<\/p>\n
\n\tAs he prepares to release his new album, D,<\/em> Daryl Hall<\/a> is well aware of how long of a gap there\u2019s been \u2014 11 years, in fact, since Laughing Down Crying<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt has<\/em> been a long time,\u201d Hall, who released a compilation, Before After<\/em>, in 2022, acknowledged to Billboard <\/em>shortly before starting his current tour with Elvis Costello. \u201cI couldn\u2019t believe how long ago (Laughing Down Crying<\/em>) was. I dunno \u2014 time flies. I\u2019ve been busy with various things and trying to do what I was doing, and the years just flew by.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe nine-track D<\/em> \u2014 which drops Friday, June 21 \u2014 itself has been \u201ca long time coming\u201d as well. Hall began working on it a year and a half ago on Harbor Island with co-producer and longtime friend Dave Stewart of Eurythmics fame. There was no sense of urgency in the process, either, according to Hall.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWe took breaks from it and all that,\u201d Hall explained. \u201cI\u2019d go down there; I have a house in the Bahamas and so does Dave, around the corner. It was really just the two of us, with an engineer (Jesse Samier). We pretty much worked in one-month increments; we\u2019d do a month, then I went away \u2014 I was on the road for a year \u2014 then I\u2019d come back and we\u2019d do another month and then it was just kind of tying things together, which we did fairly recently.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think in some respects it was better to take breaks, \u2019cause every time we\u2019d jump back into it it\u2019d be fresh. It was all very spontaneous, very happy, not a lot of thought, really. It was just \u2018Don\u2019t think, just do,\u2019 and (D<\/em>) is what came out of it.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhile Hall, Stewart and Samier played nearly all the instruments on D<\/em>, they would \u201cjust bring somebody in\u201d for other parts, including backing vocalists, while Darrell Freeman was tapped to send synthesizer parts from Atlanta and longtime Hall & Oates saxophonist Charlie DeChant contributed to \u201cWhy Do You Want to Do That (To My Head).\u201d Hall says the relaxed island environment gave the songs a particular kind of vibe, easy to hear in the soul-flacked \u201cToo Much Information,\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t Say No to You,\u201d \u201cWalking In Between Raindrops,\u201d \u201cBreak It Down to the Real Thing\u201d and \u201cNot the Way I Thought it Was,\u201d the D<\/em> track most likely to be associated with Hall & Oates.<\/p>\n \n\tThat tone counters what Hall calls a \u201cvery personal\u201d album \u2014 and one that, with its lyrical reflections on relationships, mortality and world order, is not always as breezy and smooth as the music.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe album is a complete thought,\u201d said Hall, \u201cand we organized the songs to go through a journey with it. We hit sort of a bottom place with \u2018I\u2019d Rather Be a Fool\u2019 \u2014 that song is totally autobiographical \u2014 and then start coming back up again to the new, better world. We didn\u2019t write the songs with that in mind, but when we realized what we had we put it together into a story, in a progression.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe D <\/em>title, meanwhile, pulls from Hall\u2019s nickname. \u201cMy friends call me D, so I said, \u2018OK, why not? I\u2019ll call it my nickname.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFor Hall, D <\/em>also represents something of a new era. While he and John Oates<\/a> toured together through 2022, their schism as a duo became public in recent years \u2014 and particularly last fall, when Hall filed suit<\/a> against Oates over issues related to the latter\u2019s plan to see his share of Hall & Oates<\/a>\u2018 publishing to Primary Wave Music. Both have said they\u2019re unlikely to ever reunite and are going about their businesses as full-time solo artists.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cJohn and I did not have a creative relationship for decades; the last song I write with John was in 2000 and that was with somebody else,\u201d Hall says. \u201cWe toured and we toured and we toured, and it was very restrictive to me, and to John. The real truth of it all is John just said one day he didn\u2019t want to do it anymore. I said \u2018OK,\u2019 but the problem is (Oates) didn\u2019t make the parting and breakup easy, and that\u2019s where the difficulties lay and still lay, and that\u2019s all it is.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI always say I\u2019ve been a solo artist my whole life, I was just working with John, mostly.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBeing on his own full-time now is liberating, according to Hall. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly how I\u2019m looking at it,\u201d he acknowledged. \u201cI can\u2019t speak for John \u2019cause I haven\u2019t spoken to him in a long, long time, but I think that\u2019s how he feels, too. And good on both of us. I can still play all the songs that I wrote over the years, under my own name as well as under the Hall & Oates name. It frees me, really. It frees me up.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHe\u2019s ready to continue on that path, too. With D <\/em>coming out Hall is already making plans for its follow-up, starting on his next trip to Harbor Island in January. In the meantime he\u2019s happy to be on the road with Costello, for whom he provided a guest vocal on the 1984 single \u201cThe Only Flame in Town.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s a great combination,\u201d Hall says. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of good music, a lot of good songs. I met Elvis around the same time as (Stewart), actually \u2014 early \u201980s or something. We have mutual friends and we\u2019ve traveled in and out of the same circles over the years. He\u2019s a complicated guy musically and personally, but in the most interesting of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tHall is also continuing to renovate homes \u2014 he\u2019s working on one now, in fact \u2014 and he\u2019s moving forward with his acclaimed performance series Live From Daryl\u2019s House<\/em> after re-launching it last year as a web series on YouTube. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about, instead of doing whole seasons just maybe doing two (episodes) at a time and putting them out,\u201d Hall says. \u201cSo every once in awhile we\u2019ll throw a couple out there; that way it doesn\u2019t take too much time out of other things I\u2019m doing, \u2019cause it really does take time. So that\u2019s the plan; I don\u2019t know who (the next episodes) will be yet, but it\u2019ll probably be just a couple of new things coming out.\u201d<\/p>\n