David Berkeley (born David Berkeley Friedland, September 22, 1976) is an American singer and songwriter.
He has released eight studio albums, one live album and has published two books, all of them self-produced under the Straw Man label, in a recording career that began in 2002.
Berkeley accompanies his singing on acoustic guitar, solo or with supporting instruments; his music has been described as acoustic, indie and Americana. He is also known for collaborating with trance music artists on remixes of his own songs and on original material.
After growing up in his native New Jersey and graduating from Harvard he has lived in several areas of the United States working as a tour guide, a travel writer and a teacher among other employments. After the starting of his career as a professional musician he moved first to Atlanta and then to Tralonca, a small village in Corsica. He now resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The places he lived in are a strong inspiration for his songwriting, as are the people in his family (his parents, his wife and his two children).
Biography David Berkeley was born David Berkeley Friedland in September, 1976. His parents gave him the middle name Berkeley—which he later picked as his stage name—after having been graduate students at the University of California-Berkeley in the early 1970s before they moved to New Jersey.
David started showing a passion for singing while still in nursery school, having attended a musical school. Because of this he had his first experience of singing on stage at the age of three or four. Also when he was four, the woman taking care of him was an Avon saleswoman; she would bring him with her while going door to door, and he would sing to her potential customers. In an interview he credits receiving cookies and applause for singing "that song about the Titanic sinking" (likely "The Titanic") as an early experience of positive feedback. His parents helped him nurture his passion for music by taking him to several Broadway shows, and was usually selected as the leading vocalist in high school musicals. Initially he played tuba, and did not start to play guitar until the age of 15 when he would perform songs by Neil Young, Crosby, Stills & Nash and Grateful Dead "mostly to get girls".
He graduated from Harvard with degrees in literature and philosophy. During his time there he used to busk in Harvard Square; in the same period he started writing songs "to win (his) girlfriend back".
David Berkeley lived in Alaska, where he contributed to the Let's Go Alaska travel guide; Idaho, where he was a river-rafting guide; Santa Fe, where he worked for Outside magazine; Santa Cruz; Brooklyn (New York City), teaching creative writing in a public school in an impoverished area; Atlanta and Tralonca, a small village in Corsica, while his wife worked on her PhD in anthropology.
While living in Santa Fe, David Berkeley managed a local band. This, in his own words, got him "excited about the music business". It was only after this band broke up that he decided to record his own music.
He decided to become a full-time musician while he was teaching in Brooklyn, as having a double career was taking its toll on his voice and his private life.
He presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with his wife Sarah and sons Jackson and Noah.
Recording career
The Confluence His debut came in 2002 with the mostly acoustic The Confluence, in which David Berkeley already displayed the characteristic traits that still identify his style: elaborated lyrics about personal topics, complex song construction, varying chord patterns.
After the Wrecking Ships In 2004, Berkeley released his second album, After the Wrecking Ships, in which he made use of more electric instruments but still without abandoning the genre that he defines "acoustic/indie/alt/folk/whatever-you-want-to-add-here". It sold over 10,000 copies.
This album includes "Fire Sign", written for an episode (Wannabe) of the second season of CBS-TV's Without a Trace and produced by Will Robertson. Although there are sources saying that the same song has also been used in the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode A Thousand Days on Earth, this appears not to be true.
Live from Fez In 2005, David Berkeley released Live from Fez, the testimony of a live event held on February 22 of the same year, one of the last concerts held at the popular Lower Manhattan club. Along with the CD is a DVD including four songs recorded in the same occasion. This live release displays not only David Berkeley's heartfelt musical style, but also his sense of humor in the intermissions between songs.
David Berkeley claims that this is the only live album ever released to be recorded at the now-closed New York club however, in 2004, Bree Sharp had released an album also recorded at the club, entitled Live at Fez.
Strange Light 2006 saw David Berkeley working at the Engine Studios in Chicago to record his third studio album, Strange Light, that would not be released until 2009. This delay allowed his fans and some reviewers to compare it – tongue-in-cheek – with Guns N' Roses's Chinese Democracy. When released, the album was enriched by the production of Brian Deck (Counting Crows, Modest Mouse, Iron and Wine, Josh Ritter). Its style has been judged affirming and intriguing even though downtrodden and melancholic.
Some Kind of Cure In late 2009, David Berkeley announced on his website and through his mailing list that he was working on a new album called Some Kind of Cure, mostly written while living in Corsica where, in his own words, he had the chance to listen to whatever surrounded him and take in the silence around.
As has been done more or less successfully in the past by other bands or artists (among which Marillion, Public Enemy and Jill Sobule), David Berkeley asked for his fans' contribution for the production of the record; the experiment was successful.
The album was released on January 25, 2011, and is accompanied by a book written by Berkeley himself and entitled 140 Goats & a Guitar, telling the stories behind the inspiration for each song in the album.
In this album Berkeley is accompanied among others by Peter Bradley Adams of Eastmountainsouth on piano, Kim Taylor of Over the Rhine on background vocals and by long-term collaborator Jordan Katz of Common Rotation on horns and banjo; it was produced by long-term collaborator Will Robertson, who had also produced the song "Fire Sign" included in After the Wrecking Ships and has also worked with Shawn Mullins, Clay Cook, Pat Sansone and Peter Ostroushko. Robertson also played bass and keyboards on the album.
Some Kind of Cure features much more electric guitar than Berkeley's previous works, alongside the church bells of Tralonca and a Corsican choir.
"George Square", the first single from the album, has been made available for download several weeks before the release of the record. Besides twelve original songs, Some Kind of Cure includes David Berkeley's version of "Shenandoah".
Fire in My Head David Berkeley released in 2013 Fire in My Head, recorded in only a few weeks with the help and the production of Jono Manson (who, besides releasing several album with his own band, worked with Blues Traveler and Donald Rubinstein among others and appeared at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebration) and accompanied once again by Jordan Katz and Bill Titus.
It has also been released, for the first time in Berkeley's discography, on vinyl.
Other recordings
David Berkeley also recorded a song ("Love's the Only Thing That Shuts Me Up") for Ciao My Shining Star, a tribute album to Mark Mulcahy (the former vocalist of Miracle Legion) that features contributions from Mark Mulcahy's favourite musicians. Besides David, other artists featured are Thom Yorke of Radiohead, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. The album was released on September 29, 2009, and David Berkeley's contribution has been widely appreciated. He also took part in the benefit live concert that followed that album, held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
During his stay in Corsica, David Berkeley took part to the recording of a cover version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" with local artists which has not been released yet.
"Fire Sign" from After the Wrecking Ships has been remixed by Steve Brian into an electronica trance track and released in September 2010 by Enhanced under the name of "Agulo feat. David Berkeley", which is reported to have been a dancefloor favourite of renowned DJs such as Tiësto and Sean Tyas. Further versions of the same track have been created by Will Holland, in a bigroom progressive style, and by Freigeist. The Steve Brian version was included in Enhanced's Best of 2010 iTunes compilation after listeners voted it as one of the best 25 releases of the year by that label.
David Berkeley gave his voice for a second progressive house track called "Vueltas" created by the same Steve Brian who had worked on the dance version of "Fire Sign" and is rumored to be collaborating with other dance artists in creating new music to which he'd add his vocals. In early 2014, he also contributed vocal parts to a song on the album "Field Studies" by Ben Cosgrove, a composer and multi-instrumentalist.
More recently in 2018 David Berkeley has had one of his songs "The Faded Red and Blue" remixed while teaming up with Steve Brianwhich. This song while deeply political relates to the "faded red and blue flag of the USA missing a star or two" and focuses on the immigration issues (political issues) which the USA faces at the current time.
Literary career
140 Goats and a Guitar David Berkeley published a book called 140 Goats & a GuitarDavid Berkeley (2011), 140 Goats & a Guitar, Straw Man, California, January 2011, no ISBN through his own Straw Man label. It was released in January 2011 as a companion book to his fourth studio album Some Kind of Cure and tells the inspiration behind each song in the album through short stories based on real-life events. Berkeley made clear that such tales are not to be considered synopses of the songs, but simple aids to better understand them.
Inspiration In an interview, David Berkeley mentioned as his influences Paul Simon for the lyrics, Nick Drake for the mood, and then Neil Young, The Band, Elliott Smith and Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. He also admitted to be inspired by hip hop artist Brother Ali and indie rockers The Hold Steady. He insists, however, that most of his inspiration derives from poetry (he is especially fond of Yeats and Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn is heavily quoted in "A Moon Song" from The Confluence), passages of prose, people (his parents and his wife and sons especially), the outdoors, art and most form of visual images. He admits to have at least once chosen the topic of a song because a friend pressured him into it.
David Berkeley has a penchant for using geography-related references as song titles. Among them "Leaving Idaho" from The Confluence; "Jefferson", "Times Square", "Chicago" and "Bushwick" from After the Wrecking Ships; "Willis Avenue Bridge", "Sweet Auburn" and "Milwaukee Road" from Strange Light, "George Square" from Some Kind of Cure.
Live career In 2003, David Berkeley showcased at the popular South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, where he returned in 2004 and 2011. He also toured the United States and supported such artists as Ben Folds, Rhett Miller and Ed Harcourt.
In 2006, he participated in the Jeep Compass Summer Music Tour.
In early 2007, David Berkeley toured the United Kingdom for the first time, alongside Ben Parker. He returned to the UK at the end of the same year with Common Rotation.