The newly minted Philadelphian who plays the music in ‘I Play Rocky’

Before Dave Palmer moved to Philadelphia and recorded the score to the new movie I Play Rocky with a team of all-Philly musicians, the jazz pianist and composer built an impressive music and movie industry resumé.

He had scored several films for Oscar- winning and Phoenixville-born I Play Rocky director Peter Farrelly before making the music for the Anthony Ippolito-starring love letter to Sylvester Stallone’s 1976 ultimate underdog story that topped The Inquirer’s 2026 list of the most Philly-centric movies of all time. It helps stitch together the making-of Rocky movie and its aspiring screenwriter and actor’s non-negotiable favorite three words: “I play Rocky.”

That includes 2022’s The Greatest Beer Run Ever and this year’s Balls Up.

Hanging out on a recent sunny afternoon in Rittenhouse Square a few blocks from where he lives with his wife Cheryl, Palmer shared the bullet points of a busy career that began when he hit the road with the band MC 900 Ft. Jesus in the 1990s.

It has included stints touring and recording with Fiona Apple, Seal, Chris Isaak, Aimee Mann, Air, and Joe Henry. He has collaborated with hip-hop acts such as De La Soul, Twista, David Banner, and the artist formerly known as Kanye West.

In 2009, Palmer produced The Best Is Yet To Come, a tribute to Great American Songbook writer Cy Coleman featuring Apple, Patty Griffin, and Jill Sobule. And Dave Palmer Trio Plays Cy Coleman, an EP with vocalist Gabby Moreno comes out Friday, the same day I Play Rocky hits theaters.

Palmer didn’t need to be in Philly to create the score for that film — along with songs by the Spinners, Hall & Oates, Todd Rundgren, and of course, Bill Conti’s “Gonna Fly Now.”

But as it happened, he already was.

Palmer had operated out of Los Angeles for the past two decades. But he and his wife, who grew up in Wilmington — “I married into being an Eagles fan,” he says — had already relocated to Philly when he got the assignment to score I Play Rocky from Farrelly.

Like so many other musicians whose move to Philly has benefited the city’s fruitful music scene in recent years, the Palmers’ migration is a real estate story.

They were renting in Hollywood, shut out of an ever escalating housing market. “I equate it to being on a hamster wheel,” he said. Buying a home “keeps being out of reach.”

“My wife used to hang out in Philly, she knew the neighborhoods,” Palmer said. So while also considering moving to pricey entertainment industry cities like New York and London, the couple bought an apartment in Rittenhouse as an investment."

They were unsure if they would move here permanently, but after the L.A. fires forced the couple to evacuate in early 2025, and many friends lost their homes, the Palmers decided to made the leap and come east.

Palmer didn’t know anyone in the Philly music scene, “so I didn’t know what to expect,” he says. A bass playing friend introduced him to Charlie Hall, the War on Drugs drummer and Philly Specials producer who’s deeply connected in the local scene.

Palmer and Hall had never met in person, but the day the Palmers arrived in town in June 2025, Hall show up at their door with a box of cookies as a welcome gift.

“Through Charlie, I started meeting all these people,” Palmer says, like guitarists Tom Spiker and Kevin Hanson, and percussionist Daniel Villareal, with whom he played his first gig as a Philadelphian last October at the 700 Club in Northern Liberties.

Palmer met Philly bandleader Don McCloskey that night, and has since produced the songwriter’s forthcoming album at Retro City Studios in Germantown. He also plays regularly with Spiker, Hall, Villareal and bass player Sandy Eldred in an aggregation called Tom Spiker’s Mobile Pleasure Lounge: Live Improvised Film Scoring.

The group performed at Black Squirrel Club in Fishtown last month, making up music as they went along, to clips from The Blues Brothers and more obscure films.

Dropping down into a scene where he had no contacts has turned out to be a seamless experience. And he’s smitten with his new hometown.

“I love it here,” he says. “It’s a big city, but at the same time, it’s kind of chill. All the neighborhoods are so different. And one thing I didn’t expect: People are really friendly. It’s way easier to get to know people and talk to them than in L.A. And they’re not full of s—!”

Musically, he said, he didn’t know what to expect.

“I knew the history of the music. I knew there were good musicians here. But I’ve been working with top musicians in L.A. for 20 years. … And so far, it’s been amazing. I can do anything I need to do on any professional level in Philadelphia. 100%. Because the players are that good.”

For I Play Rocky, Palmer wrote mostly what he calls “utilitarian” music to heighten tension or amplify a mood in the movie, which also includes original music by Andrew Bird.

In an early scene in the movie, when Ippolito as a young and broke Stallone auditions for a role in a soft core porn film, Palmer followed Farrelly’s instruction to create a funky, boogaloo style piece of music inspired by Mel Brown’s 1967 jam “Chicken Fat.”

A pivotal scene involving Stallone and his dog Butkus required a Latin instrumental passage. For a recreation of the drama behind the scene in which Rocky pummels a slab of meat instead of a punching bag, “we used a lot of banging on pieces of metal, and low drones, and big smashing piano sounds. It’s about creating tension.”

Palmer recorded the score at Spiker’s Undercarriage Recordings in Northern Liberties, with a crew of Philly players, some of home he also worked with in producing a forthcoming album with Indianapolis songwriter Richard Edwards.

Palmer shouts out other Philly players like guitarists Ross Bellenoit and Erik Sayles, drummers Fred Berman and Adrian Harpham, and songwriter Dave Cope.

“I’m really meeting a lot of musicians,” Palmer says, adding with a laugh, “the easiest way to get to know musicians is to hand them some money.”

He’s been able to do that “because I’m controlling the budgets for these projects. And in the case of I Play Rocky, it was a decent sized budget, so you’ve got several thousands dollars to throw around at people.”

Looking at the musical landscape, he sees a Philly scene primed to expand, with studios like Spice House Sound in Fishtown, where he recorded the Cy Coleman EP with his band mates Joey Waronker and Reggie Hamilton, as well as facilities like Will Yip’s Memory Music in South Philly.

Palmer has quickly seen how the Philly affordability fuels creativity.

“There’s so music flexibility in doing music like this in Philadelphia, because the costs are substantially lower on every metric,” he says. “But the quality is just as high. The musicianship, the studios. Everything.”

“So many young bands are here because it’s one of the last cities that you can afford to be a young, punkish musician,” Palmer says.

“I’ve been fortunate to be in different areas at different times. I was in Seattle in the mid-90s and L.A. in the ’90s and early 2000s. I’ve been around places where scenes really happen, and I see all the seeds of it in Philadelphia right now.”