Dan Searl: "Mistakes"
If you take a trip up to Acadia in Maine and climb Mount Penobscot you just might find a twenty-something year old man strumming his banjo and singing to the ocean view. No stranger to the woods of New England: this is Dan Searl and out this week his new single, “Mistakes”.
Many would say that music is the soundtrack to life. Sometimes impactful songs reflect on the flaws of humanity in a manner that inspires hope laced with awareness. There are always the overdone sounds of the day and the more we hear certain cliches we can come to appreciate other things. As a singer-songwriter often taking artistic sabbaticals to Maine to write music and poetry, Searl finds inspiration in nature and is known to experiment musically. He isolates himself in the woods of Maine to write music of self reflection and embark on vision quests. Yet Self restraint and hard work have become his allies. He produces, writes songs for others, and teaches to pay the bills while he continuously works on his next album/LP, “Songbook” which is due out later this year. As one of the Winners of the 2019 John Lennon Songwriting Contest in the Pop Category, Searl has seen some success with his record label, Lit Honey Productions which produces and releases music from a growing community of Artists on the New England scene and Abroad. He has performed at music venues across the U.S including Academy LA in Los Angeles, the Press Room in Portsmouth, NH, and the Middle East in Cambridge, MA to name a few. He is also a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Berklee College Of Music where he received a degree in 2015.
Searl says, “This song is about the opportunity we have in life to take our mistakes and turn them into something positive. It’s about the delicate tragedy of those big mistakes no one wants to make (yet some do) and how they can define forward progress or crumble us to pieces in our own self-inflicted emotional uprising or demise.” He adds, “The message of the song is to Seize the day and live everyday as if it were your last while being empowered by the past and the experiences that changed your life.”
“Mistakes” is a riff driven acoustic pop song laced with folk-oriented elements(Mandolin, Acoustic Guitar) and placed in a driving beat. It’ll keep your feet pattering (and maybe because you'll recall one of your own moments of peril) Along with the addition of some synthesizers, the track is a stimulating crossover-blend of styles and sounds. Ambient passages mix in with the percussive guitar line that drives the song. Accompanied by the rock-solid drumming of Israeli Drum Prodigy, Yogev Gabay the song has a strong groove cultivated by Searl who plays all the instruments on the tracks with exception of the drums laid down by Gabay. “The song is years old, but I decided to breathe some new life into it by adding a few parts and having it mixed and mastered again by my musical colleague, the very talented Tim Phillips of Phillips Sound in NYC ”. Over the years, Searl has produced countless records for many artists on the Boston Scene and with the lift off of this single on the tail end of 2020 it is the only release from him this year as he prepares to release a single every month in 2021, the next being a song called, “Hope” which was a winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest.
“Your mistakes can make you or break you down, I’ll Learn to Reason when I’m Bound.”
Have a listen and connect with Dan Searl on social media:
https://www.instagram.com/dansearl/
