B-Side Guys

Some songs feel less like recordings and more like overheard prayers. Dave Murphy’s latest single “One More Time,” featuring Mark Erelli, belongs to this rare category – a whispered meditation on love, age, and the courage it takes to reach across time’s divide.

Released as the closing track from his forthcoming album A Heart So Rare, this stripped-down folk ballad eschews the fuller arrangements found elsewhere on the record. Murphy and Erelli craft an intimate space with nothing more than two acoustic guitars and their intertwined voices, allowing the song’s central question to hang in the air: is reconciliation possible when both time and pride stand in the way?

The production choices here are masterfully minimal. Each guitar part occupies its own sonic space, creating a gentle conversation between instruments that mirrors the song’s themes of potential reconnection. Erelli’s harmonies don’t so much accompany Murphy’s lead vocal as shadow it, adding depth without overshadowing the vulnerability in Murphy’s performance.

Murphy, a cancer survivor whose career has included sharing stages with luminaries like Steve Forbert and Suzanne Vega, brings decades of life experience to bear in his delivery. His songwriting here draws subtle influence from Dylan Thomas, particularly in references to going gentle into that good night, but transforms the metaphor from one of raging against death to a quieter meditation on pride, change, and the possibility of redemption.

The song’s structure mirrors its thematic journey, with each verse cycling through variations of the same essential question – is it time to walk away, or is there still ground for reconciliation? The repeated phrase “one more time” takes on different shades of meaning with each iteration, shifting from hope to plea to resignation and back again.

As the closing statement on A Heart So Rare, “One More Time” serves as both culmination and question mark. The song’s power lies in its refusal to provide easy answers, instead creating a space where listener and performer alike can contemplate their own relationships with pride, forgiveness, and the passing of time.

This kind of bare-bones folk recording leaves nowhere to hide – every slight vocal quaver or guitar string buzz becomes part of the emotional texture. Murphy and Erelli embrace this intimacy, allowing the performance to feel both polished and deeply human. It’s a fitting approach for a song that deals so frankly with vulnerability and the courage required to seek connection despite past wounds.

In an era where many Americana artists feel compelled to dress their songs in elaborate production, Murphy’s choice to strip everything back to essentials demonstrates both artistic confidence and thematic coherence. “One More Time” doesn’t need more than two guitars and two voices to pose its universal questions about pride, time, and the possibilities of reconciliation.