SeanPaulMurphyVille: July 2025

My documentary Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery has been picked up by Bayview Entertainment for distribution. The film was a true labor of love for the entire production team and we hope it will soon be streaming on various platforms.

Sacred Ground: The Battle For Mount Auburn Cemetery, directed by David Butler, is a feature-length documentary about community activists and family members battling a Methodist church for control of historic Mount Auburn Cemetery. For years, Mount Auburn Cemetery was the only place in the Baltimore area where African-Americans could be buried. It is the final resting place of lightweight boxing champion Joe Gans, the first African American world champion in any sport, and numerous leaders in the early civil rights movement. It is a registered historic landmark that has fallen into such horrifying condition that bones litter the ground and weeds cover all but the highest monuments. It is a tale of grave robbing, grave recycling and every other terrible thing that could possibly happen in a cemetery.

The film follows Lu Moorman, president of Preservation Alliance, an independent group of activists and family members, and her attempt to wrest control of the cemetery from its stewards, Sharp Street Memorial Church. Dating back to the 1790s, Sharp Street Memorial Church is one of the first African American Methodist congregations. It was once the most influential African American church in Baltimore, but its numbers have dwindled over the years and its financial resources have waned. The current pastor Rev. Dell Hinton appointed her father, Rev. Douglas Sands, head of the cemetery. They, too, have a plan to restore the cemetery with the help of Morgan State University, but who can be trusted to speak for the generations buried beneath its soil?

Here's the trailer:

Be sure to check out my memoir The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, published by TouchPoint Press. It is my true story of first faith and first love and how the two became almost fatally intertwined.

Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:

Chapter 1 - A Photograph

Chapter 2 - My Death

Chapter 3 - Childhood

Chapter 4 - Saved!

Chapter 5 - The Promise

Chapter 6 - The Mission

Chapter 7 - Mission Accomplished
Chapter 15 - Quarter To Midnight

Be sure to check out my novel Chapel Street. It tells the story of a young man straddling the line between sanity and madness while battling a demonic entity that has driven his family members to suicide for generations. It was inspired by an actual haunting my family experienced.

You can buy the Kindle and paperback at Amazon and the Nook, paperback and hardcover at Barnes & Noble.

Learn more about the book, click Here.

Watch the book trailer:

Listen to me read some chapters here:

Chapel Street - Prologue - My Mother

Chapel Street - Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com

Chapel Street - Chapter 2 - Elisabetta

Chapel Street - Chapter 3 - The Upload

Chapel Street - Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru

Read about the true haunting that inspired the novel here:

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 24, Bad News Betty

The Haunting of 21 St. Helens Avenue, Part 25, Joe's Tale

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Monday, July 7, 2025

TALL TALES & WISHFUL THINKING released!

My latest album Tall Tales & Wishful Thinking has just been released. It is available on all major streaming services.

This album is a departure from my previous work. Most of the songs I write are intensely personal, practically diary entries. Not so on this album. Most of the songs are comic or highly exaggerated in nature. Trust me, this will be the lightest album I will ever release. Also the shortest, only eleven tracks.

The innovation for me on this album is the artwork on the lyric videos. Rather than using stock images like before, I have begun generating AI images for them. It adds to the fun.

Here's the track listing:

1). NURSING HOME HUSSY. This song addresses the problem of wanton sexual abandon in today's nursing homes and senior living communities. Is your grandmother a nursing home hussy?

2). ROSE OF TITANIC. The more I watch the James Cameron film Titanic, the more insufferable I find the heroine Rose. I finally take out my frustrations with her in this song.

3). SEXY SOCCER MOM. Today's kids can't comprehend that we once experienced all of the passions they do now. And they definitely have no idea how sexy mom -- or grandmom -- used to be....

4). YES I LOVED HER. This is the first of my many blues workouts on this album. This was the eighth song I wrote. I wrote all of the blues songs on this album over the course of a week during the summer of 1983 after I learned the 12 bar blues progression on the guitar. Although I was living the blues at the time, none of the songs are truly reflective of what I was feeling. They are genre exercises.

5). RAMONA CELESTE FRANCESCA. This song was written about a friend of my little sister. I used to kid her because she went by three names and I attributed a different aspect of her personality to each one. I recently saw her in person for the first time in forty years at a party. She asked me if I remembered the song I wrote about her. I said that I did. Here it is.

6). I'M WALKING. This song was the fifth one I wrote. It was one of my blues exercises and became a mainstay of my band The Atomic Enema. Many of the people who saw our band liked our version better.....

7). MY WIFE. This song is the most recent one I wrote for this album. I was inspired by attending a Jonathan Richman concert with a friend. His songs all have a knowing but oddball sensibility. I wanted to praise my wife in a similar manner.

8). YOU BETTER STOP IT. This is the 7th song I wrote. It is more of a fast rocker than a blues number, but it quickly became a mainstay of my band.

9). YOUR SOFA. This song was inspired by an actual incident. I had recently broken up with my first girlfriend. Meanwhile, a friend mine broke up with his girlfriend. His ex invited me over her house to watch a movie one evening and it felt like a fire was going to break out on her sofa. Nothing happened. I was too chicken, but I often wondered what if?....

10). ON BALTIMORE STREET. This was the 9th song I wrote. It was a naughty Atomic Enema number about Baltimore's notorious Block, which was a hub of strip clubs, peep shows, sex shops and prostitution. I had never even visited the Block before I wrote this song, but a guy could dream, couldn't he?

11). I WILL DRIVE YOU HOME. This was the 10th song I wrote. When I wrote it, I owned an olive green 1968 Chrysler Newport, which was about the size of an aircraft carrier. It was the biggest car in town. I view this song as a factual number, but some people view the car as a metaphor for something else. This song was also a mainstay of The Atomic Enema. We even arranged backing vocals....

I hope you enjoy the songs and the album. You can listen to it on these and other streaming services:

Amazon Music
Apple Music
Spotify

YouTube Music

iHeart Radio

Pandora

My Albums:

Paradise Lost
Tall Tales & Wishful Thinking

Look Back in Love
The Struggle
Many Faces of Love
He Said She Said
Many Sides of Love
Tales of Love and Death
Breakup City
The Elusive Farm Girl

Here's some music videos I worked on:

Big Pun: Twinz (Deep Cover 98)

Crack The Sky: Mr. President
Greg Kihn: Horror Show
Nils Lofgren: Alone

Face Dancer: Red Shoes

The Sunday Cannons: Friends Become Flowers

Other blogs about songwriting:

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter

Sean Paul Murphy: (Failed) Songwriter, Pt. 2