The Murphy Method Blog

We recently sold our old Dodge band-van, one that had carried us to many performances years ago. The van had been with us for 23 years, but it was time for it to find a new home.

Talk about nostalgia! We bought this van new in 1985, when Casey was 7 years old and Christopher was 4. This new van was larger and longer than our old one, and I had a high, white fiberglass top installed on it to make it easier to change clothes in at the shows. We had a full-time 5-piece bluegrass band back then, and we drove the new van all over the country. Along with going to a great many shows in our home area of Florida and Georgia, the van carried our “Red & Murphy” band to perform at festivals and concerts as far away as Louisiana, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, and even Canada. The van got a lot of miles on it in just a few years.

After we moved here to Virginia and shifted our musical emphasis to running the Murphy Method, we still used the van a lot. We drove it to play many shows back in Florida and Georgia, as well in other states, and Murphy loaded it up with Murphy Method tapes and advertising for the IBMA convention each year. But finally we quit doing much traveling, and the van became my personal car for some time. Then after Christopher reached age 16, he drove the van during high school. After he finished school and moved away I began driving it again, because the van’s endurance, and the durability of its Dodge 318 V-8 engine, were phenomenal. However, as gasoline prices kept rising along with maintenance costs, I couldn’t justify driving it forever, and it finally sat in the driveway most of the time. It had over 260,000 miles on it, but I didn’t want to let it go.

Then, just a few weeks ago, opportunity knocked. A man living near here said he wished he had that van, to fix it up and use it as a camping vehicle for himself and his own kids. So we made the transaction, and now the old van has a new life. But I took a couple of pictures before it left us. Here they are: