David Berkeley Releases 'Cardboard Boat' Alongside Accompanying Book Today

Singer-songwriter-author David Berkeley will release his sixth album, Cardboard Boat today, September 25 via his own Straw Man label. The album will accompany his novella of ten interwoven stories titled, The Free Brontosaurus (Rare Bird). The album and book will be released on the same day.

The songs are sung from the perspective of each story's main character. The releases are a rare compliment to each other, but with a degree in literature from Harvard, over a decade of touring under his belt and a stage show that melds profound songs and hilarious anecdotes, Berkeley is uniquely positioned to be able to pull off such an ambitious project.

Berkeley has amassed a dedicated and widespread following who fully funded the creation of this new album and book. He's been a guest on This American Life, Mountain Stage, World Café, CNN, XM Radio's Loft Sessions, WFUV, NPR's Acoustic Café and many more. He recently won the 2015 Kerrville New Folk competition and ASCAP's Johnny Mercer Songwriting Award. Called "a musical poet" by the San Francisco Chronicle, "sensational" by the Philadelphia Inquirer and "spellbinding" by Blurt, critics praise Berkeley's carefully crafted philosophic lyrics and soulful baritone, which at one moment resonates richly only to swoop into a fragile falsetto in the next.

This isn't the first time Berkeley has paired songs with stories. In 2010, upon returning from a year on the island of Corsica, Berkeley released his initial book/album combination: 140 Goats and a Guitar. That book comprises thirteen stories, each of which sets up a song on his fourth album, Some Kind of Cure. "With 'Goats,'" Berkeley explains, "I told the stories that led to the writing of that album's songs. The book is a lot about becoming a new father and the craft of songwriting. My new project, though, feels like the proper way to weave stories and songs."

Cardboard Boat begins with an ominous bowed bass and ends with the ethereal tinkling of metals. In between, we get Berkeley's carefully fingerpicked guitar, banjos, trumpets, organ, string sections, nylon and electric guitars and a whole array of drums and percussion sounds. Always front and center, though, is Berkeley's voice and lyric, supported on five of the ten tracks by the silver throated Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek. Each song is a story in itself, a layered landscape of sounds and textures. "I've always been drawn to blending the organic with the electronic, finding that tense balance where one morphs into the other."

Complex issues unfold, brought to life by Berkeley's insight drawn from literature, poetry and his own experiences. There are references to Moby Dick in "Setting Sail" and Norse mythology in "The Wishing Well". One of the standout tracks, "To the Sea", is an elegy for an estranged father sung by a prodigal daughter. It's a prayer for second chances as Berkeley and Watkins sing together, "Let me be like the leaves on the trees. / They come back in the spring, gold to green. / Or let me be like the stream full of rain. / It comes back eventually to the sea."

Stream/Download/Share "To The Sea":

https://soundcloud.com/davidberkeley/02-to-the-sea-david-berkeley

The album has many emotional highs, but its peak is perhaps the instrumental break in the title track, "Cardboard Boat," in which an overwhelming and relentless swelling of horns, strings, guitars and hard hit drums vanish into near silence, and one of the album's most vulnerable lyrics emerges from the rubble: "Are you still listening? Cause I'm still talking to you. / With the curtains drawn, tell me what else should I do. / I'm on a cardboard boat tonight."

The central musicians on Cardboard Boat -- guitarist Bill Titus (Dan Bern, Brother Ali), trumpet and banjo player Jordan Katz (De La Soul, The Indigo Girls), bassist/keyboard player Will Robertson (Shawn Mullins) and drummer Mathias Kunzli (Regina Spektor) -- found the recording experience transformational, according to Berkeley. "If you go about 20 minutes north of Santa Fe, up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, you come to a little village called Tesuque, which has just a post office and a restaurant inside a general store," he says. "Then you go further into the hills to an old adobe that Jono Manson has turned into a studio. It has great gear, but it feels like you're in an old Mexican house, with vega-beamed ceilings, out in the middle of nowhere. I've been out here for a few years and have begun to get used to the New Mexican palette, but for the rest of the team to live with that scenery and under those skies, it felt like being in a monastery somewhere. There's something about the light and the landscape and the calm and the quiet that's so inspirational."

David and various versions of his studio band will be touring through the end of the year in support of Cardboard Boat, with many more tour dates to be added to those listed below. A hardback version of The Free Brontosaurus will be released with a download code for the album. Cardboard Boat will also be released on vinyl where the booklet is the novel.

David Berkeley Tour Dates:
July 18 - Santa Fe, NM - San Miguel Mission (Son of Town Hall)
Aug 15 - Westport, MA - Log House Concerts
Aug 16 - Philadelphia, PA - Philadelphia Folk Fest
Aug 22 - Albuquerque, NM - West Side Tap Room
Aug 26 - Santa Fe, NM - Santa Fe Bandstand
Sept 23 - Ann Arbor, MI - The Ark
Sept 25 - Spring Lake, MI - Pin Drop Concert Series
Sept 26 - Chicago, IL - Schuba's Music Hall
Oct 01 - Falls Church, VA - Falls Church Episcopal Church
Oct 03 - New York, NY - Rockwood Music Hall Stage 2
Oct 05 - South Orange, NJ - South Orange Public Library
Oct 08 - Cambridge, MA - Club Passim
Oct 22 - Wimberley, TX - Blue Rock Live
Nov 05 - Los Angeles, CA - Last Book Store
Nov 06 - Dallas, TX - Uncle Calvin's
Nov 07 - Dripping Springs, TX - Sycamore Creek
Nov 08 - New Braunfels, TX - New Braunfels Concert Series
Nov 09 - Wimberley, TX - Milagro Springs
Nov 10 - Berkeley, CA - Freight & Salvage
Nov 11 - Austin, TX - Rock Room
Nov 12 - Austin, TX - Open Ears
Nov 13 - Fischer, TX - Fischer Fest
Nov 21 - Amarillo, TX - High Plains Public Radio Concert Series
Nov 22 - Lubbock, TX - Rockin' Box 33
Dec 04 - Decatur, GA - Eddie's Attic

David Berkeley - Cardboard Boat Track List

1 - Setting Sail

2 - To The Sea

3 - Colored Birds

4 - Last Round

5 - Cardboard Boat

6 - Wishing Well

7 - Hole In My Heart

8 - Brighter Day

9 - Dinosaurs And Sages

10 - Broken Crown