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

Shelton Ivany
National News Bureau

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.

“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

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

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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Music critic Lee Zimmerman wrote,

“Scene in San Francisco” though just might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, or in this case breaks the singer to a larger more mainstream audience. The song is melodic and catchy, so pure pop and straight ahead that it is hard at first to fathom that it comes from the same Ed Hale. It also manages to end before the four-minute mark, a milestone for an artist who has in the past filled his albums with songs up to eleven minutes in length and five different languages. “Scene in San Francisco” will hit terrestrial and satellite radio in the second week of January. But listeners can hear it now online on internet radio stations such as Pandora, Jango, Grooveshark, ReverbNation, LastFM, and iLike. They can also stream the song directly from MySpace and Facebook using iLike.

“Scene in San Francisco” is one of only a handful of songs that Hale did not co-write with writing partner Tyler Bejoian on the Ballad On Third Avenue album, claiming the song is based on a true story. Hale comments “Tyler and I were very clear on what we were trying to do with the Beautiful Losers album [the album's original title before it was changed last minute due to the book of the same name by Leonard Cohen]. Essentially we were just catharting. I don’t know if that’s really a word… but it should be. We were venting about but also celebrating that feeling of how it is when you feel like the world is caving in around you and nothing is going your way… you know, it’s easy to start to lose hope and feel like a loser. But if in the end you can still feel beautiful, if you can still find a way to love yourself… there’s survival in that. There’s hope. “Scene in San Francisco” was a song that I had written while I was working on the Transcendent Television project in this hotel in San Francisco. The song fit the motif and theme of the album Tyler and I were working on perfectly. Boy meets girl. They fall in love. She leaves him. You know, he wakes up one day and realizes that he has lost the girl. That’s the nature of this album in a nutshell, with different people. Your parents, your friends, society and the government. We’re basically on our own. But this song is true. I mean, I changed some things here and there. But it sums up an experience I had at a hotel with a girl that I fell madly in love with who ultimately left me for someone else. Her husband actually.” (laughs) “Coulda been worse I suppose. But it was important to get it out, get it in song form. That always helps. But yeah, the song is real. It’s a true story. There’s a part two though, but I guess we’ll have to wait for the next album to come out to hear about it.”