You're Free, by Dan Israel

You're Free

by Dan Israel

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Full Digital Discography

22

releases

Get all 22 Dan Israel releases available on Bandcamp and save 35%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Seriously, Social Media Anxiety Disorder - The Demos, The Hang of It, Late at Night (EP), Pandemic Blues, Dan Israel's 2019 demos, Social Distance Anxiety Disorder, Social Media Anxiety Disorder, and 14 more. , and , .

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1.	Gets You Through It 03:06		buy track
2.	You're Free 03:18		buy track
3.	Back To You 03:03		buy track
4.	Long Gone Dream 02:53		buy track
5.	Make This Life Mine 04:43	info	buy track
6.	Feeling Better 04:27		buy track
7.	Someday You'll Say 02:48		buy track
8.	If I Didn't Have You 03:43		buy track
9.	Stay On The Run 03:31		buy track
10.	Soul Will Be Found 03:25		buy track
11.	Porch Storm 02:35		buy track

about

Dan Israel’s You’re Free is a response to personal, political, and cultural crises by a singer-songwriter who happens to be in midlife. As such, it sidesteps midlife-crisis clichés while searching earnestly for change, liberation, and the perfect guitar break. By turns anxious and joyful, sometimes even a bit reckless, it’s a cry of the heart delivered from the cab of a new-used convertible, or a jeremiad shouted from a seventies muscle car rejiggered to run on french-fry grease.

The album, Israel’s fourteenth studio creation, was produced during a transitional period for the Twin Cities native. After twenty-one years on the job, Israel left his editorial position at the nonpartisan Revisor’s Office of the Minnesota State Legislature. This leap of faith has let Israel—for the first time in his adult life—concentrate chiefly on his music, and in addition to writing and recording, he’s been pursuing an active performing schedule, playing his own material as a solo act and bandleader, and putting together sets in tribute to some of his formative influences, including Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. He’s also using this time to find new ways to treat and cope with lifelong struggles with depression and anxiety, as well as severe gastrointestinal ailments that often manifest, in a vicious cycle, with depression and anxiety.

Though Israel can put on a captivating show with just an acoustic guitar and his burry, expressive baritone, he’s more of a rocker than a folkie, and on You’re Free he draws on some of the FM staples of his youth, particularly in the guitar interplay and studio inventions he worked out with producers and longtime collaborators David J. Russ and Rich Mattson. “Someday You’ll Say” on which Israel digs into his upper register, includes beautiful guitar harmonies reminiscent of Thin Lizzy, and the bluesy “Soul Will Be Found” and “Long Gone Dream” would sound excellent in a basement bedroom decorated with tapestries and can collections. The propulsive, addictively catchy title track and statement of intent might become his greatest alternate-reality smash. Other standout tracks include the cockeyed love songs "Back to You" and "If I Didn't Have You," and "Make This Life Mine," which movingly sets a course for long-in-coming self-realization. Few of the songs offer explicitly political messages, but many are colored by frustration, anger, and concern over the political situation, environmental degradation, and the alienation that often accompanies our reliance on social media.

A departure to some degree, You’re Free is also of a piece with Israel’s body of work, a further demonstration of his knack for tuneful, contemplative rock, a gift that’s earned him a loyal and steadily growing following over a quarter century. With his newly flexible schedule, he’ll likely be playing soon in your town. He hopes you’re free.

-Dylan Hicks

credits

released May 4, 2018

Dan Israel - acoustic guitar, electric guitar, lead vocals
David J. Russ - drums, bass, piano, lap steel, cello noise, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals
Rich Mattson - electric guitar, guitar solos, bass, piano
Mike Lane - bass
James Tyler O'Neill - keyboards, Fender Rhodes
Peter J. Sands - Hammond organ
Katie Gearty - backing vocals
Jillian Rae - violin
Dave Hill - drums (kind courtesy of Vitamin Brown)
Jenny Russ - backing vocals
Paul Odegaard - trumpet
Randy Casey - slide guitar and baritone guitar
Additional vocals on Make This Life Mine contributed by - Jeffrey Duncan, Gina Frances, Tim Francis, Mike Goldberg, Mike Haldorson, Kellie Nitz, Sydney Patrick, Madison Pugh, Jeff Schuller, Brenda Shepherd, Karen Skaja, Rob Stealcheat, Jim Strachan, Gigi Stroncek, Mischa Suemnig, Andrew Thomas,
and Aaron Trooien

license

about

Dan Israel Minneapolis, Minnesota

Dan Israel is a longtime fixture on the Minneapolis music scene. He was the first guest on 89.3 The Current’s “Local Show” & has been called “the hardest working singer-songwriter in Minnesota.” He won Song of the Year (for “Come to Me”) in the 2005 Minnesota Music Awards & Songwriter of the Year in the 2006 MMA’s. He received a 4-star review from the UK’s “Uncut” mag for his 2007 album "Turning." ... more

danisraelmusic.com

shows

Apr 19

Hook & Ladder Theater

Minneapolis, MN
May 19

Sacred Heart Music Center

Duluth, MN

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