Frank Viele Shares “Dive Bar Poet” Single & Music Video

This year, Connecticut musician Frank Viele, the reigning New England Music Awards “Artist of The Year,” has released a handful of tracks, all from his forthcoming album, The Trouble With Desire.

To further introduce the project, Viele returns today with his newest cut from The Trouble With Desire, “Dive Bar Poet,” along with an accompanying animated lyric video that’s themed to follow the classic intro to the TV show Cheers.

“Dive Bar Poet” is a twangy tune, painting a narrative of a bartender that highlights Viele’s keen knack for storytelling in his songs.

Viele recalls:

“My family owned a bar in Campbell Avenue in West Haven, CT for most of my young life. Campbell Ave is notoriously known for its large stretch of alcohol-serving establishments so growing up in that atmosphere from time to time as a child certainly opened my eyes to all different sorts of folks.”

His first ever performances were in his family’s bar on Friday nights. He was younger than 10, singing Sinatra and Elvis during the karaoke nights when the bar was slow.

“I’d finish my song and the bartender would always give me a Shirley Temple and tell me to ‘never give up on my dreams.’ As life would have it, I would find myself performing in bars and clubs all over the US for years to come as a young adult and it always seemed like the best advice I ever got was from somebody handing me a drink… usually the bartender.

“So I wrote this song about that fictitious bartender. Really an amalgamation of all the bartenders I’ve met throughout my life. The one that didn’t follow his dreams but wanted me to. The one that was always the life of the party, had the quickest jokes, the best little sayings and life advice, and probably had some incredible talents he or she never got a chance to pursue.”

The Trouble With Desire is currently available for pre-order on vinyl on Frank Viele’s official website. The album will be released on February 7th, 2025. Everyone who buys the vinyl gets a download code sent to them immediately to download the record in full, including additional bonus tracks. The vinyl ships the end of July and will be available at live shows starting in August.

Earlier this year, Frank Viele announced the official launch of Bigger Beast Records, his first record label devoted to artistic collaboration and nurturing the next wave of groundbreaking songwriters.

To fund the venture, which coincided with the announcement of an official release date for his long-awaited debut Muscle Shoals recorded album, The Trouble With Desire, Viele sold his treasured 1,911-piece Funko Pop collection that he had been building while touring the country playing shows over the last 15 years.

Viele says:

“What started as something fun to do before sound check grew into a collection of memories and nostalgia and I grew very fond of this collection over the years. But experiencing firsthand all the ups and downs the modern music industry throws at us independent artists, and hearing all of the horror stories from fellow musicians in the community, I felt like I needed to do something to create community, an entity for collaboration, artistic growth, dialogue, and communication.”

In addition to funding Bigger Beast, which will enable multiple artists/the next generation of talent to break into an ever competitive and sometimes cutthroat industry, a portion of the proceeds will go toward the production and release of his forthcoming album and other collaborative projects to be announced in the coming months. Stay tuned for major announcements from Frank Viele for fall and winter 2024.

Frank Viele ‘The Trouble with Desire’ album artwork