fasten your seat belt
Dave Hoffman “The saga of Crazy Dave”
When I began the interview, Dave Hoffman told me to fasten my seat belt – it was good advice. Dave was an orphan and was adopted along with another ‘brother’, living most of his life near Niagara Falls and Buffalo, New York area. He couldn’t recall when he was born and never attempted to find his birth parents. His earliest childhood memory was watching the funeral of John F. Kennedy on TV.
He says he loves Niagara Falls in the winter – the mist from the Falls covers the trees with ice, and they look really haunted and cool.
Around age eight, Dave had an older neighbor, Melissa, that had a guitar. He would go to her room and play the guitar so often that she finally just gave it to him. He couldn’t get enough of it. He knew early, around age ten, that he wanted to play music for a living. Dave received lessons from a lady that lived nearby but that’s the extent of his formal musical education, until his tenure in Edgemeade of Virginia, a treatment center for troubled teens.
Dave was a wrongfully charged teenager but as an adopted minor, given very little help, he was quickly sent to a correctional institution which in the 70s were prone to violence and abuse. 
He would escape often, be caught, and then sent to a worse place until ending up near Roanoke, Virginia at a very brutal Edgemeade institution. Dave is correct when he said most of the Edgemeade history has been intentionally erased. It’s safe to say it was not a good place for a teenager in the 70s. It was investigated by local sheriff, Yule Hunt, and his detective, Jim Crook, after tips received by other escaped teens of drug experimentation, violence, and rapes. It was permanently closed in 1979, a couple of years after Dave and few of his friends came out of a drug induced sedation, probably by mistake, and escaped for good.
For Dave, his only highlights of Edgemeade was the friendship of a preacher named Larry Potts. Potts would bring in his expensive Martin guitar and spend time teaching Dave a huge range of music. Dave credits Mr. Potts with his musical success because of his kindness and patience in a nightmarish hell that was so bad Dave sometimes feels like he had imagined it all.
Later in life, as a working musician, Dave returned to the area to say thanks but discovered that Dave Potts has passed away. He located Potts’ daughter and told her how her father had been such a positive influence on his life.
Meanwhile, Dave was sent to another “institution” in Maine and escaped again. This time he lived in the woods for almost three years, surviving on his own (another story) until he was 21 and couldn’t be sent back. He quickly returned to the Utica area and started to rebuild his life.
Club Utica was a true honky-tonk with a back room full of instruments they use to encouraged and promote good music. Dave got established with the owner, Duane Hall, and quickly became a much better guitarist and established himself into the local music scene.
Dave’s skills at surviving in the woods would prove helpful. He became a survival instructor at a number of Scout camps and was featured in Boys’ Life magazine for three years straight. He met a lovely young lady, Natalie Murrett (aka: Girlie), who was the cook at a wilderness survival camp where Dave was an instructor. They fell in love, moved in together, and bought a small farm south of Buffalo in ski country which gets pretty snowy. They never married but have remained great friends for over thirty years.
Dave loved the area and didn’t mind the cold or riding his motorcycle in freezing weather. After one snowstorm, he was digging a path from his motorcycle shed to the road, about 200 yards in four feet of snow, when the snow slid off the roof of their house and buried him and his bike. Dave decided to try a warmer climate.
He was touring with a friend in Daytona, Florida and playing at the Broken Spoke. After their last gig, Not so Crazy Dave didn’t want to ride his motorcycle north in the winter so he went south, ending up in Key West around the year 2000.
CW Colt was the first to give Dave a shot. He later became a utility player that could fill in with almost any of the local groups. Dave also plays bass guitar and pedal steel and is a musician with a very versatile range of music. He has since performed with some of Key West’s finest musicians, including the great Michael McCloud who became a serious influence and mentor.
One evening, around 2007, after a spiked drink at Hog’s Breath, a disheveled Crazy Dave wandered past Peppers and ran into Tom Luna. Luna took Dave to his place to help straighten him up for a few days. They became very good friends with Dave teaching Tom how to ride a motorcycle. Later, Tom Luna’s partner passed away and he and Dave became roommates. Their friendship continues.
About a year ago, while visiting his brother in Mooresville, North Carolina, Dave felt a numbness in his face and went to the hospital. He must have passed out in the waiting room as he woke up in a hospital bed with no feeling in his right side. He had suffered a severe stroke. His buddy, Tom Luna, quickly rode to his bedside and stayed with him, helping him to recover.
Ray West held a Key West fundraiser for Crazy Dave that raised enough money to help him get through. Ironically, Ray was just involved in a scooter accident, and is involved in his own fundraiser. Thankfully, Ray is now home and recuperating.
Dave was a stuntman for a number of years in the 80s for TV shows like Fantasy Island and several cowboy movies in old Tucson. He invented a double roof fall never before attempted and has since been named the Hoffman Roll. It ends with the stuntman actually landing on the ground, not a cushioned pad. When he first used it, the shocked director called him a crazy son of a “z@&ch”. His now standard moniker “Crazy Dave” was born.
“Girlie” Natalie Murrett and Dave Hoffman somewhere near Buffalo late 90s.
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