Ed Hale

All Music Guide:

Singer/songwriter Ed Hale learned to play the guitar at an early age, writing protest songs as a teenager. Inspired by R.E.M. and the Kinks, he started the group Broken Spectacles with his high school friends. They had a short-lived but fruitful career in the late 80's/early 90's, eventually splitting up amicably in 1994. By 1996, Hale had enough solo material to release a live disc, Acoustic in New York. Although the minimalist set didn't get much recognition, it did drive him towards putting together another band. He founded another one in South Florida, a U2-esque backing band that offered electronica flourishes and a more political outlook. Naming themselves Ed Hale and Transcendence, the group released their debut, Rise and Shine, in 2002.

Wikipedia:

Ed Hale is a writer, singer-songwriter, musician, populist blogger, activist, and controversial YouTube star currently best known for his last two hit singles, "New Orleans Dreams" and "Scene In San Francisco", both of which landed in the Top 40 Charts in the Adult Contemporary radio format. Hale was formerly known as Eddie Darling throughout the early 1990's, and is the lead singer of the popular American Britpop and modern rock musical group Ed Hale and The Transcendence, formerly called Transcendence. He also performs, records and releases solo albums. He is currently signed to the Dying Van Gogh record label. Hale is often referred to as "The Ambassador" by fans and the press, a nickname given him by friend and video-gaming industry maven Michael Nichols due to Hale's love of travel, exploring other cultures, and his penchant for singing and speaking in multiple languages. Along with his native English, Hale speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French and Persian.

Personal life

Hale is a second generation American who is half English and half Italian. He was born in Paris, France while his father was serving in the military. Hale started playing piano on his own at age four, allegedly inspired by seeing the film Sound of Music for the first time. Music would come naturally to Hale, as he comes from a long line of world-class musicians including his great uncle, the famous Sands Hotel bandleader, producer and arranger Antonio Morelli. However, it has been reported that Hale got his start in music after his mother spoke with renowned psychic Micki Dahne who recommended that she buy her creative yet troubled son a guitar in order to "keep him out of trouble, out of jail, and alive long enough to see his eighteenth birthday".

Music career

Hale released his first album, Eddie, at the age of 17 on the Alarming Talent record label under the moniker Eddie Darling. He was discovered while still in high school by author and talent agent Murray Silver who penned the book Great Balls of Fire – The Jerry Lee Lewis Story and produced the Eddie album. Hale's first professional live concert performance was opening for the band R.E.M. at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia in front of 5,000 people. It was after this fertile period as a nationally recognized solo recording artist that Hale formed the band Broken Spectacles.

Broken Spectacles – formed with childhood friend Matthew Sabatella, got their name from the cover of the Yoko Ono album Season of Glass, which featured a photo of the shattered and blood-stained glasses of slain Beatle's singer John Lennon. The band's debut album was engineered and produced by famed audio engineer and producer Brendan O'Brien . A failed attempt by legendary Peter Gabriel drummer Jerry Marotta to produce the band's second album produced mixed results and was never completed, though Hale has stated that working with Marotta was one of the most important and influential experiences in his musical career.

After the breakup of Broken Spectacles, Hale toured the East Coast as a solo artist and ended up moving to New York City. While there he recorded 12 demos for Sony Records which were never officially released by the record label. Ten of those demos were eventually remixed and digitally remastered and released on the Acoustic In New York album in 2000. It was also at this time that Hale discovered World Music, especially the MPB and Tropicalismo music of Brazil and went to live in Brazil to study the language of Portuguese and learn how to play Bossa Nova, doing several live performances and appearing on Brazilian television. A video of this television appearance is available on YouTube.

The original name for Ed Hale's second group was Ed Hale and The Troubadours of Transcendence. The name was shortened to Ed Hale and Transcendence for the band's debut album Rise and Shine released in 2002, and eventually shortened to simply Transcendence by the band's second album Sleep With You. The group originally had eleven members and was meant to be performing and recording what Hale was then calling "Planet Music."

Ed Hale and Transcendence first caught national attention by combining World Music themes with an eccentric modern rock that they called "planet music." Hale's consciousness raising lyrics and the fact that he sang in no less than five languages on the band's debut album Rise and Shine – sometimes within the same song – also added to the group's unique appeal. The song Better Luck Next Time from that album is still played often on college and rock radio in the United States and Europe. Their second album, Sleep With You, became the group's biggest seller and shot up to #24 on the Billboard Rock Specialty Show Charts and yielded two minor hits for the band – Superhero Girl and Girls The band is consistently played on college and commercial rock radio stations around the United States and the UK, were invited to tour Europe in 2003, and have released five albums in the last ten years: including Rise and Shine, Sleep With You, and the album Nothing Is Cohesive (2004). In 2008 they released the b-sides and rarities album The City of Lost Children. In 2011 they released an epic rock opera album entitled All Your Heroes Become Villains, again to critical acclaim.. The band has also made it known that they recorded another album during the same sessions for the All Your Heroes... album, a garage rocker entitled The Great Mistake, which was originally held up by ever increasing problems in the music industry, specifically with the group's distribution company. Songs from this album can be heard on various music sharing sites on the internet such as MySpace. Dying Van Gogh Records recently announced that the long awaited new album will be officially released in 2012 under the artist name Ed Hale and the Transcendence. Songs by Transcendence meanwhile are often heard on a variety of television shows on VH1 and MTV and in many films.

In July 2010 Hale released his newest solo album Ballad On Third Avenue receiving both critical acclaim and the greatest commercial success of his musical career thus far. The album debuted on college radio's CMJ Most Added Chart at #14 in its first week and peaked at #139 on the CMJ Top 200 Chart where it stayed for six months. The album also garnered Hale further radio success, this time in two new formats for the artist, Hot AC and Triple A, with the first single from the album I Walk Alone, the second single New Orleans Dreams which peaked at #10 on the Adult Contemporary Charts, and his latest, Scene in San Francisco, which is currently climbing up the Top 40. Hale toured both the East and West Coast of the United States in 2009 and 2010 performing at several International Pop Overthrow Festivals in various cities from Boston to Los Angeles to Vancouver in Canada. He is now said to be in the recording studio in New York recording his followup album, this time with Ex Norwegian front-man Roger Houdaille in the producer's seat. Dying Van Gogh Records also announced plans to release two deluxe boxed archive collections of older material from Hale's early days as a recording artist in the latter half of 2012. Spectacularly Broken is a two-disc set of nearly everything Hale recorded during his tenure with the band Broken Spectacles digitally remastered; and Goodbye Eddie Darling is the tentative title of a collection of home demo recordings that were recently discovered from the same period.

Activism

Outspoken social and political activism are also one of Hale's major occupations. Again perhaps an aspect that can be attributed to his lineage. Hale is the nephew of feminist activist, political analyst, lobbyist, and grassroots organizer Eleanor Smeal, who served as a two-term president of the National Organization for Women in the 1980s. In 2003 Hale set up an alternative media headquarters in Miami to house leading activists and demonstrators from all over the country to protest and give voice to opposition to the Free Trade of the Americas FTAA meetings that were being held in the city.

Perhaps most controversially, in 2008 Hale embarked on a Peace Delegation to the country of Iran with The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) where he and 11 other Americans, including Rolling Stone contributing editor Robert Dreyfuss and the author Larry Beinhart met with leading government officials including former President Mohammad Khatami and leading religious clerics to discuss ways to improve US/Iranian relations and increase peace between the two countries. The film department at Siena College in New York is currently creating a one-hour documentary about Hale and his trip to Iran.

A few months later, Hale appeared at the 2008 United Nations General Assembly Meeting in New York City to attend a private conference with Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other leading figures of the US peace movement. Hale is also scheduled to participate in a similar two week peace delegation trip to Israel/Palestine in 2009 with the Interfaith Peace-Builders organization.

Two of his newest projects include the non-profit website www.TuneInTurnOnHelp.org which funnels attention and monies to various causes and charities, and www.PeaceWithIran.com, a website that attempts to act as a vehicle for journalists and alternative press coverage of Iran, and to expose more Westerners to the Iranian culture. Hale made two volunteer trips to the post-Hurricane Katrina Gulf Coast helping to rebuild homes in 2006, and in 2009 he took two more volunteer trips to a remote village outside of the city Cartagena in the country of Colombia to help build a church and community center there. Hale also works locally with the New York City Mission Society volunteering with underprivileged children from the Bronx and Harlem and regularly volunteers with a local Food Bank, Covenant House, Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, and is a Red Cross Disaster Relief volunteer.

Business, professional, and entrepreneurial career

Alongside his twenty year music career and socio-political activism, Hale has also achieved success as an entrepreneur. He has founded several companies in various industries including a recording studio, The Garden of Eden health food store, and the vitamin manufacturing company Ageless Foundation Laboratories which was sold to the Naturade company in 2005. Obsessed with life extension and anti-aging sciences Hale developed a nutritional formula called UltraMax-HGH, eventually becoming UltraMax-Gold, and a full line of similar products which were the basis of the Ageless Foundation company.

Hale was frequently interviewed in Health Industry related magazines and journals about anti-aging and business during this time when active in that industry. He also hosted The Now Age Radio Show (WWNN) for two years which featured prominent guests in the field of health and longevity sciences such as Dr. Ray Sahelian and Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw. The products he developed brought the controversial nutrient HGH mass market exposure and today can be found in health food stores all over America and in many other countries. Hale is also known to be active in real estate investment; see The Hale Daniel Corporation, a Florida company. He founded and still presides over the multi-media company Transcendent Media Group Inc. – which acts as a record company that is home to artists of various musical styles from rock to Americana to hip hop, a web design firm, and a television production company. Hale also owns a clothing line which specializes in rock 'n' roll t-shirts. Hale refers to his various forays into business as a hobby and another outlet to express his creativity. He is also the founder of two non-profits, PeaceWithIran.com and TuneInTurnOnHelp.org.

Ed Hale currently lives in New York City, New York and Seattle, Washington. In 2010 he married Chemical Engineer Nahal Mishel-Ghashghai. He has no children.