Former Nevermore / ex-Annihilator guitarist Curran Murphy is featured in a new interview with VoyageOhio discussing his career as a professional musician and his company, Custom Audio Mutation. Following is an excerpt from the chat.
Q: I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Murphy: "Nothing is ever smooth in my business; getting back from my first European tour to find out I was homeless, broke, and stranded at the airport by the band I had just finished a month-long tour with. Living in a storage shed because I was broke but wanting to make records for bands. Having my car repossessed, and my home go into foreclosure twice while working to build a new guitar company. Mental breakdowns that jeopardized my marriage and life till I found therapy and got square with my soul and mind. Constant rejection of my music and always struggling to figure out how to make my amps better and to make better sounding records. What I do is an endless challenge, to my mind, my soul, my business, and my life. I wouldn’t change anything for anything; it has all been perfect and correct to get me right to this moment!"
Check out the complete interview here.
Murphy was a touring member of Nevermore between 2000 - 2004. He was working with Annihilator around the same time, 2002 - 2005, and is credited on the albums Waking The Fury (2002 / guitars), All For You (2004 / additional guitars) and appears on the live record, Double Live Annihilation (2003).
Murphy on Custom Audio Mutation:
"Custom Audio Mutation is a recording studio, tube amplifier company, guitar pedal company, and live instrumental band I started in 1999 while living in Seattle as a touring guitarist for Nevermore and Annihilator.
I started with making albums for my own bands out of necessity. Going into a studio and having the engineer or producer ruin my record or my bands sound for their ego and then getting a bill for thousands of dollars was insane to me. So I bought some gear and started making records. I got better and better at it and people started wanting me to make records for them. Now I have over 80 production credits under my belt with artists from all over the earth, and I am happy to say that more musicians ask me to work for them every year.
I also started dabbling in electronics at this time as well, I couldn’t afford the top level pre-amps and compressors, but I could source the parts and build them myself. I soon found out that my DIY pre’s and comp’s sounded better than the really expensive stuff you can by from a catalog. Taking this idea into guitar pedals I started modifying guitar pedals to correct what I saw as poor designs or component choices that compromised the tone of the pedal and guitar.
All of this leads into the crazy thought: 'If I can do this to pedals, why not guitar amps as well.' All of these things I learned due to my dissatisfaction with off the shelf pedals, amplifiers, and guitars. A $2000.00 amp should not need a bunch of pedals or EQ to sound good in the mix or live. Why couldn’t an amp just 'work' with a guitar plugged in and a mic in front of it. So I started learning how to build tube amps, how to voice them and get the kind of gain and saturation I wanted from them. The end game idea was to be using them on my own records, live shows and on tour. My recording clients and fellow guitarists started to ask if I would build amps for them, and it came to the point I opened up as a guitar amp company as well.
This is all a pretty abbreviated history, which does not go into the hundreds and thousands of hours of failure and advice seeking and electrocution’s that happened. But I hope it gives you some insight into why I do what I do and the reason I offer it to you as a customer. Either my recording services, or my amplifier company or my repairs and modification (mutation) services. I do them because I need them, and you might too."
Check out Custom Audio Mutation here.
