Sitka Sun

Murphy moved to Oakland from New York in 2016, and began his collaborative affiliation with the city’s creative collective The Long Road Society, who released Sitka Sun’s self-titled debut album in January 2018 — a true bicoastal album based on tracks recorded in upstate New York and finished in Oakland. The artist-centered music platform Bandcamp’s well-regarded blog Bandcamp Daily was effusive in their praise of the album, saying, “It’s spiritual jazz whose target audience is Mother Earth, and it clears the way for a sense of transcendent joy.”

The band’s sophomore Long Road Society release, All the Way West, was released in January 2021 and is a deeper dive into the spirit of improvisation, described by the label as “ a spaced out contemplation on the human condition.”