From Nebraska to Niagara, Cornelia Murr Talks Tour, Reflects on ‘Run To The Center’
Cornelia Murr for Run To The Center. Photo by Rett Rogers.
Since “running to the center” on her eponymous sophomore LP in February, Cornelia Murr has been running around North America.
Spring saw the seasoned artist opening for pop rock band Papooz, while summer carried her through a headlining tour of her own. Now, the autumnal air has her on the road with Matt Maltese, opening for the entirety of his North American tour.
Murr’s sound is hard to pin down — her Luke Temple-produced album is sprinkled with elements ranging from dream pop to psychedelic folk — but perhaps that’s the point. Run To The Center was written as Murr renovated a house in Red Cloud, Nebraska, a town with a population that doesn’t quite reach 1,000 residents. Lyrical motifs came to her while stripping wallpaper; she recorded vocals as a break from putting up drywall. As a result, the 10-track record’s untethered sound is held together by Murr’s undeniably ethereal voice and an underlying sense of uninhibited freedom.
As she and her band drove through the vibrant fall foliage of Upstate New York — en route to a pitstop at Niagara Falls before a show in Toronto — Murr and I conversed about life on the road, her two new b-sides and the development of her creative process.
So you’re on tour with Matt Maltese right now. What’s been your favorite song from Run To The Center to perform live and why?
Well, I would say we've been starting the sets lately with “How Do You Get By,” and so that's off Run to the Center, and the band has been going out a little bit before me and we sort of do this jammy intro to that song, which has been kind of fun, so that's been enjoyable. We also put out some b-sides recently — so it's not technically on the record, but they're b-sides for that album, they're related — and we've been playing one of those, so it's a brand new song, so that's always fun to play something that is very fresh.
Which one is it?
It’s called “Gotta Give.”
Nice! Has your favorite song to play live changed since you did your last slew of headlining shows in June?
That's a good question, I like that question. It changes all the time. It changes so frequently what feels good, and on this run so far with Matt, we've been changing up the set list a lot, like almost every night making changes to it, just because it's fun to try things different ways. And you know, we only get 30 minutes, so I'm trying to constantly craft what feels like the best set list, but I think we'll keep changing it up a lot throughout this tour.
Speaking of b-sides, you also just released two new tracks from the Run To The Center era, “Treaty” and “Gotta Give,” of which you said they feel like they “lived in their own world.” What world is that and how does it differ from the world of the rest of the record?
I think mostly the reason why that seems to be the case to me is they're both very old songs of mine. “Treaty” was probably written, like — what year is it? It’s 2025 — it was probably written 10 years ago. It's had many different versions, actually, over the years, but it's an old tune, and “Gotta Give” is maybe not quite as old, but it's up there, and so it's partly that they were just from another era of my life.
I don't know if they're even all that related to each other, but they're written about lessons that I learned in different departments of life. “Gotta Give” has a lot to do with family, and the other tune, “Treaty,” is a bit about the beauty of casual relationships in your youth, but I feel like they're chapters that are quite distant in the past to me now.
Why did you feel like now was the right time to release them?
Well, I recorded them at the same time as Run to the Center. I just had always had them, and so we made them at the same time. We put them out partly because this tour was starting, and they were just ready to go, and so it's nice to have more options for things to play, you know?
I noticed there’s a lot of natural imagery and more abstract ideas and metaphors on the album tracks, while “Treaty” and “Gotta Give” feel a little more narrative. What inspires you to tap into different types of storytelling when you’re writing songs?
You know, I don't know the answer to that. Songs usually come to me sort of in the same way, which is usually a line of words and a melody will come, and I don't really get to decide why or what it's going to be about or the style of the song. It kind of has a way of telling me that itself, and of course what's going on in your life and the phase you're in.
It might have been the case that I, perhaps, wrote a bit more narratively in those years, like, in my early 20s. Not that I won't in the future, but I think probably that's what was going on. I mean, Run to the Center, I guess, does have a lot to do with place, and so environment, like you said. Sounds and nature. There's a little bit of narrative in there, but it's not so linear, perhaps.
Did your environment while you were writing have anything to do with that? I know you were in a small town in Nebraska restoring a house when writing. Did that play a role at all?
Yeah, it did, on a couple of songs in particular, like the title track very much so refers to quite literally what I was thinking about while stripping wallpaper off of an old house. That one is the most on the nose. There's some bullfrogs in the opening of that song that actually were not recorded in Nebraska, but it was the summertime, and they exist there too.
And “Skylight,” the first song on the album, doesn't speak to Nebraska at all or the place, but that was a song that came out while I was doing a lot of manual labor — repetitive tasks like the wallpapers or drywall, different things — and “Skylight” is an example of a song that just kind of popped out while I was doing something else, and that happened a few times. “Run to the Center” was like that too, so whether they're directly related or not to the subject matter, they came forth from that environment.
Do you think being in Nebraska influenced the record sonically in anyway, in addition to thematically?
I don’t know. The record to me — it’s not anything like Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, you know? It’s not a country record. It’s not exactly a folk record, even though there’s some folk moments on it. There’s line dancing in Nebraska, honky-tonks and stuff, and it’s not like that, obviously.
But — wherever you are, whatever’s going on with you when you’re recording — I like to think about a recording quite literally like a document of somebody in a room. Their breath and their voice and the acoustics of that room and the oxygen, everything. You can't ever redo it, you know? It's exactly how it is based on where you are and what's going on for you.
All of the vocals on that record I did alone in Nebraska, in the house, when I had just gotten there and had set up a very makeshift recording rig, and it was summertime, it was very hot, and I just remember being alone layering harmonies. Like on the song “Bless Yr Lil Heart,” the kind of outro of that song turned into this sort of funny soul thing. I was just alone, sort of losing my mind. I didn't even have perspective, really, but had to just lean into it. And also, when you're alone, you can get a little wild, because no one's watching you, you know? So yeah, the house, the temperature, the isolation was part of it. I don't exactly know what it did to it, but it's part of the sauce.
Right, like the Nebraska element is more so about the rural isolation than a country thing.
Right, yeah, it's totally true, and that’s been a gift about that place for me going forward. It's still a part of my life, that house. I'm there very, very infrequently, but when I get back there, it's a place where I do a lot of writing and a lot of creative work because, basically, no one can hear me. So it’s about privacy more than anything else. And freedom, you know?
I also want to talk about “Meantime,” one of the lead singles, because it was released almost a year ago and, selfishly, it’s always been my favorite on the album. Since it’s about clinging to the comfort of a chapter in your life before it ends, what does the song mean to you today, as I’m sure touring the album feels like a different chapter than writing it?
Yeah, so it has taken on a bit of a different life live. I mean, the song will always be about what it's about for me, and it brings back the sort of tension in knowing that what you're doing isn't sustainable — you already described it well yourself — so I still feel that when I'm playing it.
But I have my bandmate, Henry Raker, who's driving right now, playing sax, and the sax line — it's not in the recording, it kind of is doubling what the strings are doing it in certain places — is kind of a joyful moment, actually. I feel like there's more release. There's tension and release in that song, and maybe live there's a bit more release than on the recording.
But yeah … I still feel like there's this frenetic sort of tense feeling there that I enjoy live, maybe that's even amped up more, the tension is greater. But yeah, that's a fun one to play.
After this tour is over, what’s next for you?
Let's see, this wraps up in early November — it's a long road ahead. And then, I have a little bit of time. I'm working on some new recordings, so, I'll have some time in the late fall and winter for that.
Catch Cornelia Murr at one of her remaining dates on tour with Matt Maltese.