Murphy's Law

I have to hand it to the guy for displaying such unwavering devotion to a city that he no longer lives in. Nearly three years after taking up residence in the Bay Area, Murphy still tirelessly advocates all things Denver more fervently than some of those who live here -- even though it's clearly not a lucrative mission (Smooch's biggest seller has moved just over a thousand units). Murphy stays solvent by working full-time at Revolver Distribution, the company that exclusively distributes Smooch, and he has plenty of other projects keeping him busy these days. He's been running interference between Munly and Alternative Tentacles -- which co-released Munly's last disc -- and hatching plans to write a book documenting the scene and produce a movie focusing on the "Denver Sound," which will feature Denver Gentlemen, 16 Horsepower, Lilium, Woven Hand, Slim Cessna, Munly, DeVotchKa, Tarantella and the Kalamath Brothers, among others.

"Seeing Slim live wins over fans who were not impressed/didn't get the album," he notes. "The hope is that the movie will do the same, and on a larger scale than a single concert."

It's ironic that Murphy singles out Slim as someone he'd like to prop up as an exemplar of the Denver Sound. Like Murphy, the tall, slender fella is no longer a tax-paying resident of Denver -- even if he still performs in the area with enough regularity that some folks are none the wiser. And while Murphy admits he can sometimes feel slightly disconnected from the Denver scene, it helps that more and more people from the Mile High City are moving to the City by the Bay.

"There's a ton of Colorado people here," Murphy points out. "There's four people at Revolver out of thirty who used to work at Wax Trax. San Francisco -- I don't know how familiar you are with the city, but it's sort of like every five blocks or so is a different neighborhood. I live in North Beach, which is the old Italian neighborhood. The Mission is the Mexican neighborhood, and there's Russian Hill. Sometimes I joke that there will be a Little Denver since there's so many of us here."

In San Francisco, maybe, but they left their hearts in Denver.