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.
First instrument: Before I could walk I used to sit and try to strum my mom’s old nylon string classical guitar. So that turned me on to the possibilities of guitar at a very early age. But honestly piano was the first real instrument