Bruce Mandel’s acoustic guitar, keen lyrical ear, and intimate and honest voice have traveled with him across the country and through musical territory both new and familiar. With the release of his latest CD, Between Dreams and Regrets, Mandel adds fresh layers to the ground covered on Follow Your Heart. After all, what lies between dreams and regrets but the sometimes gritty reality of our complex lives?
Mandel is a storyteller. His lyrically driven songs traverse the musical and ...
Bruce Mandel’s acoustic guitar, keen lyrical ear, and intimate and honest voice have traveled with him across the country and through musical territory both new and familiar. With the release of his latest CD, Between Dreams and Regrets, Mandel adds fresh layers to the ground covered on Follow Your Heart. After all, what lies between dreams and regrets but the sometimes gritty reality of our complex lives?
Mandel is a storyteller. His lyrically driven songs traverse the musical and emotional terrain between Colorado and the Berkshires. His stories are both personal and probing, whether he is writing from his own experience or weaving the ballad of another’s, as in “Irene Kibbe,” about a young Polish emigrant during World War II.
The diverse sounds of his latest CD—contemporary folk, Americana—reflect the breadth of Mandel’s experience. He grew up in the suburbs of northern New Jersey, rocking out to the Beatles. Listeners familiar with the great singer-songwriters of the ’60s and ’70s won’t be surprised to learn that at a young age Mandel happily absorbed the rich and varying styles of The Eagles, Dan Fogelberg, Cat Stevens and Paul Simon, Van Morrison, The Motown writers, and Jackson Browne to name but a few.
After college and many a warmly received performance in the folksy coffeehouse scene, Mandel did what most musicians do sooner or later and headed to the city—New York, Philadelphia, and Atlantic City. He settled near Atlantic City for a time, taking the chance to work as an entertainment technician for the Entertainment Department at Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino. While soaking up the experience of working alongside the likes of America, Ronnie Milsap, Tanya Tucker, Tom Jones, and The Temptations, Mandel stayed true to his calling, writing and producing his own songs.
In 1992, the beauty of the Southwest along with it’s open musical community and progressive thinking beckoned, and Mandel relocated to Durango, Colorado. The impulse proved a good one as he quickly became a true Indie presence in his new home, opening in concert for nationally and regionally touring songwriters, as his repertoire of soulful originals grew. His work in Durango culminated with his co-founding of the Annual Durango Songwriter’s Expo in 1996. This popular event that features listening sessions, showcases, seminars, panels, and networking opportunities has attracted new talent and high-profile musicians and industry experts alike, and continues to grow and spread to new locations around the country.
Once again Mandel's heart called, he picked up his guitar and returned east early in the new century, and he has settled deep into the fertile artistic community of the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.
This past summer Mandel debuted a special song he wrote and recorded to help celebrate the 2010 Otis, Massachusetts BiCentennial in a special performance funded by a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant. Long a supporter of Public Libraries, Bruce is donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this CD to The Free Otis Public Library.
Along with writing new material for his next couple of releases, including a children’s recording and developing a Creativity/Songwriting Seminar, Mandel finds the time as a bass player to support some of the Berkshire’s finest songwriters in the studio and on the stage.
“What happens when you dig down deep?” Mandel asks in “At the End of the Day.” Perhaps Between Dreams and Regrets, a musical expression of life’s varied landscape, is itself as good an answer as any.
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