Cornelia Murr and her ‘Run To The Center’
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY KORA ELMS FLEMING ☆
Photo Credit: Caleb Lanier
IT STARTED WITH CORNELIA MURR’S CAMO T-SHIRT — thrifted from a shop in Red Cloud. I sat in front of posters for a Nebraska art exhibition at my dinner table. My boots laying down in the corner, listening to stories of home. I explained to Murr that I’m from Nebraska, so I was very excited about her album. When I said I grew up about 40 minutes outside of Red Cloud, she immediately lit up. Red Cloud (population: 946) has become an added branch to her life. Murr spent time in the little town, visiting her mom, making music, thinking, and renovating a house. At a crossroads in her life, Murr found herself smack dab in the middle of the country, literally Run-ing To The Center. “When I encounter someone who knows it, or is from there, or has been there,” she said, “it feels like we’re part of a little club or something. Like–‘Oh my God! You know the secret!’”
I chuckled and knew exactly what Murr was talking about. Nebraska is not a tourist destination. There’s no ocean to dip your toes in, no mountains to climb. It’s discounted as a “flyover state” or a pure forgotten note of American geography. I’ve had a surprising amount of people say, “Wait, I thought Nebraska was in the South?” Nebraska is a “if you know,, you know” type of place. It’s a secret. Its beauty hidden behind the concrete giant of I-80. I never really expect to run into someone who gets it, who understands Nebraska’s vast, hidden beauty, its fireflies in the summer time. Nebraska is a state of stillness. It often feels frozen—thawing ten years behind everyone else.
Photo Credit: Bruce Estevez
It was just me, Murr, and our video chat—connecting two different people from different places, sewn together by this secret knowledge of a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Murr is no stranger to moving around. She found Red Cloud through her mother: a writer with a free spirit. “We have moved a lot in my life,” she said. “I have for many reasons, and sometimes she was the reason.”
Her mother is a longtime fan of Willa Cather, a Nebraskan author, born and raised in Red Cloud. When her mom was on a road trip, she drove through Red Cloud to meet up with Murr in New Mexico. Her mom’s original plan was to move to New Mexico, but Red Cloud was an itch that they both just had to scratch. “When I met her, she was like, ‘I just want to go back there.’ It was a crazy time. It was 2021, and I think she just wanted a peaceful, safe place to be. That's what this little town really is, more than most places.” In my romantic mind, Willa Cather's hand drew the two of them back to this little town.
Before Murr found herself in Red Cloud, there was a storm of thoughts rolling in. Internal pressure was a roll of thunder that she couldn’t outrun. “I felt the pull of all these different options, and I felt real pressure to kind of figure it out, and for it to be the real move where I'm really going to put down roots and really start my life and define it,” she said. It was this restless urgency that wasn’t going anywhere. But, sometimes, the middle of nowhere is where it all happens. Murr described her time in Red Cloud as sitting on a perch. “Being in the absolute middle of the country, and just being so, so far from everything that I thought I wanted, was this neutral middle ground. It was a bit of reprieve from the questions.” Surveying herself, her options, asking questions, and letting them breathe. In this place that Murr never thought she would be or wanted to be, Red Cloud became an eye in Murr’s storm.
Eventually, her mom took a job as a tour guide at the Willa Cather Center, and Murr began to make her way to Red Cloud. “I started making the record before I moved out there, but after my mom moved there, I started visiting her every so often to help her get settled,” she said. Unexpectedly, out of pure Nebraska magic and charm, a house basically fell into Murr's lap. An older woman offered Murr her home. “It was just a very, very affordable situation. I couldn't dream, honestly, of owning a place, anywhere…I met this older lady who owned the house, but she hadn't lived in it for many years.
She wanted to get rid of it, and she wanted a woman to take it on.” Murr explained to me that the woman and her mother lived in the house. The house found her, aching for a new life and new women to fill its space.
Murr was still living in LA when she started making the record, but Nebraska slowly drew her in. Her producer, Luke, made the trek (and trust me, it is) to Red Cloud, working on arrangements in her half-renovated house amid Fourth of July fireworks. “There was a lot going on in town, a lot of noise that we had to deal with while recording, but it was fun…I hadn’t gotten very far yet on the renovation. But he left and I finished the vocals out there by myself.” In a backward way, it fit the moment, Red Cloud chaos coupled with a renovation, and an album in the works. So many parts in motion all attempting to be fit together.
The title track, “Run to the Center,” opens with this hum, that I can only describe as those obnoxious Nebraska cicadas, crickets, and grasshoppers competing to sing their songs. The hum calms the song, stripping it down to just a piano and Murr. It’s raw, and calling to be unraveled. She sings, “Working on this old house as if it’s my body/If I take care of it it’ll take care of me.” Putting herself in this house, the house putting itself back into the music, as you listen to the album, Murr’s thoughts and emotions cannot be ignored. It’s all there for you if you really listen.
Sitting on her perch in Red Cloud, Murr had no choice but to face these different directions in her life. It was an exercise in isolation, and a push to face herself. “I would go out there and my mom's there, and there’s some very sweet neighbors, and very kind people. But all in all, it's incredibly isolating,” Murr explained. Rural Nebraska is pretty obsolete of anything a city has, but Murr joked that the grocery store did start carrying organic half and half when she asked, and an old couple came around to chop down her tree after a storm. Yet, without the hustle of LA or New York, Murr was left to her own thoughts, unable to drown it out, realizing that even in this small little town she is “still the same person, regardless of where I am, life still matters, every day still matters.”
Wanting to run was a through line for mine and Murr’s conversation. We talked about the similarities of our moms, joking that maybe they should meet each other. But, that restlessness was passed down to us, as much as we’d like to deny it. Murr moved from London at age 6, but when you leave a place that young, there’s this weird need to go back to it. Like the book wasn’t finished. That maybe, just maybe if you go back to this place everything will feel right. We joked about living in Paris or Dublin or England or D.C. or New York. Murr described to me this wrestling match she’s had with running, moving, and indecision. “I think the feeling I dislike more than any perhaps, is indecision. It just rips me apart.” Red Cloud stripping Murr of comforts and allowing her to take a pause helped her realize, “You're not really living anywhere when you're in your head…your life is happening wherever you are.” You can’t run from yourself—even when you’re running to the center, you’re already there waiting for yourself.
Murr’s album, Run To The Center isn’t just about Red Cloud, or the house, or LA; it’s all of it. The tracks are stuffed full of personality, Murr’s emotions coming through her soft voice. The record is introspective, reflecting Murr’s mindset while writing. It’s cutting and clear, synthy and ethereal. All of the points you expect from a Cornelia Murr record, but most importantly she said, “The writer who wrote the bio for the record said something that I liked. It was to the tune of, it's more about just allowing yourself to ask the questions, maybe than the answers.” Letting yourself perch, letting yourself redo a house, letting yourself move to Red Cloud, letting yourself day dream, letting yourself fly back to LA, letting yourself get serious, letting yourself mess around—that’s what this album speaks to. It lets you run without straying too far from yourself.
One could argue that the two most important tracks in the album are the opener and the closer. Coincidentally, “Skylight” and “Bless Yr Lil Heart” serve those roles on the album, and were my favorites. Murr described an album cycle as “morning to night, back to morning.” These two songs working in tandem encapsulate that thought perfectly.
Opening with “Skylight” Murr gives the listener a glimmer of sun, light, and hope. It takes you into a morning where the sun perfectly catches the little flecks of dust in the air, like you’re living in your own snow globe. Written in Red Cloud after a fit of inspiration while working on the house. The song lives in airy vocals and the lyric, “When I come up for air/May you be in sight” gives your chest a burst, a little space created for love to enter. “Skylight is about when you have an experience that wakes you up,” she said, “maybe you have a crush, or you remember what it’s like to feel, and you’re like ‘Oh my God. Life is big, and it can be anything, and maybe I’ll move to Paris and be with this person.’” “Skylight” lets you revel in a day dream, giving you a pep as you’re slamming your boots into the sidewalk.
If “Skylight” has your head up in the clouds, “Bless Yr Lil Heart” grounds you back down with a pat on the head. Written in LA, it doesn’t dismiss the bursts of love, but looks at them with a knowing smirk of “here we go again.” Murr described the track as “talking about how sort of absurd it is in some ways, to have this wild guide in life that is the heart. It just wants so much and can change all the time what it wants.” Murr gives the listener permission to follow it. To bless it, to shake its hand and listen to it, while still scoffing a little at its crazy ideas.
Although these two songs work as a morning and night duo, they simultaneously reflect Murr’s personal journey through the making of this album. “Skylight” born out of a creative flow in Nebraska: “I was doing all this manual labor,” she recalled. “A couple of times songs came to me very fluidly.” In contrast, “Bless Yr Lil Heart” came to life in LA. “I was kind of losing my mind, alone without feedback, getting into a very sort of strange mental state,” Murr described. There’s a chorus of stacked harmonies, a surge of synthy power, grounded with a steady drum. “It’s a closed fist/It’s a full moon,” she sings, almost as a full surrender to herself, allowing herself to get a little indulgent with it.
Murr sits on this perch, her hands wrapped around its branches, but she’s not gripping them. She’s ready to jump when she needs to and sit when she needs to. This record is confident, a bubble of excitement and feeling, a love letter to all those questions you keep asking. There’s moments of silly softness coupled with an unwavering strength that allows the listener to see the clouds parting.
In Murr’s Run To The Center she found the real secret of Nebraska—it’s not the place itself, but the realization that sometimes being in the middle of nowhere brings you to yourself.
