Covering All the Bases : Versatile Guitarist Dave Murdy Balances Interests From Classical to Jazz

There’s no doubt that guitarist Dave Murdy’s first recording, “That Goes to Show Ya!,” is a straight-ahead jazz session, just what the record company asked of him. But within that context, Murdy presents a variety of styles, including blues, boogie, bop and bossa nova, not to mention his own compositions, which have a decidedly contemporary feel.

“Yeah, all those things fit into the mainstream thing real well,” Murdy said last weekend in a phone conversation from his home in Yorba Linda. “I wanted to do a ballad, I wanted to do some up stuff. I wanted to do (John Coltrane’s) ‘Giant Steps’ because it’s always been a challenge. And I wanted to do some writing. I thought, if I’m going to do a jazz record, then I’m going to go all out.”

The disc was originally at the encouragement of John Anello Jr., owner of Orange County-based Cexton Records. Anello heard Murdy play and suggested he do a straight-ahead album, but once the recording was made, it languished because Anello had other releases to which he was previously committed to focus on. Then Otto Gust at Time Is records in San Diego heard about Murdy’s project.

He struck a deal with Murdy and released the album on Time Is earlier this year. The January, 1990, recording session featured an all-Orange County lineup of saxophonist and Chick Corea regular Eric Marienthal, bassist Art Davis (who also wrote the liner notes), drummer Kevin Tulius and keyboardist Peggy Duquesnel, who also is Murdy’s wife. Tulius, Duquesnel and bassist Dave Carpenter, appear with Murdy on Thursday at El Matador in Huntington Beach.

The album, which includes Wes Montgomery’s “The Thumb,” Charlie Parker’s “Confirmation” and Wayne Shorter’s “Yes or No,” reveals only one side of the versatile guitarist’s talents. Murdy also wields a heavy fusion ax for the up-and-coming electric band Kilauea and will be featured on that group’s new recording, which is scheduled for release early next year. He also plays classical guitar for some small engagements--”casuals” as musicians call them.

“I’m a person who loves to cover all the bases,” he explained. “I could be just as happy doing a happening pop gig as well as mainstream jazz.”

The 29-year-old guitarist credits his broad range of interests to a varied background in music. “My mom played a little folk guitar. My parents bought me this little $20 acoustic cigar-box guitar when I was in grade school, then enrolled me in a folk class.”

He credits Reed Gilchrist, an instructor he first met in a parks and recreation program in La Habra, for really widening his scope. “He’s not like any kind of famous guy,” Murdy says. “He’s just a great teacher. He exposed me to classical guitar finger-style playing, he taught me jazz improvisation. He was a person who really understood music, a multi-instrumentalist and a fine guitarist in his own right and a profound influence on me.”

It was Reed who, during their six-year association, noticed the young guitarist’s proclivity for rock and steered him toward more involved styles. “I was never really a folk guy,” Murdy said. “My heroes early on in high school were Bachman-Turner Overdrive, ZZ Top, Aerosmith. Reed said I should check out Steely Dan because they’re an amazing blend between rock and jazz.

“I remember hearing Larry Carlton’s solo on ‘Kid Charlemagne’ and thinking this is amazing! What is he doing? My life really changed the first time I heard a Steely Dan record.”

After high school, Murdy spent four years at USC earning a bachelor of music degree and playing with such names as Joe DiOrio, Ralph Towner, Lee Ritenour and Pat Metheny while they visited the university’s program. It was there that he began to listen seriously to musicians such as Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.

After graduation, Murdy turned to teaching to support himself, taking on as many as 55 students at one point. He also began doing some studio work and free-lancing with such players as Tony Guerrero, Brian Bromberg and Max Bennett.

But his most fruitful musical association is with his wife of five years, Peggy Duquesnel. The two have formed a fusion group, Joy Spring, to play their original material and often work together in club and casual engagements. In 1987, they appeared as a duo at the Kennedy Center in Washington as part of the National Endowment for the Arts convention. Murdy’s “Song For Peg,” a pleasantly paced ballad, is one of the album’s standouts.

“Composing comes a lot easier to Peg than to me,” Murdy explained. “She says she sometimes hears full 16-bar melodies in her head. That never happens to me. I sort of develop the melody as I go. Generally, it’s a real painstaking effort. If I sit down to write, I know it’s going to consume every ounce of energy I have.”

What would a no-holds-barred Murdy recording be like? “If radio format wasn’t a consideration, I’d proably do a bit of everything, from hard-core, gettin’-down blues in which I’m singing, to some really adventurous fusion stuff. I’d maybe have some solo classical guitar on there.

“The fusion stuff is my favorite stuff to write, but there’s no radio market for it,” he said.”

Murdy says living in Orange County creates a stigma among those musicians he knows who are based in L.A. “You start hanging with these guys and they’re asking where do you live? And I say Yorba Linda, and they say you live in Orange County? Well, uh. . . .”

But don’t expect the guitarist to relocate soon. He admits the opportunities to play here are few, but says the situation in Los Angeles is not that much different. And what about New York, the mecca for jazz upstarts?

“If you want to do jazz, you’re not going to gain any respect unless you make it in New York,” he said. “People on the East Coast will say, ‘Oh, he’s just a West Coast guy’--it carries a kind of derogatory connotation. But I could never do that, give my life over to just mainstream jazz. My heart is in other places as well.”

* Guitarist Dave Murdy appears Thursday with bassist Dave Carpenter, keyboardist Peggy Duquesnel and drummer Kevin Tulius at El Matador, 16903 Algonquin Blvd., Huntington Beach, 8:30 p.m. Admission: free. Information: (714) 846-5337.