Ed Hale

Ed Hale will be interviewed live on the radio program Vancouver Persian Radio tonight, Saturday August 28th 2010,  starting at 10:00PM PST (!:00AM EST). The two hour show is broadcast live every Saturday night on 93.1 RedFM in Vancouver BC and surrounding areas and can be heard globally on the internet at http://redfm.ca/. Hale and band are in Vancouver for their performance at the International Pop Overthrow Festival which has been running all week and weekend long in the city. They performed an electrifying set of five songs for an exuberant sold-out crowd on Friday night at The Railway Club in downtown Vancouver and then headed to a one hour interview with local TV station SHAW Channel 4 afterward. The Vancouver Persian Radio Show is a popular 2 hour current affairs program featuring interviews, listener phone-ins, commentary, and entertainment related to the Canadian Persian and Iranian community. Ed Hale is the co-founder of the non-profit organization PeaceWithIran.com, and is very active in Iranian Human Rights activism.

The power of pop music, the challenges of life on the road, converting to Islam, making babies, getting in and out of Iran, Peace in the Middle East, the illegal invasion of Iraq. All topics surely to come up in the next episode of ICTV’s television program The AfterHours Show, the full hour which will be dedicated to the American singer/songwriter turned activist Ed Hale. The one hour show will air on SHAW Channel 4 in Vancouver, BC three times next week, Monday and Tuesday at 11:00AM and Saturday at 10:30PM. For fans who want to get in on the action and on TV, the Channel 4 camera crew and the show’s host Ebby Mohseni will be filming Hale’s final concert of his West Coast tour at the Railway Club in Vancouver at 8:00PM. Full details are available on Hale’s Facebook Page.

Hale has been mesmerizing audiences touring the West Coast of the United States and Canada for the last two months with a four piece band made up of his hypnotic vocals, Cheshire Cat grin and signature open-tuned acoustic guitars, two cellists, and virtuoso keyboardist Peter Capelle who provides everything from ambient electronica to straight up mind-blowing piano embellishments. The band has performed in major cities from Los Angeles to Seattle promoting Hale’s latest solo magnum opus entitled Ballad On Third Avenue. Their final concert of the tour in Vancouver is being filmed for use in the next episode of the weekly television series The AfterHours Show. The show will also feature extensive interview footage with the singer, who will hopefully shed some light on the recent rumors about the breakup of alt-rock supergroup Transcendence, which Hale has fronted for ten years, which also includes Ex Norwegian singer Roger Houdaille and Dreaming In Stereo guitarist Fernando Perdumbo. The critically acclaimed indie band’s record label is months away from releasing their long awaited new album All Your Heroes Become Villains. Leaked copies of the band’s last recorded work have garnered hyperbolic raving reviews in the music blogosphere for over two years, but rumors abound about the album’s release date being delayed due to the band’s secret demise while the members have busied themselves with various solo projects.

Regardless of whether the Transcendence mystery is cleared up or not, Hale will certainly make for an intriguing subject on Mohseni’s AfterHours Show. Controversy, mischief and intrigue are as ubiquitous when Ed Hale is in front of a camera as are his always present scarves and eye makeup. History, politics, art, music, beauty, truth, philosophy, sex, technology and design and just about anything else pop-culture usually abound whenever the singer is interviewed. Not to mention a conspiracy theory or two. Viewers can also look forward to discussions about Hale’s recent interfaith wedding and subsequent conversion to Islam, his upcoming trips to Pakistan and Israel/Palestine, as well as his non-profit organization PeaceWithIran.com and his controversial meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year at the United Nations. All this while openly professing to be “an active practicing Christian and member of the United Methodist Church, but entirely understanding and empathetic to our fellow atheist brothers and sisters around the world…” make Hale an enigmatic figure. Perhaps Mohseni and company are biting off more than they can chew in a one hour show. But hey there’s always the sequel!

ARTIST WEBSITES: www.edhale.com, www.myspace.com/edhale, www.facebook.com/edhalemusic

ASCOT MEDIA’S CONTACT INFORMATION
Rodney Foster – Ascot Media Group, Inc.
rfoster@ascotmediagroup.com
281-324-2180

Ed Hale fans are delivered a rare treat this weekend by being able to call in and speak live on the air to the singer!!! Of course they can also email questions in via the internet during a live on-air interview on the weekly call-in radio program The Believe Show hosted by Barbara Bruce. The thirty-minute interview will air on Sunday August 22nd at 7:30 Eastern Standard Time or 4:30 Pacific Standard time. The long running Phoenix Arizona based program focuses on positive motivational and inspirational stories and leaders in a wide variety of industries who are making a difference in the world. The Believe Show airs on KVWM 970 AM on the radio dial in Arizona, or can be heard live online at www.barbarabruce.com. The well-spoken and well-traveled singer/songwriter/producer/entrepreneur and social activist, who is currently on a national tour in the United States promoting his latest album Ballad On Third Avenue, will as usual probably not be at a loss for words, but will instead have plenty to share about his most recent experiences on the road, his new album, or any number of the other ventures he seems always involved in at any given moment in time. Fans are welcome to start calling in to the station no earlier than 4:00 PM PST by dialing 928.368.8100.

Ed Hale will perform 4 IPO Festival dates.

A rare treat for fans of singer-songwriter-recording artist Ed Hale who live on the West Coast, the artist’s record label (Dying Van Gogh) has confirmed that Hale will be performing in four West Coast cities in the month of August in support of his Ballad On Third Avenue album. Ballad has been the biggest selling album of the artist’s career and the highest charting thus far, reaching #14 on the CMJ Most Added Chart. It showed Hale taking yet another leap in his constant genre-jumping musical explorations – this time to a minimalist, stripped down all acoustic sound primarily composed of acoustic guitars and other stringed instruments (even the Russian “balalaika” makes several appearances), piano, bass, and lush cello and string arrangements.

The news was first announced by the International Pop Overthrow Festival, that Ed Hale and band will be performing at all 4 dates of their West Coast Tour circuit this summer. The long-running IPO – one of this summer’s few tours not cancelling dates — is a veritable feast for music lovers and fans of catchy power-pop which often showcases the best artists of contemporary music each year.  Hale’s first West Coast show will be in Los Angeles, at The Joint on Sunset Strip, on Saturday August 7th, with subsequent stops in Portland, OR, Seattle, WA and Vancouver BC. Dates, times, and venues can be accessed from Hale’s website, www.edhale.com or the Official IPO Festival website, www.internationalpopoverthrow.com. Hale will also be conducting media interviews while on tour in these cities.

Hale will be performing 45 minute sets with a four piece group comprised of some of Brooklyn’s thriving music scene’s best players, the same guitar, bass, piano, and cello setup that he’s used in all of his live concerts to support his latest album. “Haunting,” “Irresistibly catchy,” and “instantly recognizable melodies that stick in your head for days” are some of the phrases used by the press to describe the singer’s latest critically acclaimed work. Which is exactly what Hale and company bring to the stage in their live performances — accompanied by lush, ambient, often open-wide improvisational acoustic music with Hale’s Bowiesque baritone soaring in and out of the hypnotizing music the band creates behind him – similar to Tim or Jeff Buckley or Muse’s Matthew Bellamy, a style the singer started calling “whisper pop” upon the album’s release.

In a whirlwind year that showed Ed Hale doing everything from skirting the globe meeting with Iranian dignitaries (including a stop at the UN to meet with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad), or tribal Village Chiefs in West Africa to continuing to run his New York based uber-cool Dying Van Gogh Records label, a year certainly climaxed by the singer’s multi-cultural lavish public wedding in Manhattan to Persian beauty Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai, it is good to see Ed Hale back doing what he does best. Fans of the singer hope that these West Coast shows are just the tip of the iceberg and may hint at a full-blown US Tour, but at the very least they show that making music still reigns supreme in the life of the Mercurial Renaissance Man.

Saturday August 7th Los Angeles, CA – The Joint 9:30PM
Friday August 13th Portland, OR – East End 10PM
Friday August 20th Seattle, WA – El Corazon 10PM
Friday August 27th Vancouver, BC – Railway Club 8:30PM

ARTIST WEBSITES: www.edhale.com, www.myspace.com/edhale, www.facebook.com/edhalemusic

ASCOT MEDIA’S CONTACT INFORMATION
Rodney Foster – Ascot Media Group, Inc.
rfoster@ascotmediagroup.com
281-324-2180

In a recent review of Ed Hale‘s latest solo effort, the acoustic leaning whisper-pop styled Ballad On Third Avenue,  “Ed Hale’s “Ballad On Third Avenue” has a fearless and eloquent songwriter who is a dysfunctional artist and a lost soul sound to it; finding love romantically and losing it tragically. If you need a good cry on Third Avenue, and we all do, then carry this album wherever you go. I do.”

Shelton Ivany
National News Bureau

Those in the metropolitan New York area will have a rare opportunity Wednesday: underground superstar singer/songwriter/guitarist/activist extraordinaire Ed Hale will be interviewed live on the radio on WKNY 1490 AM on April 21st at 9:15AM EST. The interview will last 30 minutes and be conducted by Morning Drivetime jock Warren Lawrence. The station has been giving away free copies of Hale’s new hit whisper-pop album Ballad On Third Avenue all week to listeners in preparation for the interview.

In a recent review Shelton Ivany of the National News Bureau said of the album, “Ed Hale’s “Ballad On Third Avenue” has a fearless and eloquent songwriter who is a dysfunctional artist and a lost soul sound to it; finding love romantically and losing it tragically. If you need a good cry on Third Avenue, and we all do, then carry this album wherever you go. I do.”

Listeners will have a chance to call in and ask Ed Hale questions live on the air as well as participate in call-in contests for more giveaways during the interview.

On Tuesday Dying Van Gogh Records announced that the singer’s official website, edhale.com, is in the process of migrating to a new stronger and more powerful dedicated-server array to handle the increase in traffic and ensuing problems it has been causing. Visitors may have noticed that the website for raconteur lead singer, Ed Hale, of the rock group Transcendence, has been acting funny lately; or at times may not appear to be working at all. The site has been down for extended periods of time over the last four weeks, several times for hours. And at other times the site may appear to be completely inaccessible or it might take forever to load before “timing out.”

“All of this makes sense with Ed’s new solo album [Ballad On Third Avenue] continuing to gain traction in the media,” stated the singer’s publicist Trish Stevens of PR firm Ascot Media. “But one would think they’d bloody be prepared for it. It’s unacceptable if you ask us and it’s making our job a bloody nightmare. There have also been several instances where the  website just says “Site Suspended” on its homepage for hours. How is that acceptable?” Stevens goes on to explain that in the last four weeks alone the website’s hosting service, Utah based MidPhase, has told the PR company that the website edhale.com has crashed their servers on six separate occasions with CPU overages up to 90% at their worst due to traffic increases and excessive simultaneous traffic and in some instances the web-hosting company has admitted to “pulling the plug” on the singer and suspending the website temporarily to avoid full system crashes on their shared servers. They have recommended the singer’s record label Dying Van Gogh migrate the artist’s website to a small array of dedicated servers which should be more than enough to avoid any further overages. The move is in process now and should be completed by week’s end.

A Midphase Sales rep named “Brock” stated “It isn’t a question of how many visitors the site is receiving so much as what those visitors are doing while on the site. These days, especially on music related websites, users will stay on a website for much longer periods of time and listen to music or watch videos, which takes up a lot more bandwidth than just reading a blog. Have ten thousand of them all doing it at the same time and this is what is bound to happen. If the traffic continues to increase on edhale.com for instance we just need to be prepared for it and know what type of site it is. Then yes, it’s a no brainer. We can handle it.” Midphase sister company WestHost Servers has been commissioned to fix the indie-rock singer’s problem, but cannot guarantee when they will have the website moved over to the new servers; which leaves the singer and his fans sitting ducks for more down-time or another suspended account at any minute. “Tell me that it’s normal for a web-hosting company not to have a backup plan in case one of their client’s traffic increases. For now all press distribution for Ed has come to a full stop due to this and if you ask me that’s just not fair.”

In the meantime Ascot Media publicist Rodney Foster suggested that now would be a good time to “friend” Hale on Facebook or MySpace until the problem is solved. The latest news, music, videos, tour dates, and status updates all can be had via the singer’s Facebook or MySpace pages. “Increases in traffic to a client’s website are what we get paid to do. But not to crash them! This is a first for us,” commented Foster. “But Ed’s new CD is brilliant and we’re honored to be working with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if this isn’t the last time this happens. Especially with his summer touring schedule now in the works.”

Ascot Media has requested that all Media contact them directly for media requests to avoid experiencing hold ups or bogging down the singer’s website any further until the new servers are in place.

Rodney Foster rfoster@ascotmediagroup.com or 281-324-2180

Dying Van Gogh Records has confirmed that Ed Hale and band will tour as promised in support of his latest Ballad On Third Avenue solo album. Starting on July 23rd 2010 in San Diego and ending in Vancouver, British Colombia five weeks later, the band will also perform shows in Los Angeles, Fresno, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, Eureka, Eugene, Portland, Bend, Tacoma, Spokane, and Seattle. Four of the concerts will be at the International Pop Overthrow festival series: Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver.

The concerts will feature at least the same five piece lineup Hale has been performing with over the last six months since the new solo album’s release: Hale, seated as he’s been for all of the dates supporting the new album, on acoustic guitar and vocals; accompanied by piano, keyboards, cello, and bass guitar.  Drums may or may not find a place on stage with the band this time out. “The last show we did was at the IPO concert in New York and we didn’t have Derek there [drummer], and frankly we all thought it actually sounded better. You could hear more of the subtle intricacies and melodies that all the other more melodic instruments were playing without the pounding of the drums,” Hale commented. “I think it just has to do with the idea of these songs being acoustic, very soft and intimate. We also tend to be able to improvise a lot more without drums… the crowd loves it, it’s trance-like man, and let’s face it, that’s a dream come true for us to be able to just go off like that into these nether worlds of sound whenever we want to and break free from the rhythm completely. We can’t easily do that with drums on board.”

Cities and dates are being posted on ReverbNation.com and on the Ed Hale Page on Facebook so check periodically as more cities are added. No plans yet for Mid West or East Coast have been announced.

Ed Hale Married Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai on February 13th, 2010

New photos of the February 13th wedding between singer/songwriter Ed Hale and the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai have started to appear online in different photo albums on Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr.

The most recent album is by indie-photo-journalist/filmmaker Flavia Molinari which can be accessed here if you are on Facebook.

If you do not yet have a profile on Facebook you can still view the photos by clicking here, though there may be less information and user interactivity available in this album.

A more ample and broad collection from a wide variety of family, friends, and fans can be viewed by clicking here.

Happy viewing and congratulations to the new couple!

DVG Records Company 2010

A new interview with Transcendence singer Ed Hale in Exclusive Magazine. The singer, who just recently released a new solo album, Ballad On Third Avenue, and more recently surprised friends and fans by getting married to the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai in dual Persian and Christian Ceremonies.”

‘All Hale, Ed!’

Ed Hale, the iconic singer of the rock group Transcendence, never known for doing things ‘ordinary,’ definitely did it his way in what may be the ‘interfaith wedding of the year!’

On February 13, Hale’s last Triple A radio hit single, ‘I Walk Alone,’ no longer applied to him as he and the beautiful Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai, began their life together in a style that crosses all cultural barriers.

At a church on the corner of Park Avenue in New York City, they were joined in a formally Islamic fashion in a traditional Persian wedding, followed immediately by a traditional Christian wedding.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Ed Hale about all this, and first wondered, being that he just married his soul-mate (congratulations!) in a Multi-Interfaith, one-of-a-kind wedding, if he could kindly explain this a little more. “Thank you for the congrats. Nahal and I knew that if we were going to have a wedding that it needed to be special. Something that was bigger than just the binding of the two of us as one. If we wanted to do that, we could have just eloped off alone the two of us and done it privately. But we felt a responsibility to our friends and fans and family… we wanted to share it.”

“Many people already knew our story. How long we had been together. How in love we were. Always the iconoclast, I wasn’t too knowledgable about weddings per se, but I knew that if I was going to get married in public that it had to be about more than just the two of us. So we really worked hard at this idea of ‘celebrating love,’ in all its shapes and forms… rather than just making it about us.”

Continue reading click here

Ed Hale and Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai tie the knot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New York, NY, February 22, 2010 – Ed Hale, singer/songwriter and social and political activist, whose latest solo album Ballad on Third Avenue was recently voted one of the best albums of 2009, has possibly started a trend in creating a little peace between the U.S. and the Middle East – by doing it his way in his one-of-a-kind wedding last weekend!  East meets West and judging from the comments of the over one hundred and fifty guests from all walks of life and religious denominations, they were deeply moved and had never experienced such a depth of love and peace within a wedding ceremony before!

On February 13, at a church in Manhattan, Hale (who took the Muslim name of Hafez in order to be legally married to his bride in the country of Iran) and Iranian-born Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai began their new life together by first being joined in a formal Islamic ceremony at a traditional Persian wedding known as Sofreh Aghd that dates back nearly four thousand years.  This service was followed by a traditional Christian wedding where the bride and groom’s own vows were integrated into the formal ceremony, followed by a few minutes of candle-lit darkness and silence for world peace.

The enlightened couple did not stop there though.  The newlyweds then “jumped the broom,” a centuries-old African American wedding tradition, to express their solidarity with people around the world who are still victims of human trafficking and slavery today. Hale then surprised his new bride by releasing two white doves into the air, and then at the reception a traditional Native American wedding blessing Deer Dance was performed for the couple and their guests by ancient Persian Sufi musicians.  Hale’s initial concern that it might have been ‘too much’ for their guests was assuaged after hearing feedback that everyone felt humbled and inspired by the love and spirituality they felt that day, many expressing that their lives were changed forever by the experience.

Hale ’walks the talk’ once more when it comes to his nickname ‘the Ambassador,’ even bringing the idea into his own nuptials. Not content simply working with Habitat for Humanity in providing homes and a new beginning for those less fortunate, he strives daily to make the world a better place in his honored role as a civilian diplomat for the United States.  In fact, it was in this role that he first visited Iran in 2008 to discuss peace between the US and Iran. Six months later he met directly with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the United Nations in an effort to promote world peace.  Contrary to what many believe, Hale did not meet his future bride during this visit – they had, in fact, been best friends for almost a decade prior to becoming engaged.

As the rocker-activist couple began their first day as husband and wife in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, they found it both sad and ironic when Nahal read aloud from the New York Times Hillary Clinton’s plan to impose more economic sanctions on Iran, where much of her family still lives. One wonders that If Ed Hale and Nahal could cross multiple cultural and religious barriers and achieve peace on a small scale for one day with hundreds of guests from countries all over the world, couldn’t we imagine what the whole world could accomplish if we worked together in similar fashion and made peace our ultimate goal. Peace between the United States and Iran was possible, at least for one day, through true love in action by these two beautifully inspired love birds.

Find out more about the artist at www.edhale.com or connect with Ed Hale personally on Facebook at:http://www.facebook.com/edhale.

Rodney Foster – Ascot Media Group, Inc.
rfoster@ascotmediagroup.com
281-324-2180

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Ed Hale‘s latest solo album, the acoustic leaning ‘whisper pop’ CD entitled Ballad On Third Avenue was voted “One of Best Albums of 2009” by New Times Magazine. The end of year edition came out of the tri-county wide South Florida area where Hale first got his start in the seminal underground band Broken Spectacles along with Americana Music pioneer Matthew Sabatella when the two were in college.

Music critic Lee Zimmerman wrote,

Singer/songwriter Ed Hale, who was engaged to be married to Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai in September of this year, announced this week that a date has been set, February 13th, 2010, creating a “Valentines Day Weekend in New York City for friends and family” and invitations have been mailed. The couple will hold two wedding ceremonies back to back, both in Manhattan. The first of which at 10 AM, will be a Traditional Persian Wedding, where Hale is said to be converting to Islam in order to travel with and be considered legally married to Mishel-Ghashghai in the Middle East, immediately followed by what is being called “an eclectic take on the traditional Christian Wedding,” where Mishel-Ghashghai is reportedly converting to Christianity. A reception will follow in the same location. The couple shared that they are foregoing the usual DJ and wedding band at the reception in favor of more personal group activities such as readings by different guests, a meditation on love candle ceremony, a blessing by a Tibetan Buddhist Monk from the Nechung Center, and of course several musical performances by friends of Hale’s in the rock ‘n’ roll world. In lieu of wedding cake the couple will be having the 200 year old New York Italian bakery Viniero’s provide over two-hundred and fifty fresh cannoli. The reception will also feature a string quintet with sitar performing both classical and standards, and a Traditional Persian Classical Trio. Honeymoon plans have not been announced, but the couple has set up a wedding website at TheKnot.com that lists flight and accommodation information for guests. Hale commented “The only other time I’ll ever get to have this many of all my different friends from around the world gathered in one place will probably be my funeral, if I’m that lucky, so Nahal and I really wanted to have things be more personal and manageable so we could have the opportunity to spend quality time with people we don’t get to see very often. Introduce everyone to each other. You know, like that.” When asked about the “eclectic take” comment on the couple’s upcoming nuptials, Hale said “Well I think I’ve got her talked into doing a big group Stevie Wonder sing-a-long, but I’m pretty sure she’s nixed the idea of me walking in wearing a cape and top hat.”

New Ed Hale single “Scene in San Francisco” is now available to hear free in its entirety and download on internet radio stations such as iLike, LastFM, and Jango. Transcendence singer/guitarist Ed Hale turned solo artist, albeit temporarily, with the release of this year’s acoustic flavored whisper-pop album Ballad On Third Avenue — a blatantly sentimental homage to beautiful losers and tragic lovers. The album debuted at #14 on CMJ’s Most Added Chart and has hovered at #140 in the Top 200 since its release in July, the most successful charting of the singer’s career to date. The album’s first single, the anthemic “I Walk Alone,” played on over one-hundred Triple A radio stations across the US, earning Hale crossover success and new fans in the adult contemporary market, a format far removed from Hale’s usual home in the alternative rock and college radio world. Hoping to further the success and momentum of showing the singer’s softer side, his record label (Dying Van Gogh) is releasing the album’s second single “Scene in San Francisco” in January – this time to both the Triple A market and to Top 40 radio, a bold gesture for an artist who has always been known more for eclectic inventiveness than hit-making.

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New music video from the latest Ed Hale album Ballad On Third Avenue. The song “Beautiful Losers” is actually the title track and song #5 on the Transcendence singer’s newest solo album, and is entitled “Ballad On Third Avenue (Beautiful Losers)” for those wishing to download the track from iTunes. The music video was shot by photographer Flavia Molinari and edited by Roger Houdaille of the indie-rock band Ex Norwegian.