A New Single and Interview With The Dave Black Expression

A warm single from The Dave Black Expression just dropped, and this single has such a wonderful way of painting a picture in your head as it all unfolds with nostalgic lyrics, detailed and descriptive, along with a suite of instruments that add to that warmth and balance.

This is a track that feels like it blends elements of contemporary pop with jazz undertones laced throughout it. The song starts with keys, live percussion, and saxophone performing this amazing and addictive hook right in the introduction of the song.

This is a brilliant approach to songwriting in general, simply because you're getting that instrumental hook to pull you right into it from the start.

Not only do I love this, but I love the element of instrumental hooks of any kind. Whether it's saxophone, guitar, or otherwise, I simply miss songs that have instrumental hooks along with robust choruses the way this one does.

"Time At The Lake" displays such a welcoming soundscape and lyrics that come across with a sense of freedom in their underbelly.

The song is about an escape. It's about going somewhere to get back to your roots, in a sense. Forgetting about your troubles, leaving them all behind, and just being here, present, in the now.

Surrounding yourself with things that you love and getting out of the day-to-day so that you can recalibrate yourself is so incredibly important to everybody.

For me, this song served as a reminder of that. It made me want to go spend time at the lake or somewhere that I can just be in the present moment instead of having all these worries and stresses because of day-to-day life, like we all have.

Sometimes it takes a song like this to remind us of those things, which is why I found the message to be really important.

Now, this is how I interpreted the track, while others may take it a little differently. The sentiment for me was loud and clear.

Wrapped up in the textures of guitars, saxophones, bass guitars, pianos, and that brilliant live percussion are these vocals that really stand tall.

The vocalist really understood the mission in terms of letting her voice express the same kind of energy that the rest of the instrumentation does.

The whole thing is an incredible balance of energies, and it almost feels like it was recorded live, all in one room. It feels this way, to me, simply because you can almost feel the players performing in a way that feeds off each other's energies.

The song just gives that kind of live performance vibe.

There are some lush organs in the background that fill any space and give the song elements of a classic rock undertone at times, but also add this almost elegant flow to everything.

Between the piano, organ, and saxophone, especially, there is that gracefulness about the track.

The Dave Black Expression most certainly branches out in terms of their approach, style, and genre. I feel like this is a single that pins down an amazing sound for the project and enables all of their different influences to come into play so that you have something with a bit of its own atmosphere about it.

This is a single that showcases not only a demonstration in warmth of tonality coming from both the instruments and the vocals, but also that inviting contemporary aesthetic that, once again, is a little bit of a nostalgic note.

I think everyone involved did an amazing job of capturing the mood to go along with those lyrics.

The saxophone performance, as always, is outstanding and not overwhelming, but again, perfectly balanced and blended into everything just as it should be.

It flows in and out of the song naturally, and this is another element that adds to the whole live performance feel for me.

As far as we know, this single is a lead-up to a full album release coming fairly soon, and if there's more of this on the record, which I'm sure there will be, I certainly can't wait for it.

At least the song will keep me at bay for now.

Upon listening to it and learning about the album, I wanted to have a sit-down with Dave to find out where this all came from, especially this song in particular.

I also wanted to know what we can expect from the record and more.

So, while you listen to this single, have a read through of our interview with The Dave Black Expression.

Remember where you heard it first.

Let's talk about "Time at the Lake"! This track was honest, with a sort of warm contemporary feel to it and beautifully performed saxophone!  Where did this song come from? What's it about?

In the course researching ideas for our next album, we started saying we were going to make songs about the water, beach and vacation places. We had cut a couple sample ideas and later did a song titled “Heaven Sent” which was about the unique connections of the constellations and how they often align by chance with people who we met randomly. What happened next really changed our course and that stemmed from a conversation with a long time friend who had taught me about lake life in Minnesota long before we bought a Minnesota lake cabin. He and I agreed there was a special essence about being at the lake including the anticipation each spring brings when the ice goes off our northern lakes and commences that it is time to get up to the lake.

And thus, I made a comment that honestly there is nothing better then spending time at the lake. Light flashes occurred in my brain. We need to change the course of our album and call it” Time at The Lake”. And off we went, writing and recording with a purpose once again that fueled our work. It was Memorial Day 2025, and I was off running an errand and I just started singing….” Its time at the lake, where we grab all we can take, to make life great with time at the lake”. I pulled into the parking lot and penned the official start of the title track right there and then. Next came some indecision as I must have listened to 60 different beats for the song and came back to my musical team, empowering them to be creative and not get locked into a certain genre or beat. We finally settled into an inviting calm yet fulfilling beat and later added the sax to liven it up. I knew all along what the vocals would sort of be like but as always, I empowered the vocalists with the chance to add their own flare, and it worked out great. Same with our contracted saxophonist, open frum and he nailed it. The finishing touch was adding in the sounds of water lapping up on the shore which one can only hear with the evening tranquility.

To answer your question about the content of the song, I interviewed three close friends, each of whom have a lake cabin in an open forum with only one question, What does Time at the Lake mean to you. It was crazy the number of responses and many fueled the writing of a number of the songs on the album. Yet the Time at the Lake song needed to first off have flow in an upbeat yet calming sort of way and I thought it best to make the lyrics really simple, so the listener isn’t engrossed in anything other than their own thoughts about what it means to get away to a lake for some leisure. Odd as it seems, we stayed fairly close to my original babble as I was driving on the day I hatched the idea. We hope this song resonates with many of the over 120,000 cabin owners in Minnesota as well as the millions who visit a resort or friends and family at one of our over 10,000 lakes we have in Minnesota. Last note, we do hope this song resonates with others outside of my home state, but I wanted to boast a bit about what it means in our state. So, we officially named the album “Time at the Lake – a Minnesota Treasure”

I'm hearing a few different approaches to this release! Who are some of your

biggest musical influences?

Even prior to starting the “Time at The Lake” project we talked about artists like Smokey Robinson and how their style was smooth and relaxing and engaging in an enjoyable way. There is a British artist from the 80’s named Tracey Thorn who always captured me with her work with the band “Everything but The Girl” and that led me toward a female vocalist with a rich voice and style. I ‘ve always been a fan of just about every song with a well timed saxophone and we have employed that since our inception.

Oddly for Bruce Springsteen with all his guitar prowess it was Clarence Clemons on the saxophone that set his group on fire. I would venture to say if we had a secret sauce, it would be how we build our songs to include saxophone at the right times. On this album we did something we hadn’t yet done and that sort of happened by accident. I listened to a clip that we ended up not using but I thought wow this is really good, but it doesn’t quite fit the sound I was looking for. Later, talking about all the spectacular things that happen while at the lake the topic of Northern Lights came up and bingo, we workshopped ideas for an instrumental set that covered what a northern lights serenade would look like in song. We later added Spanish guitars, and some thought I was nuts except for our guitarists, they hammered it out fabulously and in no time. We liked to so much I wanted to do another song that you could play on your boat while cruising around the lake watching the scenery on a warm summer day. We started with by listening to George Bensons “Breezin” song from way back, listened to some Weather Report tracks and went to work to create our own sound and thus the song “Idyllic Cruise” was born. To close these were just the influences for this album as I am a big fan of all kinds of music ranging from Rock to reggae and everything in between.

Did you record this at a home setup, or at a big studio?

Funny that you should ask this because there is an interesting story behind it. Our

usual set-up is a remote small studio, and we edit, splice and shape and work the song from each angle, my feel, the vocalists’ preferences alongside a good musical score with agreement that all or any of the elements can and will change if it makes a better song. Well, we were cruising along with a few songs, and we ran into some snags with the music and one with the vocalist we contracted with, so we scraped the actual song “Time at The Lake and rebuilt it with the help of my friends in London at the online recording studio. We hooked up a singer from LA, hired musicians in London and patched it all together and voila a simple home spin Minnesota song about going to the lake was spun, all with the favors of 2025 technology. It worked so well we did a number of songs this way and even used session musicians from Barcelona on “Back Roads”, “Back Porch Light” and “Northern Lights Serenade”. For the song “On a Day Light This”

I had worked with a very talented vocalist from Nigeria, and I brought him into the mix with the online recording studio and we re cut that song to its present form. I also have to say my long time musical team worked hard on this album and nailed it overall. There were only a few songs that we reached for the stars so to speak, and we are glad we did.

How did this all start for you as an artist?

How I got started as an artist was really a dare and an old college goal. In college I

wrote down three personal goals out side of love and marriage. The first was that I was a lifelong hockey player who knew I didn’t have the talent to be a professional athlete, but I wanted to work in the hockey business. I did that for most of my adult life.

The second goal was that I always wanted to be a writer and while in college I wrote short stories and made goal # 2, one day I would write a book. During my four plus years in college I shifted and began writing poetry, lot of poetry. With the blessing of my wife and also from my first ever girl friend who I remained friends with, they both encouraged me to publish a poetry book. I completed goal #2 in 2022 as I self-published “The Things I Couldn’t Say Until Today” a book with sixty of my best poems alongside water color illustrations. The best lessons I learned from that experience were first keep your poems to yourself, second and most important in working with a contracted illustrator from India. I needed to be very descriptive in what I wanted it to look like. This has helped me tremendously with goal #3. Yes, goal #3 was to write a rock song. I took that dare in March of 2023 and recorded our groups first ever song, “Your Subtle Style” at the dare of a friend who simply said go write a love song for your wife. This friend was so persistent and checked in on me to see how it was going. I said I have too much material that none of this makes any pattern.

I was told to go back to college and take out my yellow highlighter ( on the computer and highlight the best of what I’m trying to say). Reluctantly, I stayed up until 4am and got it down into a song. 15 revisions later and a complete rewrite of the chorus I found a person who would record it for me and 4 months later I put out our first album “My rear View Mirror” a country rock album.

The irony was that I didn’t really know or like country music but was told by three unrelated sources, that’s what my lyrics sounded like. When I finished that album, I went to a Rebulation reggae concert and called my musical producer and warned him I was going to jump genres and do a reggae song. He was all for it. From there I made my second album Genre Jump’n fool which had 8 different sub genres of music, and I was on my way to being the artist I wanted to be.

As of right now we are strictly a studio group, but we have been talking about

ideas of how this would look. We never say never.

This song will be part of an upcoming album release, correct? Tell us more about

that!

The “Time at the Lake’ song became the driving force for the completion of the full album in its name. The exact title is “Time at The Lake – a Minnesota Treasure”.

It’s a 13 song set with all the songs relating to experiences people would experience at the lake. We incorporated elements of Indies, Jazz, Neo Soul alongside our other creative forces as indicated. We ere really excited about this unique concept and how we rolled it into one album. We had finished recording last fall but sat on it during the winter months and made a couple key revisions during mixing and now like the other signs of spring in the Midwest we are ready for the summer season to being with time at the lake by our side.

Who's in your headphones right now?

Right now, I’ve been listening to Al Green, Jr Walker and Sombr. How bout that for a variety. The first two artists inspire me to try and write more jazzy songs and some neo soul. Sombr is just a great young talent and he’s so new to the world his music and art is fresh in a world where so many songs sound the same. Oh ya, I listen to “Time at The Lake – a Minnesota Treasure” as I drive up to my cabin just to get me excited!

What would you tell people they can expect on this release?

I would tell people to be open minded about our “Time at The Lake album. We sculpted our own sound and style much like each person’s own experiences going up to their cabin, with a lot of room for interpretation. I think our song “Back Roads” really sets a nice tone and my wife loves my lines...” Is it just me, when I’m drive’n carefree, I think back roads are driv’n me, to where I want to be” I guess that sums up the entire album we are hoping people will find something they can related to with our work.

We are looking forward to getting the word out to our local and regional stations

throughout Minnesota as we think there should be a nice audience out there, maybe even in other regions of the USA and beyond once they get to know us.

Before we go, what would you like to express to fans of the music? 

We would like to thank all of our current fans in the states and abroad. Our greatest joy is getting comments, and we hope we are easy on your ears! And don’t forget to tell others we always have room for new friends.

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