Influential, cult-beloved outsider folk singer-songwriter Michael Hurley has died. He was 83.
The news was announced in a statement from the artist's family, with Hurley's publicist confirming to Rolling Stone that the musician had died in his home state of Oregon after returning from a series of weekend performances at Knoxville, TN's Big Ears festival.
"It is with a resounding sadness that the Hurley family announces the recent sudden passing of the inimitable Michael Hurley," the statement from his family reads. "The 'Godfather of freak folk' was for a prolific half-century the purveyor of an eccentric genius and compassionate wit. He alone was Snock. There is no other. Friends, family, and the music community deeply mourn his loss."
Hurley, who went by the nickname "Snock," emerged from the '60s Greenwich Village folk scene when he was in his 20s, releasing his home-recorded debut album First Songs on the revered Folkways label in 1964. The record's country blues influences branded the artist as something of a dissenter in the big folk boom of the era, and it wasn't fully appreciated until the mid-2000s, when it became gospel to a lot of freak folk artists like Espers and Devendra Banhart.
Hurley finally began garner critical acclaim by the time he released his fourth LP, 1976's Have Moicy!, with the Holy Modal Rounders while living in Vermont, which received a glowing review from renowned The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau. Even when freak folk had fallen out of vogue, the singer-songwriter remained cherished within the realm of experimental folk. Just before his 80th birthday in 2021, Hurley released his final album, The Time of the Foxgloves.