Dan Bern

DAN BERN | NEW AMERICAN LANGUAGE (REMASTERED) / STARTING OVER | GRAND PHONY | OUT NOW

 

Bio:

Jan. 12, 2024, saw the reissue, in a newly remastered edition, of New American Language, the 2001 album by acclaimed American songwriter Dan Bern. Surprisingly, the occasion marks the first appearance of a Bern album on vinyl, during a career spanning more than 30 releases.

The remastered, first-time-on-vinyl edition of New American Language is followed by the launch of a six-week Dan Bern tour in Atlanta on Jan. 17. An all-new Dan Bern album Starting Over, arrives on March 1, 2024, via Grand Phony preceded by the single “Bible,” another in a long line of outspoken Bern songs.

Bern is accompanied on Starting Over by the band Jane’s Great Dane.

He explains, “I started playing with the Jane’s Great Dane guys out of Boston after a snow blower incident that cost me a couple of fingertips and put me out of commission as far as playing the guitar for a while.

“Then, In the middle of the pandemic, Jonathan Plaut, from the band, suggested I come out to Connecticut and record some songs with them. I hadn’t been in a room with other musicians for over a year! Those sessions led to a second session, some months later, and eventually, Starting Over.”

“Dan’s epic ‘Thanksgiving Day Parade’ literally took two years to record,” says the song’s producer, Wil Masisak, in the liner notes of the New American Language reissue. “The sense that we’d made something worth hearing coupled with the knowledge that we couldn’t have done this alone or without difficulty was immensely rewarding.

“Unfortunately, the release date was set for Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, and so it is that this incredible collection of American songwriting seemingly meant for those who did their best to carry on after 9/11 finds itself a little lost to time.”

“With Dan Bern’s large and acclaimed catalog, I have no idea how he has never had a vinyl release,” says John Young of Grand Phony Records (Mike Viola, Trapper Schoepp), the label that will reissue Bern’s landmark album. New American Language is my favorite Dan Bern album, Young says. With “fresh and vibrant” remastered audio, it is literally clearer that Bern’s lyrics “have proven to be prescient, as if they were written yesterday,” according to Young.

“National treasure” is an overused phrase to denote something Americans acknowledge as important—someone whose contributions to the American fabric are numerous, never in doubt, but rarely at risk.

Bern and his work is something more ingrained than what “national treasure” can measure. What Bern has offered throughout a 30-album and counting career speaks to something deeper in us than any two-word workaround for actual criticism could define. Bern’s work takes those risks, and New American Language is his career’s most precarious statement. In a world filled with plenty of “safer” controversial subjects to write about, Bern could do that if he felt like it. We are better for his decision not to.

In addition to being a Jeopardy clue, Bern has written thousands of songs, among such other notable career and personal highlights as writing songs for the Judd Apatow film “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” and Jonathan Demme’s film about Jimmy Carter (which Carter recognized Bern for when introducing Bern to his wife Roslyn, saying, “This is the fellow that wrote that song.”) Bern has opened for The Who (Daltrey has covered Bern’s songs), is a member of the Iowa Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and taught tennis to Wilt Chamberlain.

News:

PRESS QUOTES:

“Veers from comedy to anger, conjectures to shaggy-dog stories; he takes sidelong approaches to theology, science fiction, consumer culture, art, love, and baseball. His lyrics bounce from image to image, seemingly at random, then suddenly pull together all the stray thoughts.”
— Jon Pareles, The New York Times
“Folk music has been tamed since the 1960s, when it was a tool for protest. Most singer-songwriters now favor friendly meditations. Not Mr. Bern. Ransacking history and the present for subjects to attack, Mr. Bern wrestles with the domesticated folk tradition.”
— Ann Powers, The New York Times

ON TOUR:

  • 05/29/2024: Outer Banks, NC @ Pat McGee’s Down the Hatch Festival

  • 06/02/2024: Bryn Mawr, PA @ Bryn Mawr Twilight Series (w/ Jeffrey Gaines)

  • 06/04/2024: Hightstown, NJ @ Randy Now’s Man Cave (7PM)

  • 06/05/2024: Tuckerton, NJ @ Lizzie Rose Music Room

  • 06/06/2024: Richmond, VA The Tin Pan (w/ Jeffrey Gaines, 8PM)

  • 06/07/2024: Columbia, MD @ The Collective Encore (w/ Jeffrey Gaines)

  • 06/08/2024: Hagerstown, MD @ Hub City Live (w/ Jeffrey Gaines)

  • 06/09/2024: Piermont, NY @ The Turning Point (4PM)

  • 06/20/2024: Berwyn, IL @ FitzGerald’s Nightclub (21+, Doors: 730PM, Show: 830PM)

  • 06/21/2024: Iowa City, IA @ Trumpet Blossom Cafe

  • 06/22/2024: South Bend, IN @ Stockroom East

  • 06/25/2024: Detroit, MI @ Meadowbrook Amphitheater (supporting Roger Daltrey)

  • 06/27/2024: Indianapolis, IN @ Murat Theater at Old National Centre (supporting Roger Daltrey)

  • 11/09/2024: Boulder, CO @ Roots Music Project (8PM)

  • 11/10/2024: Denver, CO @ Swallow Hill (7PM)

PRESS RELEASES:

SOCIALS:

LISTENING:

Assets:

Dan Bern as photographed by Judd Irish Bradley. Click for hi-res.

Dan Bern as photographed by Judd Irish Bradley. Click for hi-res.

Dan Bern as photographed by Judd Irish Bradley. Click for hi-res.

Starting Over cover art. Click for hi-res.

New American Language (Remastered) cover art. Click for hi-res.