Don Everett Pearce: News/Journal

Inide-Music.com has chosen Hope & Anchor as one of the Top 25 Indie Releases of 2007.

Here's the blurb:

"The bluesy troubadour may live in California, but his soul still strides through the streets of New York City at 1 AM, strumming, watching, singing. Deep poetry and dry humor, characters who spring to life from the stereo, and a vibe that you'll never want to shake off. He's promising a new album for 2008. I'm breaking out the denim and fedora and praying for rainy weather in anticipation."

..and here's the link: http://www.indie-music.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=6818

For fun, low-budget music video that was made the last time I was in New York.

Shot & edited by Brad Aldous

click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzv--o0PfeE

A new 5-song acoustic EP, Hope & Anchor, is now available at www.cdbaby.com/cd/dep2

Note: this is an actual physical cd, delivered by the Post Office that arrives in your mailbox.

If you're a download-to-your-ipod type of buyer, an itunes version is expected at some point. Stay tuned.

The 5-song acoustic EP, Hope & Anchor, will be available within a matter of days at www.cdbaby.com ...and then on itunes sometime after that.

The full-length album, Last Dive in Town, is coming along. It always takes longer than we think it will, right?

Add to that a certain akwardness to being here in the middle of a hot & sunny SoCal summer (palm trees, parking lots, beaches, Mexican food, sandals, traffic, overheating cars and general dusty-griminess) while working on a bunch of songs that mostly take place in chilly New York winter environs (snowfall in the streetlights, cozy bars, crunchy sidewalks, wool coats, bridges over icy rivers, late-night cab rides...and so on).

I guess the weather will more resemble the songs by the time this album sees the light of day.

4th of July starts early in Los Angeles. Firework stands materialize in hot, cracked parking lots, facing the hot, cracked streets in the hot, cracked working class neighborhoods like the traveling medicine shows of centuries past. The moment the sky grows dark on July the 3rd, a pop, pop, popping echoes near and far across the South & Central areas.

Gripping the wheel at 80mph on the westbound 105 Freeway, the sky lighting red & gold, while those gentlemen drivers for whom 80mph is just not fast enough must now tailgate, zigzag, intimidate and tempt everybody’s fate as if westward LA freeway at 9:30 at night on July the 3rd is some kind of race to freedom, a mad dash toward some glittering prize while right here, right now, is just not good enough.

The little speedways and raceways of these old L.A. suburbs have long been paved over in favor of the great shopping mall, parking lot complexes that are the new standard, the new landscape here in the land of the free.

In this landscape, where any real feeling of freedom is maddeningly elusive, the freeway then goes berserk, pedal to the metal in shiny new cars we can’t afford, blowing off steam while the toy rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air just might tug at some mythic national memory, might cause us to pause and puzzle over some unspoken yearning for national unity, might stir those battered and repressed notions of revolution, justice, reason, purpose and hope.

…just might someday get us off this insane freeway and out of these metallic death traps. Just might one day find us comfortable in our own skin, hopeful of the future once again, with leaders who are more than self-serving, corrupt, liars and thieves. Leaders who are worthy of something more than well-deserved contempt and simmering ridicule.

Is the spirit of 1776 stirring somewhere out there in your hot, cracked parking lots in your hot, cracked neighborhoods? God knows we need it.

Happy 4th of July, my fellow Americans.

I first wrote this song back in '98, but promptly dropped it because it just wasn't doing it for me. I recently rediscovered it, revised the lyrics, revised the melody and recorded it with the help of my friend Craig Ferguson, who plays dobro & mandolin on this track. see LISTEN page

Recorded at home in solo acoustic format, "Hope & Anchor" is posted on the MUSIC page.

A couple things I'm working on right now:

1 - a small collection, "EP" if you will, of home-recorded acoustic songs.

2. A full-length studio album with the band, recorded in Brooklyn and in San Francisco.

They're both still taking shape and both should see the light of day in some form during the first half of 2007.