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Dave Murphy – A Heart So Rare
New Jersey Americana artist Dave Murphy’s seventh album, A Heart So Rare, is a fearless, heartfelt reflection on human fallibility, love lost, transition, and acceptance. It relays, in honest detail, the mistakes and longing of a man encountering the weight of divorce, all the while embracing moments of surrender, forgiveness, and mystery. There’s always hope for redemption, and this record beautifully catalogs his journey towards it.
Murphy is a cancer survivor, and an accomplished performer who’s toured in the U.S., Canada, Ireland, and the UK. He’s shared stages with Steve Forbert, Suzanne Vega, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Mike Doughty of Soul Coughing, Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and his Chasing Ghosts album featured Nicole Atkins and Forbert. He received consistent airplay for his last four albums on AAA, Americana, and folk radio stations across North America and Europe.
Murphy‘s been recognized time and again for his exceptional storytelling through song. Dubbed “a musical Raymond Carver” by Twin Cities Revue, he earned first place in the Great American Song Contest for his song “Chesapeake.” He was named a co-winner at the New Jersey Folk Festival Songwriters Showcase and a finalist in several marquee contests, including Kerrville New Folk Contest, WIldflower! Arts & Music Festival Songwriting Contest, Mountain Stage NewSong Contest, and Susquehanna Music & Arts Festival Songwriting Contest.
Murphy made A Heart So Rare with producer and multi-instrumentalist Chris Tarrow. “Chris played almost every guitar on this record except for my acoustic parts,” says Murphy, “electric guitar, pedal steel, lap steel, dobro, banjo, everything with strings on it. He’s a master.”
Together, they assembled a crew of heavy-hitters including legendary Saturday Night Live house drummer Shawn Pelton (Sheryl Crow, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen), keyboardist Rob Clores (Jesse Malin, Charli XCX, Lucinda Williams), bassist Richard Hammond (Joan Osborne, Hamilton: Original Broadway Cast), Grammy-winner Ben Wisch, Todd Caldwell (Graham Nash, Crosby, Stills & Nash), Mark Erelli and James Maddock.
A Heart So Rare kicks off with the earworm guitar hook of the alt-country “October Skies” (featuring James Maddock), an introspective and contemplative song rich with layered guitars, including the distinctive sound of a twelve-string Rickenbacker. Maddock provides gorgeous harmonies. It lyrically places us in the New Jersey setting that is quintessentially Murphy — laying in the grass with his love at Princeton Battlefield State Park thinking about all the folks who died there during the American Revolution, the struggles of the past and all of his choices that led to this moment. “It strips me raw / exposing skin and scars / the choices I have made / taking the hardest way,” he sings just before an excellent guitar solo that’s reminiscent of The Byrds or The Jayhawks.
The folk-country “Josephine” paints a picture of a man acknowledging the end of a relationship through the metaphoric and poetic imagery of bar patrons preparing for last call, mirroring Murphy’s real-life divorce. Pelton’s melancholic button accordion complements Murphy’s tempered, laid-back vocals as he sings, “Don’t kick me when I’m down Josephine / I’m not looking for another chance / We danced our last dance / The writing’s…on the wall,” coming to terms with the reality that walking away is sometimes necessary.
The big drum hits and heavy guitar chords of “After the Hurricane” explores the aftermath and devastation of a failed marriage. “There’s nothing left of this town / It’s all just in pieces / Scattered on the ground / After the hurricane / Life goes on,” Murphy sings, illustrating the metaphor of having to rebuild after everything’s been destroyed and there’s nothing left. This twangy pub-rock song has a bittersweet hopefulness behind it despite the brutality of its violent imagery of a town in rubble.
The sad and passionate “Strawberry Red” (featuring James Maddock) has a singer-songwriter vibe with a jazzy electric guitar that feels like Murphy’s secret confidant. It’s a song of acceptance after a big breakup, while acknowledging that the person was special and that they’ll always be a part of you. The laid back and understated verses lead into the emotionally resonant choruses. This song is where the album gets its title as Murphy sings, “Strawberry’s gone / she didn’t stay long / she said she’ll always be free / I wasn’t prepared / for a heart so rare.”
The dark alt-country “Planet of Pain II” (featuring Mark Erelli) reflects on the concept of human suffering. It embraces intense sadness through Murphy’s heart-wrenching vocals, plaintive harmonies, and echoed in Tarrow’s skillfully sorrowful pedal steel. Originally recorded for Murphy’s debut album Under the Lights, this updated version brings a new arrangement, a fuller sound and a couple more decades of confronting life’s pain.
Also a tune from Murphy’s debut album, “I Wish I Could Tell You” (featuring Mark Erelli) is a mystical folk-rock ballad about recognizing the causal fear behind self isolation and unhealthily holding in your feelings. Murphy expresses the desire to tell a lover what’s deep inside of them, but ultimately can’t get the words out. “I’m acknowledging that I’m not ready to share,” says Murphy, “and I still feel that strongly when I sing it. I’ve changed and evolved, but it’s still powerful.”
The down-home “If I Could Fly” embraces the wish fulfillment and freedom that flight offers alongside brushed drums, bucolic banjo and a festive zydeco accordion. It builds on the imagery of a red-tailed hawk and the cycle of life — challenging us to accept our own mortality, welcoming the mysteries that life has to offer, and living in the present.
“I love birds. They’re just beautiful creatures.” says Murphy. “I travel during the migration season to look at raptors, eagles and harriers. But more so, I’m amazed by songbirds, particularly warblers. These tiny birds will travel from South America in the winter to the Arctic Circle in the summertime. I love the solitude and quiet of nature. It’s spiritual for me.”
“Take a Ride with Me” is a road-trip song with a seductive, meandering, folky lilt. The song is an offer, a request, as Murphy sings, “Hey baby… take a ride with me / Take a chance, take a chance and you’ll see.” Caldwell’s exceptional gospel organ solo, followed by Tarrow’s baritone guitar solo, makes this a tune built for making out in your car at roadside attractions as you drive across the country with a new love.
From his album Chasing Ghosts, and originally written as a post-9/11 treatise on the fears of war, “Red” is a song of introspective contemplation. “Red is the color we all bleed,” sings Murphy. This song has sadly been relevant for all of our lives, from the cold-war dread of his childhood to our modern wars in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine. “This song is just as powerful as when I wrote it,” says Murphy.
The album ends with the stripped-down, acoustic folk “One More Time” (featuring Mark Erelli), with just Murphy and Erelli playing gently strummed guitars and singing harmonies. It’s a song of longing and hope that feels like you’re watching an aging, lonesome troubadour walk down a dirt path that forks. One path leads to a new life in the unknown, and the other loops around to a second chance at a life you once had. Ultimately, Murphy puts that decision into the hands of the person he’s singing this song to.
“I’m more honest with my songwriting these days,” says Murphy. “This song is a reckoning for me. My age. Where I’m at in life. My own mortality. I don’t want to recognize this, but I have to. I’m telling this person that there’s still time, but I’m also telling that to myself. These songs are biting and raw for me. I put my heart and soul into this record.”
As a child, music was an escape for Murphy. He received a guitar as a high school graduation present. He cut his teeth playing with friends and learning Neil Young covers. Music became the primary way he expressed his emotions. Through discipline and years of dedication, he honed his songcraft to become a master storyteller.
In the late ‘90s Murphy “knew a guy who knew a guy,” Plinky. Plinky introduced Murphy to pedal steel player Marc Muller, who connected Murphy to the NYC alt-country scene. The three of them got to work on Murphy’s debut album Under the Lights (1998). Muller became intimately involved with Murphy’s career, producing his album Chasing Ghosts, co-producing Stories from Snake Hill and Yellow Moon, and has played on all his records except for A Heart So Rare. Muller toured with Shania Twain for nearly a decade, recorded with and is featured on Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball, and has recorded for Laura Bell Bundy, Branford Marsalis, and Kelly Clarkson.
Murphy put out the EP Things I Can’t Forget (2000) to capture “odds and ends, and live recordings.” In the early 2000s, he formed garage-punk band Dave Murphy and the Hamilton Electric with Claude Coleman Jr. of Ween and New Brunswick, New Jersey guitar legend Brian Sugent. He then reconnected with Muller for Chasing Ghosts (2003), featuring vocals from Steve Forbert and Nicole Atkins.
Murphy was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2003, and he stepped back from being a full-time musician. There was a long recovery period from the surgery and treatments. He played locally, joined songwriting groups, and wrote lots of songs before recording Stories from Snake Hill (2008) with Billy Masters (Suzanne Vega, Alejandro Escavedo). He ultimately ended up finishing the album with his longtime friend Muller.
“If you go north on the New Jersey Turnpike going towards the Lincoln Tunnel, you see the skyline of Manhattan on your right,” says Murphy. “Then you see New Jersey Meadowlands and some smoke stacks. Then, there’s Snake Hill, a gigantic rock formation with a lot of graffiti on it. You can’t miss it. I wanted to have a geographic sense of place, so I named it Stories From Snake Hill. There was a famous mental institution right on the grounds where Snake Hill is, and my grandfather was institutionalized there. It’s the largest burial site of unknown people in the entire United States.”
“My sense of place is New Jersey and Manhattan, along with all the people that I’ve been working with, from our friend Plinky to Marc Muller — on all the records up until this new one, all Jersey people. Bruce Springsteen is sometimes a little embarrassing, but he’s better than Jon Bon Jovi or Billy Joel. But it’s almost like Springsteen is looking over you, looking over everything, to make sure your music is coming from the heart.”
Murphy was back in the game, playing festivals and participating in songwriting contests as a finalist at both the Kerrville Folk Festival and WIldflower! Arts & Music Festival. During this time he met a woman and moved in with her in Brooklyn. He was drinking heavily and the relationship ended messily, leading to his sad and angry break-up record Yellow Moon (2011). He decided to get sober in 2010, moved back to New Jersey and began his journey to recovery and writing the album American Landscape (2016) — made with Grammy-winner Ben Wisch.
“Ben and I were talking about working together for years,” says Murphy. “We finally made it happen on American Landscape. At the time I’d been spending a lot of time listening to Ray LaMontagne and the Pariah Dogs album God Willin’ & the Creek Don’t Rise and I loved his touring band, named the Pariah Dogs.”
As it turned out, both L.A. based drummer Jay Bellerose (T-Bone Burnett, Joe Henry, Aimee Mann) and bass player Jennifer Condos (Jackson Browne, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen) were available. So was Boston based guitarist Kevin Barry (Roseanne Cash, Jackson Browne, Ray LaMontagne), So the Pariah Dogs (Bellerose, Condo & Barry) along with the amazing talents of Glen Patscha on keyboards and Lucy Kaplansky on vocals, became the musical foundation of his album American Landscape.
The massive changes that came surrounding the COVID pandemic, including Murphy’s divorce, sparked the creative catalyst to writing and recording the batch of songs that make up A Heart So Rare, an album about accepting your place in the world with hope and gratitude. It wrestles with concepts of mortality and legacy, while reminding us to stay present and embrace the mystery of our unwritten futures. Murphy is a storyteller of the highest caliber and if you’re willing to truly listen, this album will move you.
“The younger me wanted clarity,” says Murphy. “Now, I want to embrace the mysteries ahead of me. I’m already booking U.S. tours for 2025, with plans to hit Ireland, the UK and Europe. I’m excited to explore that life again, to connect with different audiences. This album is a big restart for me. My artist LLC is Phoenix Night Productions because I feel like I’m rising from the ashes. My journey has been a series of rising from the ashes. You might’ve listened to me nine years ago, but here I am, bigger and better.”
TRACK LIST:
01 October Skies (feat. James Maddock)
02 Josephine
03 After the Hurricane
04 Strawberry Red (feat. James Maddock)
05 Planet of Pain II
06 I Wish I Could Tell You
07 If I Could Fly
08 Take a Ride with Me
09 Red
10 One More Time (feat. Mark Erelli)ALBUM CREDITS:
Dave Murphy: vocals, acoustic guitar
Shawn Pelton: drums, percussion, accordion, squeezebox
Chris Tarrow: electric, baritone, resonator, slide and 12-string guitars, pedal steel, banjo, mandolin, lap steel
Richard Hammond: bass
Rob Clores: organ, piano
Ben Wisch: harmonium
Mark Erelli: backing vocals, acoustic guitar & harmonica
James Maddock: backing vocals
Produced by Chris Tarrow and Dave Murphy
Recorded and Mixed by Matt Shane at Joe’s Garage, Brooklyn, NY
Additional recording by Shawn Pelton, Rob Clores, Chris Tarrow, Mark Erelli, Ben Wisch & Todd Caldwell.
Mastered by Fred Kevorkian for Kevorkian Mastering, Brooklyn, NY
All songs by David E Murphy © 2025 (ASCAP) All Rights Reserved