VIDEO OF ED HALE AND BAND PERFORMING ON CANADIAN TV SURFACES

This little nugget just surfaced. A Canadian television show called After Hours recorded and aired an episode featuring interviews and live concert footage of singer-songwriter Ed Hale and band while on tour in late 2010. The band had been on the road for five weeks and was ending their tour in Vancouver BC. The editing is a bit sketchy but it does feature two nearly full versions of the songs “Incompatible” and “Marsha’s Sleeping” being performed live, along with various other interview footage. You can see Ed and the band trying not to laugh a few times. But it’s all in good fun.

ED HALE INTERVIEWED IN LIQUID HIP – PART 1

Liquid Hip Magazine interviewed Ed Hale in it’s April 25th edition in a piece entitled Ed Hale On Your Heroes And Villains.
“These bands that get in the studio for two years and are forced to record 50 to 70 songs in order to come out with 10 tracks and the record companies are still not happy … they’re looking for ‘hit singles’ rather than a great fucking album. Well, we haven’t been working that way. — Ed Hale And The Transcendence
Nothing Ed Hale does is by the numbers. Even his band, Ed Hale And The Transcendence, isn’t structured like others. It includes five core members, five guest members on every record, and another five musicians who sit in with the band for live productions. That doesn’t count Karen Feldner, who has provided vocals for the band since their first album, Rise And Shine.
Yet, despite its sheer size and scope, the band has managed to maintain a distinct sound, even if it is one that can be hard to pin down. Their fourth studio album, All Your Heroes Become Villains, has been described as everything from a concept album of Brit-pop and world music to seventies glam rock and progressive alternative, but it is really something else all together. Continue reading…
“It wasn’t supposed to be a concept album, but we were trying to make sure the songs were connected in some way because critics had said our albums ‘weren’t cohesive enough.’ We didn’t know that was one of the rules to making albums,” Hale laughs. “It was only later, with a lot of it coming from DJ Kamran Green, that we started hearing how the songs could be tied together. This guy smoked more pot than anyone I had ever seen in my life. He’s got this medical marijuana card, right? So he smokes out 24-7!”
It was also Green, Hale says, who would stay up after everyone else had called it a night between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. When the band would return in the late morning, Green would still be working — creating brilliant little snippets of music that would be incorporated in all the songs, tying them together, and giving it a “rock opera” like quality.
All Your Heroes Become Villains is a collection of personal insights.
One of the most powerful songs on the album, “Blind Eye”, carries a potent message. Hale has always been regarded as an outspoken social and political activist, but this song throws its hands up in the face of everything, moving from protests that feed the system and toward passive apathy, just to survive.
“Sometimes I want to feel that way. I did when I wrote it. I mean, regarding how evil all the governments of the world are, yes, I feel that way,” Hale said. “You and I know that I can’t get into that here, in a public domain. But that’s what the song is really about … the fact that we are forced to turn a blind eye to all of it.”
Instead, Hale points to a host of entertainers that mostly stay away from politics and take matters into their own hands. People like Bono for his work in Africa, Sting and his wife Trudy saving rainforests in Brazil, and Matt Damon attacking water shortages, he said. Instead of trying to change legislation, he points out, they go out and get it done.
“Blind Eye” isn’t the only politically charged song on the album. “We Are Columbine” is equally poignant, laying the ownership of what Hale considers injustices on the societies that make them possible. Musically, it’s one of the best rockers on the album. Lyrically, it is among several songs Hale says he didn’t write as much as they wrote themselves.
“It’s a hard song to stomach if you don’t agree with the position it takes,” says Hale. “It didn’t take anything to write, but I had to ask myself if I had the courage to write it. To say those things.”
To read the complete article head to Liquid Hip online by clicking here.

CONNECT WITH ED HALE ON PINTEREST

The multi-cultural musical ambassador has been using the new social app Pinterest to engage a few steps deeper with his fans. Pinterest allows users to “Pin” anything visual they see on the internet onto “Boards” they custom design and then share these boards with their friends. Hale said of the internet’s newest craze “We get hit with these things every day. It’s insane to think we’re going to keep up, because now there’s some new website or app we’re supposed to join everyday or else we’ll evaporate into thin air by midnight. But actually I quite like Pinterest. It’s intellectually stimulating. Can be at least. You can learn a lot from spying on others!” To follow Ed Hale on Pinterest click here.

TRANSCENDENCE GUITARIST FERNANDO PERDOMO TALKS ABOUT RECORDING ALL YOUR HEROES BECOME VILLAINS

The fifth album by Ed Hale and the TranscendenceLongtime Ed Hale and The Transcendence guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Fernando Perdomo talks about the recording process of the band’s latest album, All Your Heroes Become Villains, available at music stores everywhere, amazon.com or the iTunes music store.
“The All Your Heroes Become Villains album was recorded in a very interesting time of my life… a thrilling two week love affair I had with a talented singer had just ended and I was down in the dumps. I had an awful haircut ordered by a Latin artist I was touring with and I was totally ready to make an amazing record with Transcendence.  (We ended up making two but that’s another story!)’ [Editor’s note: Perdomo is referring to the band’s often leaked and lauded but as of yet unreleased The Great Mistake album.]
“Upon arriving to the studio, I knew instantly this was gonna be an interesting project. Ed now lived in New York City but he had flown down to stay indefinitely to finish the album with the band. He was so amped up. Everyone was. He had this artist, Gina Rowland, who he had met online, there working on her art for the album cover in the studio with us while the songs were being recorded. She sat quietly and listened to get influenced and inspired by the music. We fell in love instantly…

“Recording my guitars was hard on the record because Ed had strict rules for what he wanted … No Santana, No Blues, No Allman Brothers, No Clapton, No Springsteen… He had all these annoying signs hanging up on the walls. He was constantly making signs with big magic markers and hanging them all over the studio walls. “There’s no such thing as over produced” and “There’s no such thing as not enough production”. Contradictions everywhere. All the time. The process was confusing. He was searching for something…. He was being very fluid. Also, the songs had some heavy metal influences and electronica elements to it that did not make sense to me at the time… but again he was searching for something else, something we hadn’t done before.
“Halfway through the making of the record I went off to LA to join the band PRICE. That’s when Zach Ziskin took over…  He had already tracked guitar on the album. He’s like the fifth Beatle of Transcendence. My LA and PRICE days ended with my mom getting diagnosed with Cancer. I came back and added my guitars to the album. We panned Zach’s guitar part towards the left, mine towards the right, and Ed’s rhythm guitars dead center. The crazier I played the more it fit the album! That’s Transcendence.
“Years later… I almost cried listening to the finished record in my car… The album is a masterpiece… and a real testament to Ed Hale’s writing and vision and the whole band’s genius… and EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE. And so is life… you never know what will make sense in the end…”

ED HALE’S “SCENE IN SAN FRANCISCO” CONTINUES TO RISE UP BILLBOARD CHARTS WITH A BULLET

Photo of Ed Hale by Derek P. Miller Transcendence frontman Ed Hale’s latest single, “Scene in San Francisco” from his solo album Ballad On Third Avenue, continues its rise up the charts this week in the Adult Contemporary (AC) radio format, with over 1000 spins per week and several new stations adding the song to heavy rotation, including WDKB out of Dekalb, IL and KHMX in Santa Rosa, CA. The song has also been getting heavy airplay on Sirius XM channel The Blend, Clear Channel’s iHeart Radio, The TM Studios Weekly Hit Disc, and the National AC Premium Choice Channel.
The song is still holding strong at #26 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Top 40 Chart and #15 on the FMQB AC Chart among stiff competition — including Adele, Jason Mraz, Katy Perry and Coldplay — in one of the fiercest months in years in the format, one that many radio promoters are calling “a blood bath”. Hale’s “San Francisco” remains the #1 Most Active New AC Independent Song and Artist on the charts for the 12th consecutive week (as measured by BDS/R&R and Mediabase). Word is the official music video will be released on Monday April 9th, 2012.