By Tim McMahan
Nestled among the sleek, keyboard-driven indie-pop songs on Cornelia Murr’s most recent album, “Run to the Center,” are two standout tracks that sound as if they were created in a different world.
The first, the album’s title track, opens with pastoral field noises augmented by what sounds like ducks on a distant horizon before chiming piano chords and Murr’s sweet soprano voice break through. The second song, “This Will All Change,” starts with a warm, afternoon-lit acoustic guitar, glowing keyboards and Murr softly singing the line, “These days of ours / There’s more to feast upon / And more to clean up / Using every cup.”
While the album’s remaining tracks were created in Los Angeles, those two quietly elegant songs were recorded in Red Cloud, Nebraska, in a small studio built in a 100-year-old house that has become a refuge from Murr’s hectic, nomadic life as a musician.
Now, a year after the album’s release, she’s returning to her adopted town for a show at the Red Cloud Opera House on Feb. 13, just a few weeks before kicking off a national headlining tour.
“The Willa Cather Foundation reached out, and I was really touched that they wanted me to play,” Murr said. “The record does have something to do with the place. It feels full-circle in a way to play there.”
A life in transit
The day of our interview, Murr was on the move again, trudging through 2-foot-high snowdrifts to the front door of her current temporary home in the Hudson Valley of upstate New York. “It’s so cold that the key is jammed in the front door,” she said, apologizing for the delay while stomping her way to the house’s back door.
Born in the United Kingdom (she holds dual citizenship in the U.K. and U.S.), Murr said she has “lived a bunch of places in my life.” She left for college in New York City in 2007 at the age of 18. She lived there for the next 11 years before moving to Los Angeles to begin recording her first album, “Lake Tear of the Clouds.” Music magazine Paste called the album a “haunting, sumptuous and dreamy debut.”
Her self-produced follow-up record, “Corridor,” caught the attention of indie label 22TWENTY, which signed Murr for her next album. But after some “rough experiences,” which included a difficult breakup, Murr said, she began to realize she no longer wanted to live in L.A.
And then, in what was a surprise to the entire family, Murr’s mother, Pamela Livingston, decided to move to Red Cloud.
“We didn’t have any history in Nebraska whatsoever. I had only driven through once to play a show at Pageturner’s Lounge in Omaha a few years before,” Murr said. “So she moved there in 2021. I think she just wanted a very peaceful, safe place to be in what was a crazy time in the world. She was a fan of Willa Cather’s work, so that’s partly what put Red Cloud on her radar. I drove her there and couldn’t believe what she was doing and that this place was going to be part of our lives.”
Red Cloud refuge
Still living in Los Angeles, Murr began spending time in Red Cloud, helping her mom get settled. Eventually, she discovered a vacant house around the corner from where her mom was living.
“It was a historic house from 1909 and had some really beautiful old woodwork and things that I loved about it,” Murr said, “but it hadn’t been lived in for seven years. The woman who owned it wasn’t in a phase of her life to be able to live in it or work on it.”
Over the course of a year, Murr developed a “phone friendship” with the homeowner, who eventually ended up selling her the house.
“It just fell into my hands in a sort of strange way,” Murr said. “To be honest, after moving so much in my life, the notion of being able to be somewhere for a little while where I didn’t have to leave, where I wasn’t paying an extremely expensive rent, suited me at the time. It seemed somehow healthy to get away from what I have known most of my life — big cities and all the stress that goes with city life.”
Though located in town, the house felt isolated, surrounded by empty lots with only one nearby neighbor. “When you live in cities, it’s harder to be able to afford privacy, especially sonic privacy, which I was really craving for writing and recording music,” Murr said. “Being able to play piano in the middle of the night and not bother neighbors felt like a huge luxury.”
At the same time, Murr said, it takes all of 15 seconds to drive out of town, “and then you’re out in the prairie and can easily drive away without even passing another car. There’s just so much space. Mentally, that was very freeing to me.”
She immediately began refurbishing the old home, doing much of the work herself, including stripping walls and hanging drywall. Because of the house’s history, Murr said she got it placed on the National Register of Historic Places, which in turn qualified her for a grant from Red Cloud’s Historic Preservation Commission.
“I did have some help on a few projects that were beyond me, like fixing the front porch that was collapsing, some carpentry projects and plumbing,” Murr said. “But I was basically in there all day, every day, doing stuff for about a year.”
She quickly discovered another benefit of small-town life. “Maybe it’s a Midwestern thing, but everyone was so kind and friendly compared to everywhere else I’d ever lived,” Murr said. “I’d frequently come home to find prepared food on my porch, cookies or spaghetti. It blew me away.”
Her one nearby neighbor, Kathy Stockton, also had moved to Red Cloud in 2021 and was happy to have someone close by who was also refurbishing a historic home. “It’s a neat story that we got to be neighbors and friends,” Stockton said. “Even though Cornelia is known nationally and internationally, she’s just a neighbor to me. She always gives me a hug, and I look forward to seeing her lights on.”
Wade Leak, a music industry lawyer who has a home in Red Cloud with his husband, Jay Yost, said initially, people were just interested in who Murr was and why she was there.
“We had Cornelia and her boyfriend over for cocktails around Christmastime,” Leak said. “It was exciting to have a legitimate recording artist in Red Cloud. As someone who’s been going to Red Cloud for 33 years, I’m still amazed at how the town keeps growing and transforming.”
Rachel Olsen, the director of education and engagement at the Willa Cather Center, said Red Cloud attracts people “for all manner of reasons.”
“Some want to live in a small town, some are drawn to the history of Willa Cather and her writing career, some like being on the prairie,” she said. “I’m drawn to the indie-folk sound Cornelia has in her music. When I sent the initial invitation to perform at the Opera House, I compared her to Joni Mitchell, while Cornelia mentions the spacey, ethereal quality of bands like Beach House. Her music is really unique compared to what we often schedule.”
A house becomes a studio
While busy working on her house, Murr still had an album to finish. Recording sessions with her band had already started in Long Beach. In the midst of construction, Murr asked producer Luke Temple to fly out and finish the record in Red Cloud.
“It didn’t take much convincing,” she said. “He was curious. A lot of people in my life couldn’t picture it. Most people I know don’t have any context for Nebraska or a town of 900 people.”
With her piano already in Red Cloud, Murr set up a small, basic recording rig. It was nothing new for Temple, who has produced albums by such renowned indie musicians as Adrianne Lenker and the band Hand Habits. He had already recorded parts of Murr’s album in his Pasadena apartment.
“At that point, we were finishing arrangements and doing overdubs, and cut two songs,” Murr said. “It was over the course of the Fourth of July weekend, so fireworks sometimes interrupted the recording, but it was great.”
Released in February 2025, “Run to the Center” showcases Murr at her most vulnerable. Music website PopMatters said Murr’s songwriting was “imaginative and introspective; she has an hypnotic way of expressing self-discovery.”
In the end, Murr’s new rural lifestyle and the Red Cloud house played a role in the album’s title track, with the lyrics:
“Working on this old house as if it’s my body / If I take care of it, it’ll take care of me”
The song’s music video, shot in Red Cloud, captured Murr dancing in a nearby wheat field under an endless sky.
If you go …
Cornelia Murr and her band perform Feb. 13 at the Red Cloud Opera House, 411 N. Webster St., Red Cloud, Nebraska. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 advance, $30 day of show, and available at www.willacather.org.
Shortly after the album’s release, Murr and her band spent two and a half months touring North America. On a day off between gigs in Minneapolis and Denver, their tour van rolled into Red Cloud.
“We left early the next morning, but my bandmates loved my house and the town,” Murr said. “They went to the bar in town called Juan’s Bar and played pool.”
She said they’re excited to return for the Feb. 13 show at the Red Cloud Opera House.
“It feels like a hometown show in a way,” said Murr, whose mother still lives in Red Cloud. “I mean, it’s not my hometown, but it has been a home to me in the last couple of years, and it’s a very special place to me.”
