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.”

Ed Hale Photo by Flavia Molinari

Ed Hale and band just announced two new concert appearances, both in New York. The Transcendence singer/songwriter/guitarist just released his latest solo album, the critically acclaimed Ballad On Third Avenue – a melodic gem and lyrical milestone for Hale that sounds and feels like an homage to getting lost and losing in the streets of New York and still coming out winning. Tour dates so far have been few and far between; even though the album stayed in the college radio charts all summer and the first single, the anthemic “I Walk Alone”, has been tearing it up on commercial radio making Hale more and more a household name for the emo set. Dying Van Gogh Records assures that Hale will add more tour dates as the album gains more traction at radio. For now fans will have to settle for the few that crop up now and then. Two such happen to be in the Big Apple. Stay tuned for additional updates.

October 2nd, 2009 Friday Night – New York City, NY USA – Fall Fest – Christ Church – 6:30 PM. Corner of 60th st. and Park Avenue. Tickets $10 at the door. Two hours of bands. Ed Hale is one of the featured artists. Band will consist of Hale on vocals and acoustic guitar, Peter Capelle on piano, and a cellist. Will perform 4 songs from new album Ballad On Third Avenue.

November 7th, 2009 Saturday - New York City, NY USA – International Pop Overthrow Festival – 3:30 PM Sharp. Kenny’s Castaways 157 Bleecker St. New York 212 979-9762 $10 at door gets you in for all acts that day and night till midnight. FULL SIX-PIECE BAND CONCERT featuring acoustic guitar, piano, cello, bass, drums, mellotron, and vocals – performing songs from new album Ballad On Third Avenue.

Hale, at times, will sing in a near hushed whisper that is guttural, careful and crackling. He sounds like a gritty version of Bono. That’s not a slight, Hale’s warm singing style is a plus and helps sell songs such as the album’s title track and the gently driven `Scene in San Francisco.’

The album is not an immediate grab. The slow pace and humble delivery makes it stand out after the fact, after it ends. It’s the person in the room you notice later, the one you wished you’d noticed earlier. This quality makes Ballad on Third Avenue a surprise, a gift that keeps giving. It’s indifferent and coded and may take a few spins before it begins to tattoo itself on eardrums and heart strings. Ballad on Third Avenue is a work that seemingly aims to be just left of field – a warm blanket instead of a quick pick-me-up. It’s textured and sometimes harrowing sound is a winter’s morning, a love letter to the past and indeed rich in imagery. Take a sample lyric from `I Walk Alone’ – “And those lights by the bridge shine through the night of my eyes.” Hale is digging deep and revealing through music the travails and pleasures of living life.

Brian Tucker/Bootleg Magazine/Wilmington, NC

Ed Hale pauses between his endearing musings on the streets of New York

Ed Hale
Ballad on Third Avenue
(Dying Van Gogh Records)

Ed Hale’s outfit Transcendence was the kind of band that allowed ambition and extravagance to find equal footing. Progressive by design, its sumptuous arrangements often overshadowed Hale’s skills as a songwriter, which featured some great melodies at the core. Hale seems to have remedied that band’s often-obtuse approach with a solo album that focuses more on emotional content and less on instrumental elaboration. The cast of supporting players is terrific (several played in Transcendence), and Hale demonstrates an enviable gift for brooding, introspective melodies that are as quietly compelling as those of Leonard Cohen or Nick Cave. And yes, they’re that good.

The fact that Hale still boasts a penchant for grander schemes ought come as no surprise. His own Dying Van Gogh label has given a home to some of South Florida’s most talented artists, including multi-instrumentalist Fernando Perdomo, who also co-produced this disc. Hale himself has shifted his base of operations to New York, where he now finds both the aural and visual muse for his music. And despite the vast expanse of these urban environs, songs such as “Scene in San Francisco,” “Hello My Dove,” “It Feels Too Good,” and “New Orleans Dreams” provide an intimate view of life, love and longing from a solitary point of view.

Other tracks, like “Thoughts of California and “Never Let Me Go Again,” seem to drift along in a dreamy haze. Only “I Walk Alone” conjures up the sweep and spectacle of Transcendence, but even so, Hale shuttles the song while lowering his gaze. Still, with all due respect to his former outfit, Ballad on Third Avenue is easily the best record of Hale’s still-evolving career. Intimate yet endearing, these songs of the street offer an eloquence all their own.

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Enter a slew of opinions from fellow musicians, fans, management, and radio promoters and normally you end up with ten songs that are bound to be “that hit song.” But in a rare occurence, time and time again, “I Walk Alone,” the second track on the album, proved to come out on top as the most obvious choice. Thanks to the good folks at FMQB, the Syndicate, the Howard Rosen Agency, and Jeff Appleton’s Marathon Music Radio Promotions, “I Walk Alone” is now currently spinning on approximately one-hundred and twenty commercial radio stations across the United States, all of which fall under the Triple A format, also known as “Adult Album Alternative.” This is a genre that is new to the singer, completely untouched and uncharted by the band — who have comfortably rotated numerous songs in the College Radio or Alt Rock radio formats for years since their formation in 2000. But there is no getting around that Ballad is a departure both lyrically and sonically, leaning much closer to a ’singer-songwriter’ sound reminiscent of Belle and Sebastian, David Gray or even Simon and Garfunkel, rather than the Brit Pop or Modern Rock style Hale and his bandmates usually produce. 

So far the change in direction worked. As many in the Dying Van Gogh Records camp would attest, it has exceeded their wildest dreams of how well the album might fare. Debuting in the CMJ Top 20 Most Added Chart at #14, it continues to climb the Top 200 week after week — ironically the most spun song from the album at College Radio as reported by MediaBase just also happens to be “I Walk Alone.” Hale credits the success of the song to many factors, downplaying his own role in it altogether — although he cannot deny the fact that he did just happen to write the song and sing it. “For one thing, I can’t even really take credit for this song and what those lyrics mean to people… I mean, I know what people are saying about it, and I feel the same way about those lyrics, but this is a song I wrote based on a poem by a good friend of mine Tyler Bejoian,” he says. [Bejoian for the record was fourteen years old when he wrote the lyrics to "I Walk Alone;" along with four other songs on Hale's new album] Hale also credits Perdomo’s production, the stellar cast of some of Miami’s best musicians who played on the album – many of them stars in their own right, and “the excellent job Zach Ziskin did at trimming off all the fat from our original rather long-winded five minute magnum opus. He turned that baby into an exciting no-frills power pop radio-ready slice of ear candy no doubt about it… and coming in at less than three and a half minutes! The song wouldn’t even be on the radio now if Zach didn’t have those ears and that talent for knowing what to keep and what to throw away,” Hale bemuses.

As “I Walk Alone” continues to soldier on gaining more and more airplay and momentum, Hale and crew are now working on the music video for the song, and crossing their fingers that the song attracts enough attention from new music fans in the Triple A format who may not be familiar with the band that the song indeed becomes the “smash hit” that Hale’s musical partner and confidant for eight years Perdomo predicted from the start of the project. In the meantime, Hale’s record label Dying Van Gogh has released the radio edit version of the song for sale as a single on iTunes and the amazon.com MP3 store.

Find the Radio Station in YOUR TOWN That is Currently Playing “I Walk Alone” Using the Chart Below

United States

[edit] Terrestrial radio

• http://www2.selu.edu/kslu/listen.php Louisiana’s Adult Alternative
• KBAC 98.1 Las Vegas/Santa Fe, New Mexico “Radio Free Santa Fe”
• KBCO 97.3 Boulder/Denver, Colorado
• KBHR 93.3 Big Bear City, California
• http://www.indie1031.com/
• KBXR 102.3 Columbia, Missouri
• KCLC 89.1 St. Louis, Missouri “The Wood” (Non Commercial, Lindenwood University)
• KCMP 89.3 Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, “The Current” (noncommercial, service of Minnesota Public Radio)
• KCSC-HD-2 90.1 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “Ed 90.1″ (noncommercial, service of University of Central Oklahoma)
• KDBB 104.3 Bonne Terre, Missouri
• KDBN 93.3 Haltom City/Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas “FM 93-3 Quality Rock”
• KDEC-FM 100.5 Decorah, Iowa “FM 100.5″
• KZPS-HD-2 92.5 Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas “The Summit”
• KDTR 103.3 Florence, Montana
• KEEP 103.1 Bandera, Texas
• KENZ 101.9 THE END Salt Lake City, Utah “Everything Alternative”
• KEOL 91.7 La Grande, Oregon
• KFAN 107.9 Johnson City, Texas
• KFFG 97.7 Los Altos, California (Simulcast of KFOG in San Francisco)
• KFJM 90.7 Grand Forks, North Dakota (noncommercial, service of North Dakota Public Radio)
• KFOG 104.5 San Francisco, San Jose, Los Altos, California
• KGSR 107.1 Austin, Texas
• KHUM 104.7 Humboldt County, California
• KINK 101.9 Portland, Oregon
• KKRM 96.7 Montevideo, Minnesota “KRAM 96.7″
• KLRR 101.7 Bend, Oregon, “Clear 101.7″
• KMTN 96.9 Jackson Hole, Wyoming, “Your Mountain of Music”
• KMTT 103.7 Seattle, Washington, “The Mountain”
• KNBA 90.3 Anchorage, Alaska, “Alaska’s Native Voice”
• KNTI 99.5 Lakeport, California “The Tee”
• KOHO-FM 101.1 Leavenworth, Washington
• KOZT 95.3 and 95.9 Fort Bragg, California, “The Coast”
• KPIG 107.5 Monterey/Salinas/Santa Cruz, California and simulcast on:
  • San Francisco Bay Area, California (KPIG AM 1510)
  • San Luis Obispo, California (KPYG 94.9)
  • Chico, California (KZAP 96.7)
• KPND 95.3 Sandpoint, Idaho
• KPRI 102.1 San Diego, California
• KPTL 106.3 Des Moines, Iowa “Capital 106.3″
• KQMT 99.5 Denver, Colorado, “The Mountain”
• KRKY-FM 102.1 Estes Park, Fort Collins, Colorado, “Radio Without Rules”
• KROK 95.7 South Fort Polk, Louisiana, “World Class Radio”
• KRSH 95.9 Santa Rosa, California, “The Krush”
• KRVB 94.9 Boise, Idaho, “94.9 The River”
• KRVM-FM 91.9 Eugene, Oregon, “Keeping Real Variety in Music”
• KSLU 90.9 Hammond, Louisiana
• KSPN-FM 103.1, 100.1, 97.3, 98.3, 107.5 Aspen, Colorado, “The Valley’s Quality Rock”
• KSRQ 90.1 Thief River Falls, Minnesota, “Pioneer 90.1″
• KSWD 100.3 Los Angeles, California, “100.3 The Sound”
• KTAO 101.9 Taos, New Mexico
• KTBG 90.9 Warrensburg, Missouri, “The Bridge”
• KTCZ 97.1 Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota, “Cities 97″
• KTHX 100.1 Reno, Nevada, “The X”
• KVTT 91.7, Dallas, Texas (non-commercial; pending FCC approval of purchase by KERA-TV/FM)
• KDAL 95.7 Duluth, Minnesota, “The Bridge”
• KUMD 103.3 Duluth, Minnesota non-commercial “Duluth Independent Public Radio”
• KWMT 92.9 Tucson, Arizona, “The Mountain”
• KWRP 101.5 Pecos/Santa Fe, New Mexico “Indie 101.5 – The Clear Alternative”
• KWYS 102.9 Eastern ID Western WY Southern MT “Mountain 102Nine”
• KXLY 99.9 Spokane, Washington/Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, “The River”
• KYEN 103.9 Severance, Colorado, 100% Commercial-free
• KZEL 96.1 Eugene, Oregon “Oregon’s Quality Rock”
• KZGL 103.7 Flagstaff, Arizona “Eagle 103.7, Flagstaff’s Radio Station”
• WAPS 91.3 Akron, Ohio “The Summit”
• WBSD-FM 89.1 Burlington, Wisconsin, “Great Rock, Real Variety, 89 BSD”
• WBJB 90.5 Lincroft, New Jersey “Brookdale Public Radio, 90.5 The Night”
• WCBE 90.5 Columbus, Ohio “NPR Columbus Board of Education”
• WCOO 105.5 Charleston, South Carolina “The Bridge”
• WDMT 102.3 Pittston, Pennsylvania, “102.3 The Mountain”
• WDST 100.1 Poughkeepsie, New York “Radio Woodstock”
• WEHM 92.9 Southampton, New York “Progressive Radio for Long Island”
• WERU 89.9 East Orland, Maine “A Voice of Many Voices”
• WESU 88.1 Middletown,Connecticut “Where Free Form Radio Lives”
• WEXT 97.7 Albany, New York “EXIT 97.7″
• WFIV [1] 105.3 Farragut, Tennessee Independent Radio
• WFPK 91.9 Louisville, Kentucky
• WFUV 90.7 New York City (noncommercial)
• WGFR 92.7 Glens Falls, New York, “The Revolution” (noncommercial)
• WHFC 91.1 Bel Air, Maryland, “The Crossroads,” (noncommercial)
• WLKK 107.7 Buffalo, New York, “The Lake”
• WLKR-FM 95.3 Norwalk, Ohio, “95-3 WLKR”
• WMMM 105.5 Madison, Wisconsin “Triple M”
• WMVY 92.7 Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts “mvyradio”
• WNCS, WDOT, WRJT 93.3, 95.7, 100.3, 103.1, 104.7, and 107.7 Burlington, Montpelier, St. Johnsbury, White River Junction, Vermont “Vermont’s Independent Radio Network, The Point”
• WNCW 88.7 Spindale, North Carolina
• WNKU [2] 89.7 Highland Heights, Kentucky – Cincinnati, OH, 94.5 Port Union – West Chester, OH “Your Natural Alternative”
• WNNX 100.5 Atlanta, Georgia “Rock 100.5″
• WNRN 91.9 Charlottesville / 88.1 Shenandoah Valley / 103.1 Richmond / 95.1 Harrisonburg / 95.9 Lexington, Virginia (noncommercial)
• WNTI 91.9 Hackettstown, New Jersey “Where Great Music Lives”
• WOCM 98.1 Ocean City, Maryland “Ocean 98″
• WOXL-HD2 98.1 96.5HD Asheville, North Carolina “The River”
• WQKL 107.1 Ann Arbor, Michigan, “Ann Arbor’s 107one”
• WPUP 103.7 Athens, Georgia “Bulldog 103-7″
• WPVM 103.5 Asheville, North Carolina “the Progressive Voice of the Mountains”
• WRLT 100.1 Nashville, Tennessee “WRLT Lightning 100″
• WRNR-FM 103.1 Annapolis, Maryland “WRNR”
• WRNX 100.9 Amherst, Massachusetts “WRNX“
• WRSI 93.9 and 101.5 Northampton, Massachusetts “WRSI the River”
• WRQQ 97.1 Nashville, Tennessee “Quality Rock”
• WRUR 88.5 Rochester, New York “Different Radio”
• WRXP 101.9 New York, New York “101.9 RXP – The New York Rock Experience”
• WTIP 90.7 Grand Marais, Minnesota “A Member of Independent Public Radio”
• WTMD 89.7 Baltimore, Maryland “WTMD” (noncommercial)
• WTTS 92.3 Bloomington-Indianapolis, Indiana“World Class Rock for a World Class City”
• WTYD 92.3 Williamsburg, Virginia “92.3 The Tide”
• WUIN 106.7 Wilmington, North Carolina… The Penguin “We’ve Got The Music Down Cold”
• WUKY 91.3 Lexington, Kentucky
• WVJW-LP 94.1 Wheeling, West Virginia, “The Voice of Dissent” (noncommercial)
• WVOD 99.1 Outer Banks, North Carolina, “99.1 The Sound”
• WWMM 100.5 Birmingham, Alabama, “live100.5 – Birmingham’s Modern Music”
• WXPK 107.1 White Plains, New York, “The Peak”
• WXPN 88.5 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (noncommercial)
• WXRT 93.1 Chicago, Illinois, “93-XRT, Chicago’s Finest Rock”
• WXRV 92.5 Boston, Massachusetts, “The River”
• WXRY-LP 99.3 Columbia, South Carolina, “The Independent Alternative”
• WYCE 88.1 Grand Rapids, Michigan (noncommercial)
• WYEP-FM 91.3 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (noncommercial)
• WYMS 88.9 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, “88Nine Radio Milwaukee” (noncommercial)
• WZEW 92.1 Fairhope/Mobile, Alabama
• WZGC 92.9 Atlanta, Georgia, “Dave FM”

[edit] Internet radio

• The Lobo! World Class Progressive Rock Gleneagle, CO
• Tel Aviv Alternative Rock: Alternative rock
• WORJ.com Internet radio USA
• SlothRadio Internet radio Salt Lake City, UT
• Omemo Radio Tel Aviv, Israel
• Radio Paradise Paradise, CA
• Radio Pig (99.3 The PIG) Memphis, TN
• errorFM Indie Pop Music Los Angeles, CA
• Radio Oasis USA
• Pulse Radio Idaho, USA
• 103.5 Progressive Voice of the Mountains Asheville, NC
• AOL Radio and Pandora have Adult Alternative stations.
• KOHO 101.1 Wenatchee, WA
• Legato Cafe Cleveland, OH.

[edit] Satellite radio

• The Spectrum (Sirius 18/XM 45)
• The Loft (Sirius 29/XM 50)
• The Coffee House (Sirius 30/XM 51)