Champion native Jason Murphy plays music in the area as Jay Byrd.
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WARREN — Jason Murphy grew up with two music-loving parents.
His mom was a child of the ’60s with a huge collection of pop and rock 45s. Dad was a big blues fan who would quiz his son about the songs they were listening to whenever they were in the car together.
That musical education — and a Billboard magazine reference book he found at the library — inform the music the 1995 Champion High School graduate plays at different venues in the Mahoning Valley as Jay Byrd.
“I started putting on shows as a teen,” Murphy said. “I had a rap group and became fascinated with putting on shows.”
He couldn’t ignore the musical influences he grew up with, though, and he did his first solo acoustic show at age 18.
“Except for eight years when I worked at a mill on swing shift and couldn’t schedule any shows, I’ve been doing it ever since,” he said. “I couldn’t exclude the rock and blues anymore as far as playing shows. And it’s a lot easier to play rock shows and blues shows here.”
Murphy has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Westminster College and his teaching endorsement from Notre Dame College in Cleveland and works as a special education teacher, but he continues to hone his craft on guitar and harmonica.
He was writing his own material as a teenage rapper, but most musicians will say it’s tough to make a living in this area — and, frankly, most areas — playing original songs. People want to hear what they already know.
As Jay Byrd, he tries to meet them halfway.
“When I was starting out, I went to the Warren public library and found a Billboard magazine book that went all the way back to the 1950s,” he said. “I made a list of songs and made sure all of the songs were a charted song, at least a top 100 hit. From there I took those choices and looked at what hasn’t been played by every other band in town but still is familiar enough that people will respond to it.”
It makes for a setlist of tunes that people have heard before but never performed in this way.
“I’ll do songs from the ’80s, like Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.’ I’ve never heard another band cover it. I’ll do ’90s thowback jams – (Warren G’s) ‘Regulate’ and (Montell Jordan’s) ‘This Is How We Do it.’ You don’t hear other acoustic acts playing that. It’s a novelty, but people seem to really get a kick out of that.
“I’ll take a song like Bennie and the Jets. Because it’s Elton John, it’s associated with the piano, but I do it on guitar, so it’s different instrumentation. I’ll throw a harmonica solo on (Robin Thicke’s) ‘Blurred Lines.’ It’s a blend of the familiar with something new.”
Murphy, who is married and has four children ranging in age from 2 to 21, has gotten back to writing in recent years. It started in 2019 when his friend Bobby Ocean, who was attracting attention with his song “Coal Miner’s Way,” asked him for help in recording some new songs.
The two started writing together, and two songs they co-wrote, “In This Bar” and “Best I Could Do,” picked up nominations this year at the Josie Awards, which recognizes independent artists.
Murphy also started writing songs to perform himself. The first one he’s released is “Steel Heart (The Ballad of James A. Traficant),” which is available on the streaming services and has been played on The Summit radio station (91.3 FM) and Cornel Bogdan’s “Tangled Up in Blues” radio show on Y103 (102.9 FM).
“I was listening to the Crooked City podcast, which outlines the entire story of the Mafia’s involvement in the Mahoning Valley and Jim Traficant’s ascent. I was pushing the baby in the stroller and it just clicked with me. I looked on Apple Music, did anyone ever write a song about Jim Traficant, and no one had.”
Drawing inspiration from songs like Dire Straits’ “Sultans of Swing” and Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” and the movie western soundtracks of Ennio Morricone, he crafted a nearly 6-minute song that spins Traficant stories over multiple verses.It wasn’t until he’d written the song that he discovered on a later episode of “Crooked City” that Traficant used to drive around in his truck listening to music from old westerns.
“In my mind, wow, that was more than a coincidence,” Murphy said.
People have started asking to hear “Steel Heart” at his local gigs, and he’ll occasionally slip in one of his other originals, without introducing it in advance, to gauge the response from those in the audience.
The plan is to have an album’s worth of material to release in the next year or so, and the boy who grew up listening to his mom’s 45s definitely wants a vinyl release, not just a digital version for streaming or a CD with hard-to-read liner notes.
He’s also putting to use the research he did to select cover material.
“I hope by studying songs that have lasted over the years and stood the test of time that they inspire the songs I’m making and they can have some longevity.”
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