Photo courtesy dorianmarshmusic on Instagram
Dorian Marsh lives in the heart of Oak Cliff and has had quite the year building his music career. We sat down with Marsh to get to know his story.
Tell me a little bit about yourself
I grew up kind of all over, from here to New Orleans to just a bunch of places. I grew up in Dallas, moved into Denton, Little Elm area when I got a little bit older. But now I moved back to Dallas to pursue music and do this thing. I’m actually living in Oak Cliff, right across the street from Oak Cliff Brewing Company.
The reason why I moved here was to just pursue music. The journey has just been absolutely wild. It’s been crazy. And so I’m kind of in the thick of it right now. It’s just I can’t be more grateful for this place to be in and the area that I’m in right now. It’s perfect and ideal for what I’m doing.
I know the house you’re living in now is pretty significant, tell me about that
The house belonged to this lady named Sara Tillman. She’s like on the Dallas Observer, and there’s all these things that have been written about her. She she passed away, I think, like 2019, and my Nana now has her house, and she’s loaned it to me to be able to stay in to pursue this music.
Sara was a light onto everybody that she met and everybody that passed her. And she literally handed out money to loan money to restaurant vendors over in Oak Cliff to start it up. She saw potential in Oak Cliff, and she came at the time when it was, like, kind of still getting figured out and worked out, and she she legitimately helped build it from the ground up. And a lot of businesses are thriving because of what she did.
So to be able to stay here, it’s been really wild. And there is like an influence or energy, whatever you call it, in this house, you know. She was a collector of antiques. So everything in here is just full of antiques. Even though I haven’t met her, she has played such a huge influence on my own personal life as well as my musical life.
How did you get started with music?
I mean, I’ve been doing music for a long time. Professionally, it’s only been a year and a half, really, since I started doing this, and there’s been seeds planted, and I think within Dallas, and specifically Oak Cliff, I got a taste of the whole music scene when I was a sophomore in college.
This guy named Charley Crockett has been played over the radio so many times. And so I was like, let me go see this guy. And so me and my girlfriend for a project went to go see Charley Crockett. It was at the Kessler theater. And again, like, there have been many seeds in my journey to, like, really push this thing, but like, being in the heart of Texas music and seeing it right there, like 2017 I believe, was just crazy. I got a taste of what it was like in that scene. And so ever since then, there’s been multiple periods, but there’s been seeds to pushing me to do music more and more.
Tell me about your music
I always call it like a gumbo sound. There’s bits and pieces of everything. And I think people agree with me when I say that. So there’s bits of blues, and there’s folk and Americana, and there’s even it goes down to, like, drone, noise music, to Indian raga music that you find over in the East. There’s hints of everything. I think that the foundation of what I do is really blues.
Stevie Ray Vaughn and T-Bone Walker from Oak Cliff have played such a an important role in my music, and especially blues, in regards to my style that I’m going for now, and what I’ve been developing lately.
What has the journey been like?
It’s been very crazy. I’m trying to hold on. I’m trying to keep my head, right, you know keep my screws from going too loose, but also reminded myself what I’m doing. When I first started doing this, I started busking, like, playing it on the street in Bishop Arts and just figuring it out. Me and my guitarist were invited to go play at the Kessler theater for a song. So I literally went from busking to the Kessler theater in like months. And so I went from singing to people on the street corner to singing to what felt like 300 people. And I still think about that day, and it’s like, that’s that same stage that I saw Charley Crockett play on in 2017. It’s just like full circle.
What are your goals for the future?
I mean, I think my goal ultimately is no different than, like, what Sara was doing when she first started doing this. My plan is to serve, I mean, my music, I want to bring people together from all different walks of life. Doesn’t matter who you are, what you’ve been through, and I think it’s been doing that, and I think that that’s why, you know, I’ve been able to reach all different types of crowds, because it is the songs I’m singing and the songs I’m talking about. There’s bits of addiction in there. There’s a bits of grief and loss of death. There’s bits of like hiding from something that you may not want to face. You’re too scared to but you ultimately need to. You know, there’s, there’s these different things that dive into musically, that reach all different types of people.
So my goal is to bring people together. That’s really what is, just like Sara did back in the day, you know? And so just to serve the community with my music and also continue the tradition of blues and folk and that stuff. Just community and continuing that tradition of that music.
