Local musician Dave Murrow is a man with the magic hat. One minute he puts it on, and in a rhythmic whirlwind of sound, he becomes Dfactor Dave, front man of power pop rock band Dfactor. Or he can use it to reach in and channel his inner John Lennon to lend his vocals to a Beatles tribute band. On most days though, he's the brain behind New Times' 2011 Best Indie Music Blog, Waved Rumor. And sometimes he can just be Dave; jacked up on ginseng.
He's what Guy Ritchie might call "a real rock 'n' rolla."
On Tuesday, November 8, you can catch Dfactor Dave, drummer Gary Martin, and bassist Stew Hall, the esteemed trio that make up Dfactor, for a free show at the Yucca Tap Room. They'll be joined by Tempe rockers Plainfield Butchers and Roxy Dioxide from San Diego.
We caught up with Murrow to chat about his music and the secret behind his ability to juggle so many duties. Read on to learn more about New Times Music Editor Jason Woodbury's role in the formation of this version of the band, and what you can expect to hear at Tuesday night's show.
Up on the Sun: So let's start with Dfactor. What's new with the band? Can you talk a little about what you've been working on?
Dfactor Dave: We've been playing a lot and recording. So that's good. The band's called Dfactor. I've built up a pretty strong internet base using that name over the past 10 years or so. When it came time for the band to get together, which we did following the New Times article in March 2010, a couple of guys reached out to me and said, "Hey we want to be in your band, we're a good rhythm section." We started playing together shortly after that.
We decided to stick with that name, just because I had built up a lot of equity online with it and it seemed to fit. I still write all the songs and having the guys with me to play them live has been awesome, because we really have fun rocking.
So you guys came together directly because of that article?
Indeed. I moved to the Valley in '08 and after settling in a little bit, I started to get out and play my songs live, but I was using my own mp3 backing tracks at clubs -- just standing up there banging on my electric guitar. After Jason saw me at Yucca back in '09 or something, he said, "We got to get this guy a band." So I'm forever grateful to Jason for hooking me up with these guys.
[Editor's Note: The idea to write put out a call for musicians to back Murrow came from former editor Martin Cizmar. Both Martin and I were fans of the DFactor sound.]
I continue to write a bunch of new songs. Right now, on stage, we play a couple of songs from our last two CDs, which are up on our Bandcamp site, dfactor.me. Now we've got a bunch of new songs that we've recorded and we play those live too.
You're quite the busy man with the blog, the band and everyday life, how do you manage to keep up with everything?
Ginseng baby! I drink Verve every day too. You got to read about Verve, they're a Scottsdale-based vitamin drink.
I didn't know it was Scottsdale-based. I've seen it at Hob Nobs in downtown, but outside of that, I had never heard of it.
It's because they don't sell it retail, they sell it through a marketing network. It's good stuff. It costs a little more than Monster but it's a hell of a lot better, too.
But, yeah, we are keeping busy. We want to put out a new EP the beginning of 2012. We thought we'd get it out by the end of this year but we're still fussing with the recordings. We've got a little surprise coming up on that upcoming batch of recording too. We were able to get a well-known guitar player to play lead guitar on one of our songs, so that's pretty cool.
The blog thing I've been doing for nearly a decade. It started as a promotional tool for my New York band. I realized, with the Internet, you could put out your own news -- you don't have to wait for others to write about you. I've been doing that long before social media started. I think the original version of Waved Rumor was [based off of] my old band name, Anthemic Pop Wonder, so I called it APWrockblog or something like that.
Plus we're excited to play shows, which we have coming up soon.
That's right. Can you talk a little about the show this Tuesday? Tempe's Plainfield Butchers, San Diego's Roxy Dioxide, and Dfactor are playing. How did this show come together?
I'm friendly with Scott from Roxy Dioxide, and they were looking to put together a mini-tour around the Southwest and asked if I could help put together a show. So, indeed, I was able to get one at Yucca for the three bands. I think we're all perfectly complemented really well because we're all slightly north of 30 -- some of us north of 40 -- so we're able to draw from our long history of rock and roll and punk rock. So it should be a good smattering of classic, power-pop, punk rock and indie rock. I'm excited about it.
What about that bodacious flyer? That thing looks freaking awesome -- who put that together?
Isn't that rad? I did it myself. You can do it at band-flyers.com. I try to do everything DIY, you know. I've been sort of DIY for a long time and I find that it suits my impatience level, time level, and control freak level. Because of all those things put together, I try to do as much of that as I can.
Going back to the blog for a second: You stay up to snuff on a lot, what are some favorite sites you like to frequent for music content?
In general I like to jump over to Stateside Presents to see what shows they have coming up. Silver Platter is awesome. New Times is good. Then for national blogs I go to Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Brooklyn Vegan. And because I've been doing this for so long, I get sent a lot of music emails from publicists all over the country. It's an onslaught, it really is. Every local band that's going on a mini-tour wants to get some coverage you know. Frankly, there's not a lot of outlets for indie music coverage other than the New Times, So Much Silence, and Electric Mustache. It's kind of hard to get the word out.
I just feel an affinity for helping people. I think it's good karma, you know. Maybe one day, I'll need their help in exposing my music too.
Cool, man. So what's up for the near future? Other than the EP coming out early next year.
Yeah, we're going to finish up some songs. We may go in to record some more before the end of the year, and we've also got a couple of shows coming up.
We've got this one Tuesday night and one next week at the Roxy Lounge on the 16th, and we're looking to get a December show or two.
I'm also singing in this Beatles tribute thing this weekend. We're doing a two-night Beatles fest Friday night at the Desert Botanical Gardens, and then Saturday night at the Paradise Valley Community College up in North Phoenix. I'm one of three singers there trying to sound like John, Paul, George and Ringo.
So this is going to be a fun weekend for me and then I turn my head back to Dfactor for Tuesday night.
