enjoy what they listen to.”
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