Matt Urmy CD Release

Laced with free verse, a few sprinkles of hip-hop flow and plenty of good ol’ country roots music, Matt Urmy’s New Season Comin’ owes a debt to the unofficial poet laureate of East Tennessee, R.B. Morris. It’s a debt Urmy happily acknowledges in the disc’s liner notes, and the admiration is reciprocal: Morris called Urmy’s poetry collection Ghosts in a House “an evocation and beginning for a powerful new voice.” Still, Urmy is his own man, blessed with a tuneful, Knopfler-esque baritone that’s as well suited to singing as to the spoken word. A student of the late Maori healer Hohepa “Papa Joe” Delamere, Urmy does healing work himself, and the impulse to uplift comes through. But if that sounds too “New Agey,” don’t let it deter you: The majority of the material recalls the groovin’ country soul of The Byrds and Flying Burrito Brothers or the thoughtful folk of John Prine—and it features some of the trippiest pedal steel since Sneaky Pete passed on, courtesy of Tom Pryor.

Fri., July 17, 9 p.m., 2009