Berning It Up On New Year's Eve

Like his best songs, Dan Bern is realistic. That is, when he's not being skeptical.

"Yeah, I've played the Watercolor Cafe before. It's a great room, even if it's a little small. Considering the weather, though, the main order of business is I actually have to get there."

Bern is calling from L.A., where endlessly-falling snow and cancelled plane reservations are usually just amusing plot points in some writer's screenplay. However, if he makes it, Watercolor will be the right place to spend the night this New Year's Eve. For Bern is to songwriting what Richard Yates was to prose: a writer's writer, whose small, but devoted audience, would commit acts of terrible mayhem if the author asked.

It's understandable when you write this well. For instance, take Bern's song, "After The Parade," a harsh, brilliant song, sung by a crippled war veteran. With a voice so real and details so impeccable, you'd think this fictional man was real and really telling you his story.

"I wrote that song about 15 years ago," Bern said, while he was packing. "It's on an EP called 'My Country, Too.' I really hoped it would've been outdated by now. A real anti-war song. But I guess that was wishful thinking."

Bern, who comes from Iowa, is now in Los Angeles for reasons other than working on his tan.  After a bunch of brilliant solo CDs and various independent music awards, he's made real inroads into the world of movie soundtracks.

It makes sense.

Bern knows that albums and record stores are fading away and that "people are really used to downloading by now."  And the new repository of the excellent song is the movie screen. But even though he's scored some real successes in film recently, Bern maintains a nice healthy skepticism about this realm, too.

"In the last couple of years I've written songs for the films Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, and Get Him To The Greek. I really enjoyed writing for specific characters and collaborating with guys like (ace pop tunesmith) Mike Viola. But it's not as simple as it seems on the surface."

Bern elaborates on the Hollywood scoring process.

"You're not guaranteed anything when you write stuff. The director may like your work and that's why he's asked you to do something. But it's all still on spec. They may take it and they may not. I've been pretty lucky so far, especially with 'Walk Hard.' They used the song Mike and I wrote together 'Beautiful Ride,' at the end of the film and it got lots of attention. Still, the movie thing is weird. All that money I made that year just screwed up my taxes in the end."

Hoping to add to the luster of his sizable catalog, Bern, who has two recent live discs out, is planning to release a CD in 2011 of all new material, his first in several years. But, like most musicians in the brave new world of the Internet, he's not sure exactly how to go about it.

"I haven't been on an actual label in years and I'm not sure if I need to be. I've had an assistant helping me with e-mail and record distribution, but it's still a weird scene out there, as far as making and selling an album. Unless you're born savvy about such things, it's hard. There's a whole new set of rules now for getting an album heard. And once you've learned them, they change again."

In the meantime, he will concentrate on his considerable cult out there and will play live for them. He hopes to do an actual tour starting in February. Then, perhaps his phone will ring again from a music-friendly film producer. But first, there's this gig at the Watercolor Cafe. Bern says he's looking forward to playing this revered room again. And yet that realism-or is it skepticism-rears its head one last time.

"Unless, of course, the planes are grounded," he said. "In that case? I guess I better make other arrangements for New Year's Eve."

INFO: Dan Bern will be at the Watercolor Cafe on Dec. 31st. He'll be playing two shows at 7:oo p.m. and 9:30. Tickets are $150 (which includes three-course meal, champagne, favors). For more information call 914-834-2213.