One of the brightest lights in Portland’s music constellation has gone out. It was announced this past Thursday that Michael Hurley, aka Doc Snock, passed from this temporal plane suddenly and peacefully on April 1, 2025 at the age of 83. Hurley wove his incomparable simplistic genius deeply into the fabric of Portland’s folk and DIY music landscapes since his move to the area in the early ’00s, becoming as much a part of the PNW art and music as the water itself.

Hurley’s insatiable curiosity—a thread connecting his music, his art, and how he moved through the world—spread without bounds his infectious wonder to those he told a story to, shared a drink with, or danced through life with. His continual undefining of folk music earned him admirers and collaborators the world over, making his expansive catalog of music as magical as the Doc was old.

Hurley represents a Portland—a time, a way of being—more curious and caring than the Portland we live in today. When boundless joy, pure sorrow, and limitless connection to people and place went hand-in-hand all at the same moment. His music is sexual, healing, funny, smart, and wildly relatable to so many in Portland and further afield. Even his songs that don't specifically reference Portland slyly embody the beauty and spirit of a utopia he believed could (can) be built on the banks of the Willamette and Columbia rivers through love and music and art.

Though Snock can no longer be caught playing regularly at Laurelthirst Pub or Scapoose’s Rosebud Cafe, we can wrap ourselves in his immense body of work, share it with friends and family—talking about the good times, hard times, and end times as we listen and sing along.

From the Doc himself:

“I stole the right to live as if there was no time. 
I stole the eyes of god as if those eyes were mine. 
I took and did infuse a light that was to shine.

Oh mercy, lord have a pity!
I’m only travelin’, I don’t have no place to go.”