Valentine’s Day and one week before rehearsals begin in Stockholm. Many have asked why am I doing band shows now, how this band came together, and who are the folks I am performing with, so I will give a short background on this day of celebrating ‘love’.
Rob Daiker, the electric guitarist from Portland, Oregon, and I have a long history. One of Rob’s first album’s I co-produced with him over 15 years ago. Rob is a great singer/songwriter and two of the former DRN members, Blake Sakamoto and Dan Pred played with Rob in a band called Generator after the DRN days had finished. Coming full circle Mr. Daiker has over the years co-produced material with me, including 6 of the new songs on ‘Coming Up For Air’, and playing drum elements, electric guitar, synths, singing background vocals, and mixing the songs.
Bengan Jonasson and I met via the web while I was living in Jerusalem. I had heard some of his own compositions and was moved deeply by his chordal bass musings and fretless work… melodic and uplifting, and invited him to play on some of the songs I was recording there. We accomplished this via the web, sending tracks back and forth and you will find his playing on a few songs on the new album… especially noteworthy is his fretless work on ‘The Dictator’, a song which has been up on Youtube this last year. Bengan joined me on stage with Tommy Denander for a short Swedish tour this last year, and it was magic.
Robert Ikiz, the drummer/percussionist, was introduced to me through Bengan, and after one meeting and short jam session in Stockholm last year, I was convinced Mr. Ikiz could add the colors and subtle rhythmic nuances the new music required. We spoke of my recording time in Jerusalem and the rhythms of the Middle East. I learned that Robert Ikiz is from Turkish decent and was well versed in the instrumentation and stylings if Mid an Far East. This sealed the deal!
Tommy Denander is a whole other story, as he and I met in Stockholm over 20 years ago when he was a young, but talented beyond his years, guitarist and composer. In the years following he found himself working with some of the biggest names in the business, Toto being one of them… a band that inspired me greatly growing up in South Dakota. Tommy and I met again through Jens Lundberg, last year and did some writing together, and I was invited to sing on a track for his new album that has just been released on Frontier Records. Tommy has joined me on my acoustic tour in New York, Vienna, London, Paris and Stockholm, and although he is well know for his electric guitar work, I was floored by the acoustic work he added to the set, and have asked him to continue this tradition we started in 2009 with the new band.
Finally, Brooke Lizotte from Los Angeles… we met back during the Network days when we use to play up in Seattle, Brooke’s home town. Through a mutual friend Art Ford, I was introduced to Brooke and once visited his loft studio in Seattle after a DRN show one evening, and had a long night time jam session. 20 years later we found ourselves in his and Art’s studio in LA, working on a song for soundtrack. Brooke comes from the old school of piano, B3 organ, and stings arrangements, as he has spent that last decade scoring film projects and creating soundscapes for many projects.
With the release of ‘Coming Up For Air’ finally approved, it was time to represent the songs as they are recorded on the album, with not only a full band, but with artists that will take those recordings, those snapshots in time, and interpret them in their own way. This collection of artists seem to just naturally come together over the years, and we shall soon see if the experiment comes to life as it is in the imagination!
These are all musicians that live and breathe music daily in a number of projects, and I am honored to be touring with them and creating something new… a true ‘love’ for music. Happy Valentine’s Day.

In a snow covered Paris today, running through the songs for the set. Some old DRN songs and most of the new record ‘Coming Up For Air’. Rob Daiker, the electric guitarist and background vocalist and Brooke Lizotte, the keyboardist, are journeying from Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California to Stockholm in one week, where we will begin rehearsals with Swedish natives, Tommy Denander on acoustic/electric guitar, Bengan Jonasson on Bass/background vocals, and Robert Ikiz on Drums and Percussion. I have played with all these wonderful musicians separately, but never as a group, and the potential is staggering! My main thoughts now are focused on making sure during rehearsals we find a way to ‘contain’ all the wonderful abilities of these musicians so that no one steps on each other’s beautiful playing, while at the same time ‘releasing’ the power of melodic cohesiveness… an exercise in ‘chaotic stillness’ and ‘unleashed control’ will have to be our mantra. I can’t wait to get started!

All flights are booked, the dates are set, and the band excited! These will be the first band shows I have been a part of in over 16 years, and returning to Sweden, Norway, Scotland, England and Ireland for these 6 dates and with these musicians is a great honor and hopefully a new beginning of what will be a wonderful translation of the new record and an homage to music from my past. More to come!

February 25th - Uddevalla, Sweden - Mortens Krog
February 26th - Boras, Sweden - Puls Bar
February 27th - Bjugn, Norway
March 1st - Glasgow, Scotland - King Tuts
March 5th - London, England - Union Chapel - Live Video Shoot
March 6th - Ahoghill, North Ireland - Diamond Club

To those that have pre-ordered ‘Coming Up For Air’, the new studio album, I am writing to inform everyone that you indeed have not been forgotten. The release date has been held back due to negotiations with a major label. While I have been and continue to be extremely frustrated with the delays, I am tempered by the fact that more and more people in the industry are coming on board with the project and this will, in the end, allow a worldwide release of the record. Everyone will still receive a signed copy of the new CD one month prior to the street release date, and this date will be announced to all as soon as it is determined.

Your funding allowed the recording and production of three new songs for the album, the mastering of the recordings and the design of the album artwork. Everything is finally poised to be released and moving in a very positive direction. I will keep everyone posted on the release no later than the end of January, 2010. Again, thank you for the faith, the support in purchasing the pre-release, and for your extreme patience with the process. You have my deepest apologies for the delays. Dan

I’ve heard it said that you cannot speak to a terrorist, there is no negotiating with a madman. But was not Osama Bin Laden, the poster boy for all that is terror, once the CIA’s comrade in arms in the 1980s when he was fighting the Russians for us in Afghanistan? We surely were negotiating and speaking with him then. Did he just ‘lose his mind’ at some point, or was he pushed over the edge? It is said that during the 10 year embargo on Iraq between the years of 1991 and 2001 over a million Iraqi children died from lack of food and medical supplies due to the sanctions on Iraq, the US’ punishment to Saddam for invading Kuwait. The rumour is that Osama, witnessing these senseless deaths of innocents, wanted to strike back at those he once aligned himself with. Whether this is true or not, seeing the strikes on Taliban sites in Northern Pakistan these last weeks it seems quite possible that we are not getting rid of the enemy one by one, but we are rather defining their hatred and resolve to continue their quest to rid the world of modernism. Pakistan military with the help of US money and unmanned drones strikes the Taliban… a few days later a number of people blow themselves up in Pakistani markets… now it’s time to drop some more bombs on their heads.

When reading a headline that states -

“A local official told CNN the missile attack killed the nephew and son-in-law of Mawlanna Faqir Mohammed, the Taliban commander in Bajaur. Mohammed, himself, appears to have escaped the assault.”

I wonder… do we pat ourselves on the back in the war room and say, “There… now there are two more dead terrorists, now all we have to do is get the other 10,000 terrorists and this mess will be cleaned up once and for all!”. Are we really that naive to not see that revenge is a losing enterprise? Both their revenge and our revenge indeed kills some of those we despise, but the ‘cancer of anger’ grows like a wild fire, for are we not all justified from our own points of view? The planes knocking down the World Trade Centers on 9/11 may have seemed like, at least at that time, a great success for those who wished to strike back at America’s meddling in the Middle East, but the byproduct of that horrible day was the US military occupying Afghanistan and Iraq for near a decade now… and perhaps forever. Revenge by the radical muslim fundamentalists that day can hardly be viewed as a success in their hindsight. Now we drop missiles and kill Taliban leaders, or their family members in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. Dropping bombs on the same crazy Taliban organization that was being flown to Texas for years to negotiate a pipeline through Afghanistan. (another case of ‘use to be able to talk to them, but can’t anymore’). In time this will insure the friends and relatives of those who survive those we have erased with our modern weapons will want to exact revenge… and the cycle begins again.

If in time we do not heal this karmic circle of the age old method of an eye for an eye, we may be in for a surprise. When every country has finally achieved acquiring nuclear weapons, and one could bet this day is surely coming, whether it be above board or clandestine… what will revenge look like then?

Patriotism in all it’s forms is exciting, chest pounding, noisy, fun stuff. But if we don’t adopt ‘Humanism’ over our passion for borders and religious superiority, then perhaps soon all of our pretty flags will be nothing more than tattered, torn, burning remembrances of how us humans were too proud to survive.

I’ve heard it said that you cannot speak to a terrorist, there is no negotiating with a madman. But was not Osama Bin Laden, the poster boy for all that is terror, once the CIA’s comrade in arms in the 1980s when he was fighting the Russians for us in Afghanistan? We surely were negotiating and speaking with him then. Did he just ‘lose his mind’ at some point, or was he pushed over the edge? It is said that during the 10 year embargo on Iraq between the years of 1991 and 2001 over a million Iraqi children died from lack of food and medical supplies due to the sanctions on Iraq, the US’ punishment to Saddam for invading Kuwait. The rumour is that Osama, witnessing these senseless deaths of innocents, wanted to strike back at those he once aligned himself with. Whether this is true or not, seeing the strikes on Taliban sites in Northern Pakistan these last weeks it seems quite possible that we are not getting rid of the enemy one by one, but we are rather defining their hatred and resolve to continue their quest to rid the world of modernism. Pakistan military with the help of US money and unmanned drones strikes the Taliban… a few days later a number of people blow themselves up in Pakistani markets… now it’s time to drop some more bombs on their heads.

When reading a headline that states -

“A local official told CNN the missile attack killed the nephew and son-in-law of Mawlanna Faqir Mohammed, the Taliban commander in Bajaur. Mohammed, himself, appears to have escaped the assault.”

I wonder… do we pat ourselves on the back in the war room and say, “There… now there are two more dead terrorists, now all we have to do is get the other 10,000 terrorists and this mess will be cleaned up once and for all!”. Are we really that naive to not see that revenge is a losing enterprise? Both their revenge and our revenge indeed kills some of those we despise, but the ‘cancer of anger’ grows like a wild fire, for are we not all justified from our own points of view? The planes knocking down the World Trade Centers on 9/11 may have seemed like, at least at that time, a great success for those who wished to strike back at America’s meddling in the Middle East, but the byproduct of that horrible day was the US military occupying Afghanistan and Iraq for near a decade now… and perhaps forever. Revenge by the radical muslim fundamentalists that day can hardly be viewed as a success in their hindsight. Now we drop missiles and kill Taliban leaders, or their family members in the mountains of Northern Pakistan. Dropping bombs on the same crazy Taliban organization that was being flown to Texas for years to negotiate a pipeline through Afghanistan. (another case of ‘use to be able to talk to them, but can’t anymore’). In time this will insure the friends and relatives of those who survive those we have erased with our modern weapons will want to exact revenge… and the cycle begins again.

If in time we do not heal this karmic circle of the age old method of an eye for an eye, we may be in for a surprise. When every country has finally achieved acquiring nuclear weapons, and one could bet this day is surely coming, whether it be above board or clandestine… what will revenge look like then?

Patriotism in all it’s forms is exciting, chest pounding, noisy, fun stuff. But if we don’t adopt ‘Humanism’ over our passion for borders and religious superiority, then perhaps soon all of our pretty flags will be nothing more than tattered, torn, burning remembrances of how us humans were too proud to survive.

Thank you to all who have pre-ordered the CD. The actual album release has been delayed a few months due to lead times for getting reviews on the album, and in the need to not release during the Christmas rush. However all those that pre-ordered the album will be receiving the record now three months before it hits the streets. I received a few requests asking when they would receive the album they purchased online through Paypal. You will have your copy no later than mid to late November. We are in the middle of shopping the record to major distributor’s, so this may change that schedule a bit, but only because there will be access to a wider distribution, so I appreciate your patience, support and understanding. Your faith in the music and pre-ordering the record has built the foundation to recording new tracks and putting the final touches on the record, and for this you have my deepest gratitude. I am looking forward to finally having this long process over and having the music in your hands. I hope it will be worth the wait in your eyes (and especially your ears  In peace. Dan

I have been asked to play a story tellers type performance at Borders Book Store in Northridge, California, August 1st at 6pm. I will be performing two sets between 6 to 8pm. The address for the store is 9301 Tampa Ave. Northridge, CA, 91324. This show will be unique in that they have asked me to elaborate on my experiences in India with the Tibetan monks and my time in Israel/Palestine. Hope to see you there! Thank you Charrie Foglio for making it all happen

Borders Store Phone - 818-886-5443

Legendary guitarist and songwriter Tommy Denander will join Dan Reed on stage the 24th of June at The Bitter End in New York. Tommy played with Dan both in Stockholm and London during Dan`s latest European tour to the delight of all who attended. An evening not to miss if you are in the NY area.