Sloan’s Chris Murphy keeps the hits coming

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/12/2009 (6100 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As with most conversations, a phone call with Sloan’s Chris Murphy starts with the most inane of small-talk questions: How are you?

"I’m well — but you mean, after having been hit by a car or whatever?" he says slyly.

Yuk it up, but Murphy did, in fact, get run over by a car. It was this past July, so he’s had some time to recover — plus release a new EP, Hit & Run (yes, he says it’s named after the accident, though not based on it) and announce a winter tour, which hits the Pyramid in Winnipeg on Wednesday; tickets are $22 at Ticketmaster — but he was willing to relive the horror for the purposes of this story.

"I went out for the first time in a million years," begins Murphy, who’s currently in "baby land" as the father of a two-year-old.

After spending the night out at a downtown Toronto pub watching his Sloan bandmate Jay Ferguson DJ, Murphy hopped on his bike for the ride home. "And as soon as I get out of the door to leave, I get hit by a car."

"It basically looked like I was dead," says Murphy. "I was unconscious; there were people trying to revive me."

Murphy’s bandmate, Ferguson, saw the accident, "but he didn’t know it was me. He called 911 and came over to see who it was, basically, and saw my sneakers and f–ing s– his pants," says Murphy, clarifying with a chuckle, "Well, he didn’t s– his pants, but anyway, he had a hard time.

"Jay (Ferguson), the little hero, he came straight to the hospital. He got in the ambulance with me, so he was there when I woke up, terrified that I was paralyzed or something. But God love him, he stayed with me and, as soon as I could feel my fingers and toes, I was starting up the comedy routine to keep him from losing his mind."

While his sense of humour came out unscathed, Murphy says the accident broke his collarbone in half. "It was snapped so severely, it was like an X, two points coming out to my skin," which, incidentally, makes it tricky — never mind painful — to play the bass. He’s since had surgery, and says he’s "feeling pretty strong, but it’s a drag, because, literally, there’s a piece of metal that sticks out right where my guitar strap goes. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it is."

And while the hit and run forced the band to scrap a few shows this past summer, they were back onstage within weeks, recruiting Taylor Knox (The Golden Dogs) and Kevin Hilliard (Small Sins) to play bass and drums for Murphy. "We did some shows where I just ran around like a goofball with a sling, just singing a quarter of the songs and standing around like Flava Flav the rest of the time."

Nor did the accident affect the making of the new EP; Murphy says most of the work was wrapped before he wound up unconscious on Toronto’s Dundas Street. (He finished recording vocals the afternoon before the accident.)

Available as a digital download only, Murphy says he’d originally hoped to have Hit & Run out in September. "I thought that it would be quite quick and cheap and easy, and it was none of those things," he says with a laugh.

"Manufacturing is such a huge pain in the ass, and it’s a huge money risk, too. It’s like, how many should we make? Should we make 10,000 or should we make 1,000? Our rehearsal space, it’s sound-insulated with tons of unsold records from records past — especially our famous white elephant, our live record from 1999 (4 Nights at the Palais Royale). We have a couple thousand of those, or something."

All of these plans for the digital EP were laid months before Murphy experienced an actual hit and run, he says. "So, why are we calling it (Hit & Run) if it’s not based on it?" he asks, jokingly. "My ideas are never so much ideas, they’re essentially elaborate puns."

Hit & Run is available at www.sloanmusic.com.

 

— Canwest News Service