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Neo-folk prophet
Dave Hall adds P ortlan d
to his list of Places
II:
^
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K a t y D avidson
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■ m m?m Mm
ave Hall looks like one worn-out dude.
On the cover of his new poetic folk-
| pop record, Places, he is draped over a
paisley couch with his mango-colored
shirt unbuttoned halfway. His face expresses a
combination of travel weariness and heat
exhaustion— he looks like he has been on a
non-air-conditioned train for three weeks and
just got beat up, mugged and abandoned in a
cheesy foreign hotel.
Well, maybe that’s not quite what he was
trying to capture. But you certainly get the
feeling Hall has been somewhere and figured
some things out.
And that’s what Places is all about.
The record, his second released by his part
ner’s Brooklyn-based Giuseppe Joe label, is a
deeply resonant machine of rootsy sounds. Obvi
ously enough, it’s about places— cities and towns
Hall has lived in, conjured up, thought about.
It’s about Saugerties, N.Y., and the plight of
its trapped-feeling residents. It’s about Hall’s
recurring dreams regarding Jerusalem. It’s about
his fictional hometown of Dullsville and the
mayor, Hall’s brother. It’s about the small town
where two men, Biff and Tony, got married to
each other.
In a phone interview, Hall tells me he’s
always interested in telling a story, making a
point through the use of metaphors. He says he
doesn’t have a lot of formal training as a writer
but became interested in metaphorical lan
guage while studying Shakespeare.
“Lyrics are really important to me,” he says.
"My stuff is largely about words.”
Though Hall is clearly more into the lyrics
than the chord changes, the record is still a
well-oiled musical production. This could have
something to do with his degree in composi
tion from the Manhattan School of Music.
There, Hall learned classical guitar and how to
write music in his head.
His insight is evident on Places. The various
percussive instruments on “Seven,” the open
ing track, give it a deeply urgent, tribal, spiritu
al kind of feel. “Saugerties” is an ambient musi
cal journey supported by an intense chorus of
backup singers. “Jerusalem” is highlighted by a
set of trippy electric guitar meanderings. “The
Mayor of Dullsville” sounds like “Weird A l”
Yankovic ripping off the Buzzcocks.
Perhaps the track that most embodies the
idea of place, both musically and lyrically, is “Ya
Gotta G o Easy.” This is a journal o f a song— it
captures Hall’s view of the nation through the
windshield of a Toyota. The guitar part chugs
along for nearly eight minutes, though the
whole feel of the song is sweeping and nostal
gic. A t the end, Hall surmises: “No, I didn’t go
easy / No, I didn’t go slow / T he voice inside
me sang / I heard it grow.”
Hall says the song took him two years to
write. Whereas many others come together
instantly, “it took me a while to figure out what
I was trying to get across,” he adds.
Hall was faced with a similar challenge when
he wrote a coming-out tune about his partner,
“His Name Is Joe.” He says it was a tough deci
sion to perform it live, but he eventually did,
knowing he would be artistically linked to the
gay and lesbian community from then on. “It
would have been censorship and internalized
homophobia if I didn’t play it,” he says.
In many ways, coming out has paid off for
Hall— he was nominated for Best Male Artist
at this year’s Gay and Lesbian American Music
Awards. Though he didn’t win, he says, “I was
kind of psyched to be nominated, because
there was a lot of good competition.”
Riding the wave of this new exposure, Hall
slowly and surely has been gaining the ears of
America while sticking with a do-it-yourself
spirit. His attitude and acute attention to lyrics
have critics calling him a male version of Ani
Diffanco.
One critic called him a prophet. Hall says
the comment was ironic because he developed
a fascination with prophets while growing up
in a Catholic family. “I always thought the
prophets were interesting, railing about things
wrong with society,” he says.
A couple of decades later, Hall has found
himself in a position where he’s allowed to do
that very same thing: He’s a good ole Ameri
can folk singer. W ith an edge.
■ D ave H all will play 8 p.m . Aug. 8 at Port-
land’s Tugboat Brewing Com pany, 711 S.W .
Ankeny St.