Reviews (Places)

May 2000

Dave's got issues with people who have issues. Good thing he's such a skillful writer and moving performer because it gives him a healthy outlet. His vivid stories like "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding" and "The Mayor of Dullsville" really shine. However, there's one moment above all others guaranteed to bring you to tears, it's his cover of "Shenandoah."  

February/March 2000

MAKING TRACKS IN BROOKLYN

By Joe Fodor

If you were at Welcome Back to Brooklyn last year, you saw Dave Hall and his band, The Corridors, dazzle the crowd with the "Star Spangled Banner" before the official crowning of Tony Danza as King of Brooklyn. Later, Hall, 30, sang his ballad "Come to Brooklyn."  

Part of 1999's Places album, "Come to Brooklyn" paints Hall's adopted hometown as a garden spot "where the rent is low, and it looks so pretty under newly fallen snow." Places also contains a bona fide radio hit--the epic "Biff "n Tony's Wedding" about a same-sex marriage. If you're planning a similar ceremony, you'll definitely want this dance-able tune on your mix tape.  

January 2000

By Andrew Taber

A folk-pop artist with considerable lyrical clout, Dave Hall has become a downtown mainstay. His introspective lyrics are woven through well-crafted compositions, relating poignant tales of love, loss and small-town life. 

Hall's sophomore album, "Places", is an impressive showcase for his earthy voice, which roves between the folk grit of Bob Dylan and Hall's own soulful smoothness. 

November 20, 1999

By Joy Catania

If VH1 was folk oriented, Brooklynite Dave Hall would be a shoo-in for the Storytellers series.  

On his sophomore CD "Places," released in January, the singer-songwriter presents a patchwork of musical tales, sewn together with insightful and engaging lyrics.  

As the title suggests, the album is about the places he's been, left, dreamed of and returned to. Jerusalem. Saugerties, Brooklyn and the fictitious Dullsville are all on the map, as well as some others that exist on a purely emotional level.  

"Places" is the follow-up to Hall's 1997 debut "Playin' the Man," which first stamped him as an out-gay artist. This time around, "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding" is the album's political standout. "Leaving," one of the best tracks, is a more universal look at a rocky relationship. But the pick of the bunch is "You Gotta Go" a seven-minute-plus masterpiece that recounts the singer's on-the-road travels.  

Hall easily shifts from folk to folk-pop to folk-rock, sounding Dylanesque at times. With his outstanding vocal delivery and musical composition, this guy is going places.  

November 4, 1999

MASS APPEAL

by Stu Fox

My television was spitting out useless commercials last summer when a folk melody suddenly caught my attention. A smile came to my face as I realized that folk singer Dave Hall's song "Come To Brooklyn" was being used in a public service spot to promote the borough of Brooklyn.  

The number is one of many impressive songs from Places, the singer-songwriter's latest release. His creative writing and singing resonates throughout the album and really shines on two uptempo rockers that have humorous tongue in cheek lyrics, "The Mayor of Dullsville" and "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding." Hall's storytelling reaches a peak on the majestic "Ya Gotta Go Easy."  

"I work really hard on my lyrics, and try and get every word to get what I'm trying to say in the best possible way," says Hall. I think the people that are attracted to my music are people that get into lyrics and want to hear the stories unfold."  

He's written a lot of new material and is getting ready to record a new album. "One song that will definitely go on it is called 'Big White House' and is based on a fellow I met in Ithaca the first time I played in town," says Hall. "It's a tune about a townie in a college town and has been going over really well with audiences."  

Dave Hall is one of the most interesting voices on the regional folk circuit and is playing at the ABC Cafe this Saturday night.  

October 21, 1999

Dissolving The Heart's Hard Shell 

By Cat Ballou

There's a kind of irony in a commercial rock world where male megastars flirt with androgyny in their stage acts to titillate fans, while gay artists either choose to keep closeted for the sake of professional acceptance or confine their performances to audiences with a similar sexual orientation. 

Dave Hall, the folk-rocking bard who'll play West Strand Grill in Kingston Wednesday, October 27, transcends the either/or approach to the preference issue with an embrace. Picking acoustic guitar with a flowing, classical touch-the man did time in an East Coast music conservatory-and rolling on a beat that has a seductive, subliminal pulse, reflecting a Middle-Eastern heritage, the finest songs on Hall's CD, Places, bewitch and lure a listener beyond the literal of event and locale to transparent horizons of the soul, universal rather than unisex.  

Layer by layer, tripping along on Hall's cross-country quest in "You Gotta Go Easy" (imagine Kerouac joining Janis and Bobby McGee and bouncing from DC to Frisco to love's true home in New York City), absorbing the tender summons of "Brooklyn" (Hall makes this much-maligned borough seem mystically alluring as Bali) and imbibing the ecstasy of "Joy," the hardened shell of the heart dissolves, leaving it innocent and open to infinite, immaterial expectation.  

There are also those album cuts treating Hall's all-American mixed immigrant family background, touching on abuse, isolation and grief suffered by a sensitive boy who knew he was gay in his teens.  These are pitched in a (Bob) Dylanesque nasality-a satiric vocal sneer suited to subject.  As a psycho-socio revelation, it's depressing to observe that the abuse and racial ostracism Hall's olive-skinned family of mixed ethnic background endured when they "bought into" a neighborhood where "none of their kind lived before" is passed directly onto the "different" son, whose cheeks are pinched and hair is pulled as he's told, "You'll never be nothin', you'll never go nowhere...."  The whole three-generation saga is recounted in "Saugerties": "...that brought you to your knees, shame and pride of a nation, Saugerties." (We presume this song was written before the town achieved its current hip, P.C. state.)  

Love mixes with exasperation in the opening cut, "Seven."  Hall is joined in this song and a few others by a backup trio of singers-The Corridors, some guest guitar players, Dave Moreno, "classic" among them, and Sean Conly, Gregg Sulzer and Todd Isler, who give musical attitude on bass, traps and percussion.  The guys chant "nana, nana, nana," like a school-yard taunt, as Hall invokes his Italian Catholic grandmother who prays to St. Anthony to "keep her boy from the devil's tricks."  Nana receives the promised miraculous rose (bone up on your Catholic saints to understand this reference or listen close to Hall's lyrics) and so continues to pray for her errant grandson's return to "normalcy."  

"This Was My Childhood" is a fleeting idyll of innocence Hall sings in an eight-year-old's voice, recounting apple-pie wholesomeness, which perspective he upends as a man suffocating at a suburban house party for his perfect brother, "The Mayor of Dullsville."  It does not require gay sensibility to relate to the material.   Tom Wolfe said, "You Can't Go Home Again";  Hall tells us why we really, really don't want to.  It's straight politics and uptempo fun in "Biff and Tony's Wedding," a gay affair officiated by a minister who's just trying to keep up with his flock.  Hall's publicist says this song is receiving national air play.  

All the biographical material-in-song is so vivid, you start to feel like you're a member of Hall's family, for better or for worse.  The soaring starts beyond this stuff.  It's as if working through anger with irony takes Hall vocally and in spirit to higher ground, the place he was coming from all along, and what makes him an artist rather than a musical career opportunist engaged in catharsis.  The closed, nasal honk opens to a lyric transparency, the voice hangs iridescent, and the tenderness of its summons, mirrored in a flowing, acoustic pick, is what activates the dissolution of all grief in this world.  

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June 18, 1999

Going "Places" 

By Jeffrey L. Newman

Dave Hall is going places, and fast. At least it seems that way judging by his eponymous sophomore release Places, on his indie-owned record label, Giuseppe Joe. His maturity as a folk rock singer/songwriter, as well as an out gay man, is evident through the gorgeous array of deeply rooted guitar rifts and delicious folk/pop melodies. His strength lies in the potent execution of his storytelling, which is deeply rooted in his introspective exploration of relationships -- gay and straight -- and life's continually changing course. While he raises some eyebrows with a political jab or two -- such as on "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding," -- the album is surprisingly accessible to non-gay audiences who can appreciate stellar songwriting. 

Such rock gems as "Come To Brooklyn," "Seven," and "Saugerties," are proof of his keen ability to mix raw emotion with musical melancholy, overlaying guitar rifts and stirring drum 'n' bass beats. They also spotlight Hall's ability to turn a phrase, while remaining true to who he is as a gay man. It's clear these songs are deeply personal to him, and with each note, it's easy to hear the connection to the words from which he sings. Hall has also aligned himself with three brilliant back-up singers for his second set -- Marcus Hutcheson, Ennis Smith, Jeff Stults -- called the Corridors, whose harmonizing voices blend easily with Hall's sweet, infectious sound. 

April 29, 1999

ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT

by Stu Fox

One of the more promising folk artists to pop up in the northeast over the past couple of years is Dave Hall. The talented singer-songwriter is an eclectic addition to the scene, mixing everything from straight folk to soft rock into his music. 

He released his second album, Places, in January and although most of the tracks are folk-oriented, there are several songs which straddle the border between rock and folk. "I think of myself as kind of a folk singer, yet I like to rock as well," says Hall, "I do find myself sometimes between formats." 

What makes the music stand out is Hall's impressive lyrics and his distinctive vocal delivery, which makes his stories come to life. His talents shine brightest on the majestic "Ya Gotta Go Easy" which clocks in at just under eight minutes, holding your attention from beginning to end. 

The album has a couple of cool rockers like the humorous "The Mayor Of Dullsville." Another song which hits the mark is "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding." 

March 20, 1999

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

by Larry Flick

PLACES TO GO: Dave Hall has been gradually building a solid following on the DIY circuit, making inroads where few other out-gay artists are: in mainstream rock circles. In fact, as he promotes "Places," the second effort for his homemade Giuseppe Joe label, he is playing larger and more mixed crowds than ever before. 

"My music appeals to people who are enlightened and people who can find something universal in what I'm doing and saying," says the New York-rooted artist. 

"Places," with its blend of rugged roots rock and pop/folk, often succeeds in exploring the highs and lows of relationships without sexual boundaries. At the same time, however, Hall can't resist the temptation to press a few political buttons, as he does on "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding," which has begun to draw the interest of college radio programmers on the East Coast. 

Hall will spend the next couple of months on the road promoting the disc, and he's considering releasing "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding" as a single. 

February 8, 1999

TRIPLE AAA

Dave Hall is one of the best unsigned folk-poppers out there. His 1997 debut, Playin' The Man, was a strong reminder that a quality singer-songwriter can gain a national audience with or without a major push from record labels. For his sophomore release, Hall continues to give us personal spins on his life's journey, but this time, rocking with more gusto. Recommended tracks: "Come To Brooklyn," "Seven," "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding." 

January 29, 1999

PROGRESSIVE ADULT RADIO

Let's face it, any fool can throw some words that don't make sense together, play an E G A chord combo on a guitar with five strings and call her/himself a "musician" or "artist." Dave Hall is the exact opposite of the pretentious college dropout coffeehouse nightmare. His lyrics are incredibly insightful, set to exceedingly different music of the guitar, bass, drum combo on his new album PLACES (GiuseppeJoe!). Take some time and read over the lyrics in the CD booklet (remember when they were on album sleeves and easily discernable?). You'll find it an experienced bouquet of emotions and intelligence. Check out the songs: "Saugerites," "This Was My Childhood," "The Mayor Of Dullsville," "Biff 'N Tony's Wedding," and "Shenandoah."