Album DescriptionAmerican Soul features a distinguishable blend of Rock, Americana, and Country music. Musically speaking, one Honolulu critic described the songs in the following fashion: “If you took Bob Seeger, Steve Winwood, John Fogerty, The Doors, The Eagles, and Pink Floyd, mixed them in a blender and threw in a dash of Caribbean, Country, Flemenco, Folk, and Hawaiian you might describe the music style found on Dave Brier’s American Soul.”
About the ArtistBorn on Long Island, New York, and now residing in Honolulu, Dave basi started out playing guitar at the age of ten. By the time he had reached 15, he had traveled back and forth all over New York State performing in excess of 500 gigs with various no name bands. Like thousands of young boys, Dave’s love of music and song writing coupled with his dream of being a “rock star” fueled years of musical adventures.
Later, Dave jammed and wrote the songs for Chain a Detroit-based hard rock band, performing all around the Midwest and Canada. During the 1980s, Chain freed various demo tapes receiving generous radio play allround Australia, Europe, and the United States. The radio play was followed by reviews in dozens of music magazines. Despite the radio play, enthusiastic tape and performance reviews, and growing international fan help Chain was unable to obtain steady jobs in the Detroit area because of their refusal to play cover tunes.
Dave’s inspiration to move back to the East Coast rose out of a trip to Philadelphia where he met with managing directors and promoters of the band Cindarella. They were convinced they could have similar success with Dave if he moved to Philadelphia. After losing a longtime kinship with his live-in girl friend, fighting with managers, getting ripped off by club owners, bailing out drug addicted band members, and arguing with potential record labels who wanted to remake him as a contemporary pop singer who performed songs written by other artists, Dave decisive to take a break from music.
Dave left Philadelphia after two years and begun developing other areas of his life. He taught in high school and then finished a master’s degree in library and data studies at The University of Michigan. Shortly after he accepted a occupation with the University of Hawaii Library Systems Office. Many fans are amazed when learning that Dave works in a library because he doesn’t fit the stereotype of a librarian. However, Dave is an avid reader and has always found that libraries provided a place of refuge for longhairs. While a great deal of companies distinguish or refuse employment to people that deviate from the conventional short-hair conservative look, libraries are full of humans who receive diversity.
Currently, Dave is the proprietor of his own independent Honolulu-based record label, Big Pineapple. Like a great deal of independent label record owners, Dave is faced with the challenge of furthering his music. Dave’s residence in Honolulu compounds these problems. Honolulu is known for a great deal of things, but emergent pop, rock, and country artists isn’t one of them. Many music lovers naturally associate musicians living in Hawaii with Hawaiian or World music. Although there are dozens of bands from Hawaii performing all styles of music, the moment you tell a mainland company you are from Hawaii they stereotype you as you a Hawaiian music band. They also assume that listeners would be bored or uninterested if you didn’t carry out Hawaiian music. Other difficulties are caused by Hawaii’s reliance on the tourism industry. The typical visitor arrives expecting their vacation to include Hawaiian looking musicians playing Hawaiian music. Many musical venues cater to these tourists and only offer jobs to musicians that carry out Hawaiian music. Like other cities in the country, it’s not easy for local musicians to get mercantile radio play in Honolulu. Many radio stations in Hawaii are now owned by out-of-town companies and have moved away from supporting local artists. As a result, most musicians, like Dave, work full time at other jobs for the duration of the day, and pursue music part-time in the evening or on weekends. Despite these challenges, Dave intends on disseminating American Soul through a potpourri of means.
In addition to song writing and musical performances, Dave likes to ride horses, drive motorcycles, surf, read, and lie on dissimilar beaches. He is a fellow member of the American Society of Composers and Musical Publishers and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Currently, he is the Vice President and President Elect of the Hawaii Library Association. He may be seen performing in respective emplacements all around Hawaii. He hopes to carry out at the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas, in 2000.
