Singer, songwriter, rockstar, recording artist, author, activist, populist blogger, controversial YouTube star and general raconteur Ed Hale is a hard man to keep up with. Affectionately called “The Ambassador” by friends and fans the world over, Hale was originally introduced to the world at the tender age of 17 as Eddie Darling when his debut album EDDIE was released. He may be best known now as the lead singer and guitarist of the popular Brit-pop/Modern Rock group ED HALE AND THE TRANSCENDENCE; or for his latest hit single “New Orleans Dreams” from his current solo album Ballad On Third Avenue. Hale records and releases albums and tours both solo and with the band Transcendence. His albums are available at music stores and retailers nationwide such as Virgin Mega, FYE, Best Buy, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Walmart, and as digital downloads at the iTunes Music Store, and two-hundred other online music outlets such as Amazon.com, Rhapsody, eMusic, LastFM, iLIke, or CDbaby.com. He is currently signed to the Dying Van Gogh record label, as is the group Transcendence, who’s newest album All Your Heroes Become Villains hits stores on November 15th.

“Still finding myself obsessed with a quiet secret subtle and almost constant gnawing at my insides about the unbearable sadness of how impermanent everything is. Our lifetimes are short here. I remind myself that it is up to me to find meaning while I am here. I try to live my life to its fullest and even then I cannot shake the deep underlying knowing that they are all just moments lived and then soon forgotten. Where is the meaning in that?”

-Ed Hale, from his blog The Transcendence Diaries

Hale takes a break during recording sessions for the new Transcendence album All Your Heroes Become Villains in 2009.
Photo by Gina Rowland.

Watch a portion of the one hour Public Television documentary about Ed Hale and the band Transcendence by Journey of Dreams directed by Diane Doyle.

Ed Hale Artist Bio – Last updated September 28th, 2011

If nothing else, Ed Hale is a busy man. He’s been called a renaissance man, a genius, a blind idealist, and a fool depending on who you ask. He is best known as the internationally recognized singer, songwriter and recording artist from the eclectic Brit-pop/indie rock band Transcendence. He has released eight studio albums over the last ten years, either with the band Transcendence or solo. His newest solo album Ballad on Third Avenue (Dying Van Gogh Records) is a lighter sounding eleven song acoustic-leaning singer/songwriter venture heavy on mood, emotion and lyrics that Hale describes as “whisper-pop.” The sound of the album is reminiscent of Bright Eyes, Kings of Convenience, Rubber Soul era Beatles, Belle and Sebastian, and Simon and Garfunkel, and was a bold step in a new direction for Hale who is more well known in the college radio or alt-rock world. The Ballad On Third Avenue album has become the most successful of the singer’s career. Upon its release it debuted at #14 on the CMJ Most Added Chart and stayed on the CMJ Top 200 all summer long. It was named “one of the Best Albums of 2009″ by New Times Magazine, and is now enjoying a resurgence of popularity by the success of Hale’s latest hit single, the delicate acoustic ballad entitled “New Orleans Dreams” which broke into the Top 40 in the Adult Contemporary radio format. This is the first hit song Ed Hale has had in the softer leaning Adult Contemporary radio format.

Over the last two years Hale has been touring the United States and Canada to packed venues and rave reviews in order to promote the new album with a five piece band including two cellists. The new “lush and hushed sound and seated” approach the singer chose for this tour has created an excited and near hypnotic effect on audiences from New York to Vancouver BC. Hale has also been making the rounds in the media as well, doing numerous radio and television interviews in each city he and his band perform in. On top of it he still finds time to make guest appearances at numerous human rights rallies and demonstrations and to travel to remote areas of the world to do volunteer work.

Over the last twenty years Ed Hale has been written about, reviewed and interviewed in webzines, podcasts, blogs, newspapers and magazines all over the world and has toured throughout the United States, Europe, and South America. A darling with music critics for nearly a decade for their unique, passionate, and selfishly eccentric sound and style, Transcendence the band – which is more of a “collective” than a singular rock band strictly speaking – is a highly prolific outfit, though the band was forced into exile due to the massive changes in the music business which led to  The band is releasing two new albums in 2010: The long awaited and much touted All Your Heroes Become Villains, and the mysterious collection of rumored one-offs entitled The Great Mistake, on the Dying Van Gogh record label. The two new albums could not sound more different than each other and yet both still oddly sound like Transcendence. If that weren’t enough, the band is also adding the finishing touches to the new 24 song two-disc solo album of Hale’s entitled L’ntrigue de Femme/Finding Francesca for release in late 2010.

Transcendence are consistently played on over six-hundred college, community, and commercial rock radio stations around the United States and Canada and have released four albums in the last six years: Their world-music meets modern rock debut Rise and Shine, which gave them their first taste of commercial success with the song Better Luck Next Time; their second album Sleep With You which was a major commercial breakthrough for the band yielding three hit singles – Superhero Girl, Vicodin, and Minnie Driver – and climbing to the #24 position on the Modern Rock Charts in the US; their third album Nothing Is Cohesive – which many claim as their best – was honored as “one of the most important albums of the year” in 2005 by HellFire and featured three popular hit singles – Somebody Killed the DJ, the fan favorite Caetano, and the breathtakingly beautiful All This is Beginning To Feel Like An Ending. (Trivia note for music junkies: Caetano is indeed a song that Hale wrote as an homage to his musical idol, Brazilian superstar singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso). In 2008 the band released the twelve-song rarities collection The City of Lost Children (named after the French film of the same name). This album featured two never before released but already well-known songs, the MTV favorite Whenever I’m With You – made famous on the Nick and Jessica Simpson show, and the September 11th tribute song Rebuild America. Songs by Transcendence can be heard on a variety of television shows on VH1, MTV, NBC, FOX, ABC, and CBS and in numerous films. They are also well known for their electrifying live performances which bring the whole group back together again more like a family reunion both for the band and fans alike.

Hale has become increasingly well-known for his frank and sometimes outlandish brand of social and political activism — at times showing up at anti-war rallies either sporting his trademark FUCK WAR t-shirt or dressed up like a United States Army General who walks around carrying a United States flag with the words “World We’re Sorry” painted on it. In the last two years Civilian Diplomat was added as his newest title. In 2008 Hale attended a 15 day Peace Delegation to the country of Iran where he and 11 other Americans, including Rolling Stone contributing editor Robert Dreyfuss and writer Larry Beinhart — best known for his book-turned-movie Wag the Dog – were hand-picked to fly around the country to meet with leading government officials including former President Mohammad Khatami and leading religious clerics and Ayatollahs to discuss ways to improve US/Iranian relations and increase peace between the two countries. The film department at Siena College is currently creating a one hour documentary about Hale’s trip, which he took extensive footage of while there. A few months later Hale appeared at the 2008 United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York City to attend a private conference with Iran president Moumad Ahmadinejad and leading figures of the US peace movement. Hale is also scheduled to participate in a similar two week peace delegation to Israel/Palestine in the Fall of 2010 with the IFPB organization, as well as tour the country of Pakistan to film a TV documentary focusing on two American-owned schools for girls being run there.

Actively involved in volunteer work when time affords, six months before Hale was in Iran he was in a remote village in the center of Ghana on the West Coast of Africa building houses for the native people there made of not much more than mud and clay with Habitat for Humanity. Hale filmed the entire trip and created a documentary about the experience called Going to Ghana, which can be viewed on YouTube, but soon will be able to rent or buy due to a recent deal with Warner Home Video to release his Transcendent Television series. He also makes similar bi-annual trips to the city of Cartagena in Colombia, South America for the same mission, home and community building.

Besides music and activism, Hale’s other passion of course is writing. Known for the unyielding frankness and personal nature of his online journals, he has posted daily entries to his online blog, the Transcendence Diaries, under the name “Fishy” for seven years running now, which boasts a loyal readership of 15,000 fans and features more than two thousand pages uploaded since its inception in early 2002. Hale also just began a new guest columnist spot on the Sundance Film Channel’s Website regarding how “green” peace on earth really is. He is also the author of the award-winning screenplay for the road-movie The Tribe Moves to London; and just completed two new books: a memoir-styled pop-culture exploration of contemporary sociology entitled We Are the Revolution: Life in the Age of Personal Expression, and The Casanova Diaries, whose title probably speaks too much already about its subject matter. Both books are currently being shopped for a literary agent or publishing.

Domestically Hale made two trips to the post-Katrina Gulf Coast helping to rebuild homes in 2006, and locally he works with the New York Mission Society volunteering with underprivileged children from the Bronx and Harlem. He also volunteers with local a Homeless Shelter, a Food Bank, Covenant House, Big Brothers & Sisters, and is a certified Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer.

Two of Hale’s newest charity projects include the non-profit website www.TuneInTurnOnHelp.org which funnels attention, awareness, and monies to some of his favorite notable causes and charities; and www.PeaceWithIran.com, a website that attempts to show a different side to the people and culture of Iran by acting as a vehicle for enlightened journalists and alternative press coverage of Iran, and exposing more Westerners to Iranian culture – similar to what he did with the country of Brazil during the Rise and Shine years when he recorded several songs in Portuguese and toured there during the late nineties and early two-thousands.

Hale is a member of NARAS (The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences), the performing rights organization ASCAP, the International Avatar Network, Amnesty International, International Rescue Coalition, the ACLU, United For Peace and Justice, the ANSWER Coalition, Environmental Defense Fund, Smartmeme, Greenpeace, MoveOn.org, Save the Children, Easter Seals, Christ Church United Methodist, and the Christian Children’s Fund.

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FAST FACTS AND TRIVIA

Ed Hale is currently the singer, songwriter, and guitarist in the rock group Transcendence along with other members Fernando Perdomo (Dreaming in Stereo), guitar, Roger Houdaille (Ex Norwegian), bass, Allan Gabay, keyboards, founding member Ricardo Mazzi, drums, and drummer Bill Sommer. Transcendence has released four albums and has two new CDs being released in 2010, All Your Heroes Become Villains, and The Great Mistake. Ed Hale has released four solo albums. His newest solo album, Ballad on Third Avenue, is due out on Dying Van Gogh Records on June 18th, 2009. A new double disc, entitled L’intrigue de Femme/Finding Francesca will hopefully be completed in time to be released in late 2010.

Half of the songs on Hale’s new album Ballad On Third Avenue, which is said to be the most personal and intimate collection of songs he has ever recorded, were co-written with newcomer Tyler Bejoian, notable because Bejoian is sixteen years old. The two started collaborating before Bejoian had reached twelve years of age; their first publicly released song the controversial anti-war protest song White House Jihad which can be seen on YouTube. Hale evidently met the young Bejoian because they lived in the same apartment building in Manhattan, took him under his wing as an older brother and the two would often get together to talk music, art, politics, film, and literature. Now Hale often turns to Bejoian for lyrics and collaborates with him on a regular basis.

Music came naturally to Hale at an early age, and perhaps for good reason his family says in many archived interviews, stating that it must be in his blood. He is the great-nephew of the famous producer, arranger, and musical conductor Antonio Morelli, conductor and orchestra leader for the Sands Hotel’s infamous Copa Room during the “Rat Pack” years of the fifties and sixties for twenty-five years. Morelli appears on more than three-hundred recorded albums by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Tony Bennett, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin as either producer, arranger, band leader, or musical conductor. His former home is now a registered Historical Landmark in the State of Nevada, the Antonio Morelli House.

Music may have come naturally to Hale who started playing piano at age four inspired by seeing the film Sound of Music for the first time, but one newspaper article claims that Hale got his start in music when his mother spoke with a psychic who suggested that her troubled son was very creative and recommended that she buy him a guitar in order to give him a creative outlet and keep him out of trouble. The rest as they say is history.

Other articles recall the same story and corroborate the “troubled youth” history reporting that Hale was expelled from school for the first time in the first grade (a rare feat if there ever was one), and continued to be expelled throughout his school career having to attend three different high schools in the same town in order to graduate – including a stint at a military school.

Hale’s first real band post the EDDIE album period, Broken Spectacles – formed with childhood friend (now popular Americana singer) (Matthew Sabatella – got their name from the cover of the Yoko Ono album Season of Glass, which featured a photo of the shattered and blood-stained glasses of slain Beatle’s singer John Lennon.

Though Broken Spectacles never became the household name that they seemed destined to be, they did achieve a national buzz in the college radio circuit and especially in the music industry itself. The band’s debut album was engineered and produced by famed producer Brendan O’Brien (Black Crowes, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, Bruce Springsteen). A failed attempt by legendary drummer Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello, Hall and Oates) to produce the band’s second album produced mixed results and was never completed, though Hale has stated it was one of the most important experiences in his musical career. “I think we learned more about making music, about making good music, about what good music is, in those few months working with Jerry Marotta than in all the years before or since. His knowledge of music and how to make it actually sound good and unique and different was just way beyond what we were capable of at that time as players. But his influence has been huge on me and how I look at music. He was the first guy I ever met and worked with in person who really lives in that other world where real artists live. Just totally transcendent beyond all the talk and bullshit of most people in the business,” Hale said about working with the famous drummer.

Ed Hale released his first album, Eddie, at the age of 17 on the Alarming Talent record label out of Atlanta Georgia. He was discovered while still in school by music critic-historian and talent agent Murray Silver who wrote the book Great Balls of Fire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story. Silver produced Hale’s first album entitled EDDIE. Hale’s first professional live concert performance was opening for the band REM at the Fox Theatre for 5000 people. It was after this period as a solo artist that Hale formed the group Broken Spectacles, wanting to be more than just a “pop singer,” but rather be in a real rock band.

After the breakup of Broken Spectacles, Hale toured the east coast as a solo artist doing pick up gigs at coffee houses eventually landing in New York City. While there he recorded 12 demos for SONY Records which were never released. Ten of those demos were eventually remixed and digitally remastered and released on the Acoustic In New York album in 2000. Several of the songs from that disc have since been reworked and recorded on future albums by Hale’s group Transcendence, notably Paris and Bored.

The original band name for Ed Hale’s current group TRANSCENDENCE was Ed Hale and The Troubadours of Transcendence. The group originally had eleven members and was meant to be what Hale was then calling “planet music” – the style that can be heard on the band’s debut Rise and Shine. Hale and drummer Ricardo Mazzi are the only two original members still in the band today. The name was shortened to Ed Hale and Transcendence for the band’s debut album Rise and Shine released in 2002, and eventually shortened to simply Transcendence by the band’s second album Sleep With You.

The nickname ˜the Ambassador” was given to Hale by long-time friend and video gaming maven Michael Nichols due to Hale’s love of travel and to the fact that he speaks six or seven languages. Hale also sings in a variety of languages on his albums — which adds a multi-cultural approach to creating his art that helped first garner his new band Transcendence public attention. Hale attests that it also helps him in his travels as a volunteer, activist, and Civilian Diplomat.

Outspoken social and political activism may also be something that came to Hale naturally. He is the nephew of Eleanor Cutri Smeal (Born 1939) who is considered one of the leading feminists in the United States of the 20th century. She was the only woman to serve as president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) two separate times, once from 1977 to 1982 and again from 1985 to 1987. She was also president of the Feminist Majority Foundation and continued to organize, publicize and promote feminist issues well into the 1990s. A feminist activist, political analyst, lobbyist, and grassroots organizer, Smeal has appeared frequently on television and radio and testified before Congress on women’s issues over the last fifty years, and has organized numerous events around the world and given speeches on the concepts of feminism, equality, and human rights as they pertain to people in and outside of the United States.

Unbeknown to most fans of his music, alongside his music career and activism, Ed Hale is also a fiercely ambitious entrepreneur and businessman who at times comes across as passionate about business and innovation as he does art. Over the years he has founded numerous multimillion dollar companies in his spare time including The Garden of Eden health food stores, which he sold to the GNC Corporation in his mid-twenties, and the international vitamin manufacturing company Ageless Foundation Laboratories which he sold to publicly-traded Naturade Inc in 2005. Obsessed with anti-aging science he developed the UltraMax-HGH line of products which can be found in health food stores all over America today and fourteen other countries. He also has his hands in real estate investment in The Hale Daniel Corporation, founded and presides over the multi-media company Transcendent Media Group – which acts as a record company that is home to artists of various musical styles from rock to Americana to hip hop, a web design firm, and a television production company which co-produces the reality show which he stars in called Transcendent Television. He also owns a clothing line which features 36 different t-shirt designs.

Hale refers to his various forays into business as “a hobby and fun way to express his creativity.” His newest business venture is a company called Optum Consulting, a New York based business consulting firm with team-consultants in different cities all over the world that specializes in corporate and product branding, advertising and marketing, and integrating Web2.0 technologies. The firm helps start-ups and entrepreneurs to Fortune 500 companies optimize their businesses, helps them run smoother and more efficiently, bring new products to market, and in the end make more money.

Hale has had his own YouTube channel called TranscendentTV since 2006 where he often videoblogs or posts new songs before they are professionally recorded and released.

Ed Hale is half English and half Italian. He is a descendant of the 17th century Italian Engineer and Mathematician Niccolo Tartaglia – who developed the solution for algebraic cubic equations and is best known for his books on applied mathematics Della Nova Scientia and General Trattato di Numeri et Misure.

Ed Hale is married. He and his wife have two homes and splits their time between New York City and Seattle.

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