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…

AbsolutePunk.net Interviews Ed Hale and The Transcendence Frontman Ed Hale   

03.27.12 Interviewed by: Linda Ferreira

3. What bands are you influenced by?
I think each guy in the band has a different set of influences. So I can only speak for myself. But one thing I will say is that almost all of us are pretty much into anything. We’re IN the music business, you know. So there’s no real style or genre that we don’t come into contact with. I mean, right now, while we’re doing all this promotion for my latest single “Scene in San Francisco” which has jumped into the Billboard Top 30, our keyboard player Jon Rose is out on tour with Julia Iglesias in South America. Crazy. But you know, that’s the biz. All our work right now is centered around promotion, meet and greets, record signings, interviews, photo shoots, so the guys in the band have time to do other things. And this is a great gig for Jon. No way he could take it, sincerely do a great job, or even get the job, unless he was into a wide variety of styles of music. Dig?

Me, I’m into anything and everything. I really NEED music. For my health and sanity. To make me feel good. Like it’s part of my soul or something. I did this photo shoot yesterday that was very elaborate. A lot of makeup and styling and people on deck. And in order to get into it, we had to have music going in the background. They asked me what I wanted to put on. They were using Pandora, which is an incredible tool. One of the coolest things to come out of this new age. And we’re in this photography studio filled with people of all different ages and backgrounds and at one point someone put on contemporary rap. But I just wasn’t feeling it. It totally ruined the vibe of the shoot for me. Plastic, put on, contrived, commercial for the sake of being commercial, all posing and bragging and nothing substantial underneath. This is what it felt like at least. In the room.

But I had to be “on”, right, totally ON… for the camera. So I went for the pure shit, the stuff that created me and who I am. Lou Reed, David Bowie, T Rex, Donovan, Hendrix, The Beatles, Zeppelin, Lennon, Wings, The Stones, Bob Dylan. Even the Dandy Warhols or The Pixies, The Replacements, Radiohead, U2, Muse. At its heart, this is where my music is coming from at i’s core. Plus a few thousand others I suppose.

4. If you could tour with any bands, past or present, who would they be and why?
The Rolling Stones in the 70s. For obvious reasons. Never has been and never will be another “world’s greatest rock band” quite like the Stones in the 70s. Way before all the bullshit started in the music business. Crafting songs like pottery to fit a specific genre using computers. Narrow-casting to please niche-niche markets based on polls and statistics. This kind of thing has ruined music as we know it today. We’ve got people like Adele or Katy Perry at the top of the charts who use three to ten people to help write a freaking song. And another five to produce it. That’s become the norm now. Everyone pandering to everyone else in an attempt to please a very small imaginary group of music listeners who are scrambling away from regular radio in hordes for that exact reason. They’re out there looking for something REAL and SINCERE and AUTHENTIC and the radio and record exec guys just don’t see it. Albums like DARK SIDE OF THE MOON were made with a small band of four guys and a producer and a few engineers. And that’s it. Real artists who could write great songs, looks be damned. Yeah, I’d love to tour with Pink Floyd if they ever got back together with Roger. For sure. I’d do anything with Paul (McCartney) just because he is still alive and, like many, I feel like I owe him a great deal for who I am today.

5. Best food to eat on tour?
I live on Sprite, coffee and protein shakes man. Among other things. I may not be the best role model for that kind of question.

To read the full interview Click Here

Barron Collier High School grad number 25 on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart

By ANNE CLAIRE SHILTON
Posted March 19, 2012 at 10:34 a.m.

If you had the Naples Daily News delivered to your home in the 1980s, it’s entirely possible that your morning paper was flung by the hands of a future rock star.

Number 25 on last week’s Adult Contemporary Billboard chart was a song called “Scene in San Francisco,” written and performed by none other than former Naples Daily News paperboy, Ed Hale.

Seeing her son’s song on a Billboard chart is a moment that has been a long time coming for Adele Hale. The former Naples resident has known her child was meant for rock-stardom since he was a baby, drumming in diapers on the pots and pans.

“He was born to be a musician, he was composing mini concertos on our baby grand piano when he was 13 or 14,” reveals Adele Hale.

But what your mother thinks of your work and what the systematically brutal music industry thinks of your work are two different things.

A musician for the past 20-plus years, the success of Ed Hale’s new song puts him in the company of Lady Antebellum, Train and Adele. And for the Barron Collier High School graduate, it’s about time.

Read the rest of the feature online: http://www.naplesnews.com/news/2012/mar/19/long-time-strumming/

Transcendent singer/songwriter Ed Hale will be interviewed live on air by PJ Grimes on the Backstage Gourmet radio show broadcast over the internet radio network HealthyLife.net, 4pm EST. Fans can tune in and listen live by clicking the stream on HealthyLife.net or check out the archive of the show after broadcast here: http://www.healthylife.net/RadioShow/archiveBSG.htm. Tune in to hear The Ambassador discuss his favorite vegetarian recipes, in addition this his music, activism and other healthy passions.

Healthy Life features eclectic talk programs with a positive twist. Their mission is to help eliminate fear, advance positive thought and encourage the concept that we are all one here for the greater good of all.

1. What are you currently up to?

a.       Currently up to our necks is what we’re up to! Total madness. But a very cool kind. Semi-controlled madness. Just a lot of incredible things happening right now all at the same time. It’s a thrill and a rush for sure. But it also requires extreme focus and attention, which isn’t usually the stuff of artists if you know what I mean… More than anything else I’d say we’re all very excited about the upcoming release of the new Transcendence album All Your Heroes Become Villains. It’s hitting retail and digital stores all over the world as we speak and people are loving it. The concept of the album is resonating with people at this time. One critic called it “The perfect soundtrack to a beautiful apocalypse.” That pretty much sums it up I’d say. So that’s a good thing. Right now t’s making a big splash on College Radio here in the States.

b.       Oddly enough, at the same time we’ve got this other thing happening with my last solo album Ballad On Third Avenue which was totally unexpected. The second single “New Orleans Dreams” has been climbing up the Adult Contemporary charts here in the US and spinning in 21 other countries. Including the UK of course. Right now the song is currently #10 in the US. Because of this, there’s a whole new interest in this solo album. We didn’t see this coming. So we’re literally working PR and promo on two totally different albums at once by the same artist. AND trying to book two separate tours to support these two very different albums. It’s insane.

c.        We’re doing a ton of press, which is always fun, and at the same time we’re working on the music videos for the “Villains” album. Of course we are also planning the US tour, deciding which cities to hit and which other countries to books some shows in. That’s a daunting task. But obviously well worth it once we’re on that stage. We love performing live. It’s THE rush of all rushes. If that doesn’t sound like enough, we’re also in the studio and just about halfway through recording two new “Ed Hale solo albums”. We’re still attempting to get our minds around what these new albums ARE… what their all about… We recorded about 20 songs so far and we’ve found that about a third of them sound like Adult Contemporary, a third of them sound like a more mellow singer/songwriter vibe, and another third sound more like they belong on a Transcendence album. They’re more alt-rock. It’s weird how we work like that. It confuses some people… but not us. We’re used to it.

d.       And of course there’s the mysterious The Great Mistake album that we still haven’t officially released, but it’s been sneaking around the internet for a few years. We just found the master tapes and gave them a listen and they sound incredible. Just over the top raw garage rock but catchy as hell. So now we are all involved in this heated debate as to “when should we release this new-new album?” It obviously doesn’t make sense for us to release it now. And yet it sounds so damn good we want to! Take French band Phoenix and mix it with some Strokes and Vampire Weekend… add some early seventies Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground or Wolf Mother and you get a pretty good idea of what the sound of this new new album sounds like. It’s done. Just needs to be mastered. I can’t wait for everyone to hear it. I just love it.

After catching up with Ed Hale last week in the first part of my interview with the singer/songwriter/guitarist/keyboard player for the former Miami based band Transcendence, today we delve further into the group’s current status and the making of their latest album, All Your Heroes Become Villains.

I encountered an interesting parallel story during a recent weekend in New York. During lunch with musician pals Richard X Heyman and Edward Rogers, an obscure British musician named Jimmy Campbell came up. Campbell wrote a few mildly successful hits in the mid ’60s during the full flush of the British Invasion. Few Americans know of Campbell, but Hale sure does. His label, Dying Van Gogh, has a multi-artist tribute planned and Rogers is contributing a track to the effort! Anyhow, here’s the rest of my little chat with Mr. Hale.

Read the full interview here.

Radio Industry Journal Friday Morning Quarterback interviewed Ed Hale last week in their Get to Know feature. Read the interview below or click here to go to the source.

Get To Know… Ed Hale

Town and state you grew up in:  Well, that’s a tough one. We moved and lived in sixteen different cities before I was 11 years old. A single mother in her early twenties raising two boys isn’t the easiest thing to do, but we eventually settled down in a small town in southern Florida called Naples. Everyone knows Naples Florida. But talk about surreal, growing up in a retirement beach resort type town… Small-town America. The ocean to the west, swamp and forest to the East and South, and one tiny resort town after another to the North for hundreds of miles. “Landlocked” is what it felt like if you were a young wild and rebellious teenager who thought he was the second coming of David Bowie. (laughs) So I was outta there by the time I hit sixteen. Though looking back now… it wasn’t such a bad way to grow up. We were safe and secure, with a real sense of community, and shielded from a lot of the more harsher realities that other kids are confronted with who grow up in large cities. Frankly, I’ve got a treasure chest full of fond memories now of growing up in Naples, FL. But of course like many kids who grow up in small towns, all I wanted to do was get out of there and make something of my life bigger than that.

Town and state you live in now: Umm hum… Another tricky one. But I’ll give it a go. The simple answer is we live in Seattle and New York. We’ve got a beautiful old house in a small woodsy town just outside of Seattle where you can see the stars at night and hear everything from hummingbirds fly to crickets chirping to the relaxing sound of water flowing through a babbling brook that runs through our backyard. It’s a very peaceful escape from the madness of New York City, which is where I actually spend most of my time. Upper West Side to be exact. New York has been home to me for a very long time and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. There’s just nothing like flying in and seeing that first glimpse of city lights down there once through the clouds. If we were Gladiators, New York would be our Rome. It’s where it’s at for sure.

An interview with Ed Hale will appear in the December issue of the United Kingdom’s premier acoustic guitar print magazine, Acoustic Magazine, talking all things acoustic guitar and acoustic music. Look for the full interview when the December issue hits stands in mid-November. In the meantime, here’s a tiny sneak peak below. Enjoy.

What’s the secret of good playing?
Well that’s an easy one. PRACTICE! (laughs) You’re either on your way to becoming a great player or not. And I don’t think that path ever ends. But if you are on your way to that, and you really want it, then you have got to do nothing but practice your instrument. Night and day. Day and night. When you’re watching TV, you’re quietly practicing your guitar. When you’re making love you’re still practicing your guitar in your head! (laughs) I sleep with my guitar beside me. If I wake up in the middle of the night I like to reach over and feel it there. I collect old vintage acoustic guitars. They’re one of my favorite things in this world. So I’ve got a few. That way you can keep a guitar in every room of your house. So there’s just no excuse not to be practicing all the time.

New York, NY, July 06, 2011 — Ed Hale is known for being a musician and singer/songwriter, however there is more to his music than meets the ears. On his last solo studio recording Ballad on Third Avenue, a rousing collection of alternative pop-rock acoustic tracks, he sings about love and all the emotions that are forthcoming.

Yet there is much more on the album that needs your attention, particularly the track “New Orleans Dreams”. The track is a rather poignant take on the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the ineptness of our government to help the suffering people of the area when it was needed most. This is a story that continues today several years later as people are still reeling from the disaster of the hurricane and many other natural disasters that would follow in that area including the disastrous BP oil spill.

CONTINUE READING