Ed Hale

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.

Recorded in October 2006 in Miami, Florida while recording the Transcendence album All Your Heroes Become Villains, the two-part “Happy Columbus Day” monologue video by Ed Hale was one of the very first videos posted to the YouTube channel TranscendentTV. Since that time, Hale posted over one-hundred and twenty videos of a wide variety of content to YouTube in a little more than half a year citing it as a cultural experiment. Often misunderstood, the controversial video is straight-faced, biting, sarcastic, and entirely tongue and cheek the singer claims. Happy hunting and happy Columbus Day!

Ed Hale Photo by Flavia Molinari

Ed Hale and band just announced two new concert appearances, both in New York. The Transcendence singer/songwriter/guitarist just released his latest solo album, the critically acclaimed Ballad On Third Avenue – a melodic gem and lyrical milestone for Hale that sounds and feels like an homage to getting lost and losing in the streets of New York and still coming out winning. Tour dates so far have been few and far between; even though the album stayed in the college radio charts all summer and the first single, the anthemic “I Walk Alone”, has been tearing it up on commercial radio making Hale more and more a household name for the emo set. Dying Van Gogh Records assures that Hale will add more tour dates as the album gains more traction at radio. For now fans will have to settle for the few that crop up now and then. Two such happen to be in the Big Apple. Stay tuned for additional updates.

October 2nd, 2009 Friday Night – New York City, NY USA – Fall Fest – Christ Church – 6:30 PM. Corner of 60th st. and Park Avenue. Tickets $10 at the door. Two hours of bands. Ed Hale is one of the featured artists. Band will consist of Hale on vocals and acoustic guitar, Peter Capelle on piano, and a cellist. Will perform 4 songs from new album Ballad On Third Avenue.

November 7th, 2009 Saturday - New York City, NY USA – International Pop Overthrow Festival – 3:30 PM Sharp. Kenny’s Castaways 157 Bleecker St. New York 212 979-9762 $10 at door gets you in for all acts that day and night till midnight. FULL SIX-PIECE BAND CONCERT featuring acoustic guitar, piano, cello, bass, drums, mellotron, and vocals – performing songs from new album Ballad On Third Avenue.

CD REVIEW IN BOOTLEG MAGAZINE August 2009
Ed Hale has recorded a solo album away from his Brit Pop band Transcendence but hasn’t left the pop sentimentality too far behind, using the skill to help shape something acoustically raw and introspective. Ballad on Third Avenue is rich in memorable and pleasantly catchy songs that eschew common trappings of a larger sound in favor of recording more sparse and intimate material. It succeeds in practicing restraint and in also telling stories weaved through American landscapes. The album recalls the jingly soft sounds of late sixties bands that seemed to crystallize sugary melody versus stomping easily all over it. Read More »

By Lee Zimmerman in New Times Magazine: CD Review, Music
Monday, Sep. 14 2009 @ 1:45PM

Ed Hale pauses between his endearing musings on the streets of New York

Ed Hale
Ballad on Third Avenue
(Dying Van Gogh Records)

Ed Hale’s outfit Transcendence was the kind of band that allowed ambition and extravagance to find equal footing. Progressive by design, its sumptuous arrangements often overshadowed Hale’s skills as a songwriter, which featured some great melodies at the core. Hale seems to have remedied that band’s often-obtuse approach with a solo album that focuses more on emotional content and less on instrumental elaboration. The cast of supporting players is terrific (several played in Transcendence), and Hale demonstrates an enviable gift for brooding, introspective melodies that are as quietly compelling as those of Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave. And yes, they’re that good.

The fact that Hale still boasts a penchant for grander schemes ought come as no surprise. His own Dying Van Gogh label has given a home to some of South Florida’s most talented artists, including multi-instrumentalist Fernando Perdomo, who also co-produced this disc. Hale himself has shifted his base of operations to New York, where he now finds both the aural and visual muse for his music. And despite the vast expanse of these urban environs, songs such as “Scene in San Francisco,” “Hello My Dove,” “It Feels Too Good,” and “New Orleans Dreams” provide an intimate view of life, love and longing from a solitary point of view.

Other tracks, like “Thoughts of California and “Never Let Me Go Again,” seem to drift along in a dreamy haze. Only “I Walk Alone” conjures up the sweep and spectacle of Transcendence, but even so, Hale shuttles the song while lowering his gaze. Still, with all due respect to his former outfit, Ballad on Third Avenue is easily the best record of Hale’s still-evolving career. Intimate yet endearing, these songs of the street offer an eloquence all their own. Read More »

Singer/songwriter and longtime committed bachelor Ed Hale appears to be changing his tune. Dying Van Gogh Records confirms that Hale, 36, was formally engaged to be married on September 14th of this year to one Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai. Professionally, Mishel-Ghashghai is a chemical engineer, formerly of Microsoft, and now teaches The Avatar Course where the two are said to have met seven years ago. She is originally from the country of Iran but currently resides in the United States. Hale has long been known for passionate and emotive songs of forlorn love, longing and unrequited love and for a very public personal life, represented most notably through his online blog, the Transcendence Diaries. He is also well known for releasing songs titled with girls’ names from the seemingly endless string of public relationships he has stepped in and out of over the last fifteen years of his career. From “My Wendy” on the singer’s first album, to the minor Adult Contemporary hit “Veronica” from the Sleep With You CD, to “The Architect’s Daughter” on his latest release Ballad On Third Avenue, Hale has never been afraid to wear his heart on his sleeve; for better or worse. In the song “Girls” from the Transcendence album Sleep With You, he manages to shout out over thirty names of past flings in under three minutes and is said to be nearly finished with another new album nicknamed “The Girls Album” which features 25 new tracks, each said to be titled with a different girl’s name. Fans may recognize the name of Hale’s bride to be, Nahal, or think it subtly familiar. And they’d be right. That’s because Hale and company sing it repeatedly on the last song of the Sleep With You album, a song called “Little Tree.” The name “Nahal” literally means “little tree” in Farsi, the native language of Iran. They may also recognize her from YouTube. She is the same girl featured in the BedPeace 2008 video Hale released on YouTube at the start of the New Year. In typical fashion the couple made their quiet proposal — which took place in a row boat on a lake in Central Park in New York — very public by posting photos of it on Hale’s Facebook page. Hale has been dating Mishel-Ghashghai for two years. Hale has never been married. No wedding date is said to be set yet.

Use the chart below to look up the radio station in your town to hear the exclusive radio-edit version of the latest single “I Walk Alone” from Transcendence singer/songwriter Ed Hale’s newest album, Ballad On Third Avenue. “I Walk Alone” had been the unanimous choice as the first single from the new disc since the album’s initial recording sessions, back in late Fall of 2008. Producer and fellow Transcendence guitarist Fernando Perdomo heard it the moment that Hale played him the song accompanied by nothing but an acoustic guitar on the first day of recording. Hale also played Perdomo forty-plus more songs that day in order for them to begin the process of deciding which songs would make it to the new album. Perdomo stated that he knew instantly that “I Walk Alone” would be the “hit song” from the album and demanded that it be the first song they record “just to make sure it made the record. You know how Ed is. He’ll play you a song once, and then won’t want to play it again and instead want to move onto something totally new. But I knew we had to get that one recorded first.”

Enter a slew of opinions from fellow musicians, fans, management, and radio promoters and normally you end up with ten songs that are bound to be “that hit song.” But in a rare occurence, time and time again, “I Walk Alone,” the second track on the album, proved to come out on top as the most obvious choice. Thanks to the good folks at FMQB, the Syndicate, the Howard Rosen Agency, and Jeff Appleton’s Marathon Music Radio Promotions, “I Walk Alone” is now currently spinning on approximately one-hundred and twenty commercial radio stations across the United States, all of which fall under the Triple A format, also known as “Adult Album Alternative.” This is a genre that is new to the singer, completely untouched and uncharted by the band — who have comfortably rotated numerous songs in the College Radio or Alt Rock radio formats for years since their formation in 2000. But there is no getting around that Ballad is a departure both lyrically and sonically, leaning much closer to a ’singer-songwriter’ sound reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian, David Gray or even Simon and Garfunkel, rather than the Brit Pop or Modern Rock style Hale and his bandmates usually produce.  Read More »

Ballad On Third Avenue, the latest solo album from singer-songwriter Ed Hale, continued its climb up the CMJ Top 200 Chart this week jumping thirty spots to land at #145 on the college radio airplay-driven chart. According to MediaGuide and MediaBase tracking, the songs receiving the most airplay are “I Walk Alone,” “Incompatible,” and the album’s title track, a power-pop “Born to Run” for the Millenium Generation nicknamed “Beautiful Losers.” The Simon and Garfunkelesqe “It Feels Too Good” is also receiving a good number of spins. Just under four-hundred college and community radio stations across the United States and Canada are reporting spinning tracks from the singer’s first solo album in several years – making it the most successful and highest charting album in Hale’s fifteen year career. Key cities picked up last week included Philadelphia’s WKDU, WBWC out of Cleveland, and Baltimore’s XTSR. Fans of Hale’s “dayjob” – fronting the Britpop/alt-rock super-group Transcendence – might be taken by surprise by the softer, more mellow sound of the new disc, a collection of eleven intimately recorded and exclusively acoustic songs (not one electric guitar to be heard on the album’s forty-plus minutes), but Hale’s vulnerable confessional lyricism and the songs’ sparse instrumentation have if anything only broadened his audience. Interestingly the most rotated song from the album at college radio, “I Walk Alone,” also happens to be the first single at commercial radio. After fifteen years of alt-rock radio love, the first single from Ballad is instead being picked up for airplay by Adult Contemporary and Triple A stations across the US, making a potential crossover hit the next stop in the singer’s adventurous and noteworthy career, one that has been consistently marked by experimentation and forays into the unexpected.

Day six. A quickie. Several of our team members fell ill over the last 36 hours. I too had a brief bout with the old ‘rumble in the jungle’ yesterday morning as previously reported; not sure if it was the unbearable heat, the grueling work, the lack of sleep, or something I ate or drank. Same goes for the other troops who went down over the last two days. You just can never be sure. But we’re back on the work site and we’ve finally hit that flow-space that most work trips find eventually within themselves. It can take anywhere between two days to five if its going to happen, and when it does you can really see and feel it. It’s palpable. One minute you are on a team of twenty-something unique individuals of all different ages, races, backgrounds, and social circles, who may or may not know each other, each with their own work habits, ideas and beliefs; each with their own opinions, fears, hopes, and aspirations – God knows all trying their best to get along and get the job done, but still separated by that invisible line that exists between each of one of us and “the other.” On almost every work or peace or mission or activist trip I’ve ever been on I have noticed that at some point the group as a whole will reach a new place in consciousness where the individuals unify, become one unit and work as a whole that almost always is greater than the sum of its parts in terms of effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. Not sure when the exact moment in time that occurred for us on this trip, but it has. We spoke about it today after we got back to the hotel in our group meeting. We hit that stride where everyone is now working together in harmony and it feels great. Heat, illness, and back-breaking work aside, several commented that the work site has now turned into “a happy place.” Read More »

So much to report yet so tired. It is just past 10 PM on Tuesday night, the fifth day of our ten day work trip in a small village called Flora Del Campos – a government housing project community thirty minutes outside of the much wealthier coastal town of Cartagena in Colombia. This might be a good place to interject one of the many ironies that we have thus far encountered on the trip. [Everything I will write about tonight I will try to keep brief and to the point as best as I can – though even when it is demanded of me, this time out of the dire need to get to bed earlier than midnight and get some much needed sleep, I still almost always find that task difficult. Perhaps best if I just jot down thoughts and observations rather than attempting to break any of it down; so if it all seems a bit disjointed, pardon me just this time at least; for indeed we are more than tired. Way beyond “tired.”]

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A quick update. It is Sunday night July 26th 2009, the end of day 3 of a ten day work trip in Cartagena, Colombia. We are all exhausted. How we will ever make it to day ten I have no idea. Specifically we are here to do one thing: build a church and community center in a poor neighborhood forty minutes outside of the beautiful coastal town of Cartagena called Flora Del Campos. The area is a project town so to speak comprised of a few thousand people who have been displaced from their real hometowns, neighborhoods, schools, and of course from their own houses. So now they live here. All of them from different areas of this fascinating country called Colombia. None of them natives of the area, or neighbors, or childhood friends or relatives of each other; just thousands of displaced people from all over the country and of all ages who became homeless because of the never ending wars over the last forty years between the “paramilitary” of the rich and powerful monopolizing feudal land owners and the equally questionable communist “guerrillas” who have tried for decades to defeat them.

This is our simple mission. But we are quickly learning that there is much more to it than just “building a church for the poor.” Tired. I have been on the road now for five weeks, primarily in the US. This trip was planned months ago; but it came suddenly. Shocking really. Not enough time to plan or pack or consider what or where or when or how. Flew into New York after more than four weeks gone and woke up at 4am the following day to catch a flight to Bogota and then Cartagena. It is no way to live, but it is better than a day job. Maybe. With each new flight I wonder more and more. I am tired of flying. tired of airplanes. Tired of airports and taxis and early mornings and late nights. More than tired. Exhausted and then somewhere beyond that I would suppose… With the new album out and all the work involved in promoting it I lost track of time and never really stopped to ponder this particular trip. I knew it was on my schedule. But I never stopped to really think about where we were going. It just sort of happened. Next stop. Colombia. Read More »

“With a new solo album in the stores and spinning on radio from coast to coast, Transcendence singer-guitarist Ed Hale will jet from Vancouver, British Columbia to his current hometown of New York City for a day, then on to Cartagena, Colombia in South America, then Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then of all places Lahore, Pakistan for three days before returning home for what one assumes will be some much needed sleep.”

Recording and promoting a new album in the music world of today is a cookie-cutter process that has become as predictable as it is difficult in an ever increasingly competitive music marketplace. With the advent of home-studio recording and internet distribution over the last ten years, talent is no longer a prerequisite for “releasing an album” to the public – whether it be a band of well-to-do 13 year old suburban pre-teens who dream of becoming the next Plain White T’s, or a group of pot-bellied off-duty cops who once dreamed of being the next big thing back when Led Zeppelin were topping the charts, anyone can record a collection of songs, call it an “album” and unleash it to the unsuspecting masses. This has made the music business one fiercely competitive industry to make a living in. The steps artists are supposed to take along the way are routine: record, release, promote, and tour. There was a time way back when this process worked. The only glitch is that now there are tens of thousands of would-be next big things of all ages doing the same thing every day of the week three-hundred and sixty-five days a year.

The statistics don’t lie: over ten-thousand bands applied to perform at last year’s biggest independent music festival, South by Southwest in Austin Texas. On any given week over five thousand new CDs are released into a flooded marketplace – all expecting radio airplay and big sales. The artists, no matter how big or small, are expected to follow the same routine regardless of how difficult or futile the actions or results are. Bands tour up and down and back and forth across the country in rented vans living on peanut and butter jelly sandwiches playing for two to ten drunken stragglers in nameless, faceless bars or clubs or any venue who will have them – knowing full well that they aren’t going to make a a dime from doing it. They don’t do it for the money though. They do it because according to legend, and some crusty higher-ups, that’s just the way that you do it. Most bands expect and accept that unless they break big with a song on the radio or in a big Hollywood Blockbuster or the new iPod commercial – all highly unlikely, though still possible – that touring after they release a new album will set them even further in the hole of debt they already incurred recording their initial album. But they do it anyway. Touring, no matter how lacking in fun, profit, or glamor is supposed to at least serve to lend credibility to an emerging artist’s reputation. Or so it is said.

Recording artist Ed Hale, best known as the singer-songwriter-guitarist for the rock band Transcendence, knows the process well. Having just released his eighth studio album, the majestic acoustic pop jewel entitled Ballad On Third Avenue (the album debuted at #14 on the CMJ Most Added Chart last week), he is accustomed to being asked to jump through the usual hoops of the contemporary circus that is today’s music business. “Record, release, radio and tour man… that’s the game. But we’re playing it a bit different this time out,” the singer said over a cup of espresso after a two hour interview on Canada’s Vancouver Persian Radio Show Saturday night. The self-proclaimed “Ambassador” has been giving a lot of interviews since the June 16th release of his new solo album. And his schedule over the next six months is more jam-packed than a rental van full of scruffy-haired indie rockers on their way to Cleveland. But the topics of conversation in said interviews are remarkably different and unexpected for a singer promoting a new album – as is his tour schedule. (The Vancouver interview was based on Hale’s involvment with a side project of his, the PeaceWithIran.com website, and was by all accounts an activist lover’s dream – with Hale ebulliently excited about his latest infatuation – Iran – and emphatically declaring that “people from all over the planet need to come together to support this mega-revolutionary people’s movement of our Iranian brothers and sisters at this historic moment” – hardly the usual banter of top 20 college radio pop-stars).  Over the next three weeks in fact Hale will jet from British Columbia to his hometown of New York City for a day, then on to Cartagena, Colombia in South America, then Sao Paulo, Brazil, and eventually of all places to Lahore, Pakistan for three days before returning home for what one assumes will be some much needed sleep. Read More »