Alex McMurray

McMurray, a New Jersey native and 13-year resident of the Crescent City, may come off as a boozy, degenerate goofball, the very definition of a class clown gone dissolute, a cut-up given to nonstop drinking and smoking as he crawls his way across the nightscape.

But that might not explain the resonance of the quirky cast of characters he's created, or the musical appeal of the eclectic settings given to his collection of story songs, given life by a singer variously reminiscent of Tom Waits and Louis Armstrong. McMurray wields a mean Gibson ES 335, too.