Darryl featured on the cover of the Boulder Weekly, Caitlin Rockett’s piece — “King of Hearts”
Check out Darryl’s Mindmill Podcast appearance.
Singer songwriter Darryl Purpose is sharing a video song each week on FaceBook: it’s called “A SUNDAY SONG”
Presented by Camp Ned, here is the latest, see them all here.
Episode 59 – “The Fourth Chair”
This is the last Sunday Song…
Written by Darryl Purpose and Kathleen Brophy, a day after I left Ellis Paul’s house in Maine, many years ago. Kathleen was in Boston and we wrote the song there.
Camera by Karolina Naumova
The Fourth Chair is probably the best of my songs that hadn’t been featured yet on A Sunday Song. There are some good one’s we missed — Rutherford Hayes, Ring On My Hand! — but this one is special, at least partly because of the connection to Ellis, and Kathleen, and the woman it was written for…
This original track is on the ‘Next Time Around’ CD.
What a fantastic challenge and joy it has been to be responsible for posting a song each Sunday – THANK YOU for following along! We did 59 weeks! Once we had to wait until Tuesday, a few times we recorded the Sunday Song on Friday or Saturday, but we always got it done, though sometimes with a twist on what a Sunday Song was, exactly.
Ultimately, if a Sunday Song is a DP original, well, that’s not sustainable. If it is/was a friend’s song, and a DP song, well then, it’s 15 minutes long, and nobody watches a 15 minute long video. I also began to feel a little squeamish about asking friends, usually with careers of their own, to play a song for me to post on my page. So this is it, for now.
HUGE THANKS to all the musicians who contributed, from the The Super Saturated Sugar Strings (episode #1! miss you guys!!) to Willy Porter (episode #58! What a treat!!)
I’m working on getting all of them up on YouTube. Meantime, be kind to each other. You haven’t heard the last from me. xo
Look for the new video being by Josh Zollo “Race The Wind”, watch this space!
Singer songwriter Darryl Purpose biography
When Darryl Purpose was 16 years old, his mother put a book called “Beat the Dealer” in his Christmas stocking. He interrupted a guitar major program, went to Las Vegas as a teenager, began a career as professional card player. He was soon known as the world’s fastest card counter. Banned from casinos on six continents, he still calls this the “only real job I’ve ever had.” Years later, he took time off to walk across the country for peace, and fell in with a ‘bad’ crowd – musicians & peaceniks – which culminated, improbably sharing the stage with the likes of Santana and Bonnie Raitt in the first stadium rock concert in the former Soviet Union.
In 1996, inspired by his work with a traveling band of musical activists and working his way out of a brush with the law (that’s another story), Darryl began to tour nationally as a solo singer-songwriter. Eight years, six CDs and a thousand-plus shows later, he was headlining venues like the Freight and Salvage, Club Passim, McCabe’s, The Bluebird Cafe, The Kennedy Center, and the Kerrville Folk Festival Main Stage.
A break and further projects
In 2005, he inexplicably set down his guitar, took a 7-year sabbatical in the Rocky Mountains. He set out to “get healthy in multiple ways”. During this time, he shepherded the release of “Singer-Songwriter Heaven: the songs of Kevin Faherty”. He co-captained the “Second Strings Project” delivering over twenty thousand sets of guitar strings to those who need them all around the world. He studied with Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh; and in 2009, was inducted into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. One of 17 members was Ed Thorp, the man who wrote that book that his mother put into his Christmas stocking at 16.
The music called him back in 2012 and saw Darryl record his first CD of original material in 10 years – “Next Time Around,” produced by Billy Crockett for the Blue Rock Artists label. With no formal radio promotion, the CD spent five weeks at #1 on the Roots Music Report folk chart for national radio airplay in 2013. His critically-acclaimed latest release – “Still The Birds” (co-written with Paul Zollo, also produced by Billy Crockett) twists and turns songs as unique and diverse as the stories from Darryl’s kaleidoscopic life. “Still the Birds” also rose to #1 on the Roots Music Report folk chart.
Darryl likes to say that luck is a residue of design — and he has been crafting his own luck for some time now. Current interests include Camp Ned, (an intimate songwriter retreat in the rocky mountains); traveling, including the occasional gig; and, inspired by the mountains, a deep dive into mindful practices and a super-healthy lifestyle.
