“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 »
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