Dave Murphy Has ‘A Heart So Rare’
Dave Murphy by Rick Krueger
There’s a poet in Madison, deep within Morris County, but you might find him stretched out on the grass at Princeton Battlefield State Park in Mercer County where American and British troops fought each other in 1777. Alt-folk-country Americana singer-songwriter Dave Murphy thinks about those times a lot. And when he writes lines like “it strips me raw exposing skin and scars/the choices I have made taking the hardest way,” the listener realizes this is a dude who feels deeply, whose inherent restlessness drives him down life’s highway knowing he can never return. There’s a sadness to his finely-etched characters chasing salvation. Doctors thought he might die when they diagnosed him with cancer. Yet he plays on. He won a prize at the New Jersey Folk Festival Songwriters Showcase and when you finally hear A Heart So Rare when it comes out next month, you might think The Byrds if John Prine was their lyricist. For now, one can only revel in the delight that is “October Skies.”
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