My Discography

A Story Through Music

I love music. I always have. For as far back as I can remember, all the way back to Austin, TX, where I was born, where my mama used to rock me to sleep to Stevie Wonder. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to expose me to that kind of music as it was the only thing that worked. Music soothed me to sleep. That was my first encounter with the healing effects of music.    

In preschool I used to make up songs at the playground, swinging on the swings, or riding around in the back seat of my parents’ car, or improvising on a little toy piano that my parents got me for Christmas one year. It felt right. It comforted me. It’s how I best related to the world.    

We moved to Boulder, CO when I was five. I took piano lessons for a while. I remember getting an electric Casio piano. I loved all the various sounds it created. I’d sit around and improvise for hours. It also had prerecorded music by various Classical composers. I loved those songs and would sing them all the time. I took choir in elementary and middle school, which exposed me to new songs and allowed me to explore my voice.    

I was always musical, but when my father was diagnosed with brain cancer when I was thirteen, I started reaching for an outlet to express what I was feeling and experiencing. That’s when I took up the guitar and started writing songs. My father died six months later. Writing music got me through a difficult time in my life. Music truly is healing. It soothed me when I needed soothing. It picked me up when I was down. And in sharing it with others I found it offered them the same healing effects. It connected me to other people. I had found my purpose in life.

I studied music in our high school jazz band. I made a lot of new like-minded friends and formed my first band, Uncle Dave. We’d rehearse in the space above our bassist’s parents’ garage. We’d write songs and record our rehearsals. We played some shows, most notable the Boulder Creek Festival and the Battle of The Bands held at The Boulder Bandshell. It was a great learning experience and some great friendships were born. 

After Highschool, I kept writing music and started performing at the open mic at a little cafe in Boulder called Penny Lane. There I honed my singer-songwriter and performance chops and made a bunch of great friendships with other musicians including Gregory Alan Isakov. Another musician friend I met there was Ramaya Soskin. He used to record my live shows, and the first album I released was a collection of those performances, called Live @ Penny Lane. It’s a singer-songwriter, ballad-heavy album, with a lot of emotional, heartfelt material. Much of it about love and loss. Though there are a good collection of songs on this album, I was unable to include all the songs I had written up to that point. Recording in a studio was costly and a live album was the best way for me to get my recorded material out to the world.

Live @ Penny Lane

Dechen Hawk

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Live @ Penny Lane

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This is a collection of live recording from Penny Lane in Boulder Colorado. credits released January 1, 2001

All songs written by Dechen Hawk © 2001

Players: Dechen Hawk - Vocals/Guitar Devin Liles - Djembe

Engineers: Ramaya Soskin - Live Recording Dave King - Live Mixing Dechen Hawk - Mastering license all rights reserved

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    Patience/Honey Burned/Everybody's Here

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    Two Steps

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    Unconditionally

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    Mother

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    Grant Me This

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    My Home Town

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Then I moved from Boulder to Chapel Hill, NC. I established myself in the music scene there, started connecting with other musicians. I formed my second band Sleeping With The Enemy. It was me, another songwriter Grant Withington, and a drummer Casey. We lived together for a while, writing songs and playing shows around town. Our sound had more of a rock influence with gritty guitar tones than my previous ballad-heavy singer-songwriter material. We added a violinist, Pepe, who had a great ear and surprising talent for improvisation seeing as he came from the world of classical music. It was a cool experience. I was growing up. I never lived with my bandmates before. We recorded a few songs at home, but never released an album of that material. Thankfully I write down and capture all my songs so that they can be recorded at a later date. 

As a solo artist, I entered the North Carolina Songwriters Co-Op’s songwriting contest and had the honor of being one of the select few finalists that got to perform in the competition. It felt good as a songwriter to be acknowledged for my craft and to have the reflection that my material was noteworthy. 

Later on, I met a drummer named Josh Stohl. We hit it off from the start. Our love for funk, soul, and hip-hop took the music in a new direction. I bought an 8-string guitar from local luthier Wes Lambe that allowed me to play bass and guitar at the same time. Josh got a sample pad that would allow him to trigger prerecorded samples while playing the drums. We formed my third band Old Soul, a powerful duo project. We played shows together around town and became great friends through the process. We released my second album Old Soul, a minimalist, duo album with more of an R&B twist than my previous album. We recorded the album at home as opposed to in the studio. All we could afford at the time was to record the album ourselves. Though we managed to get several songs on the album, there were still many more that we didn’t have a chance to record.

Old Soul

Dechen Hawk

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Old Soul

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Fist album collaboration between Dechen Hawk & Josh Stohl credits released January 1, 2003

All songs written by Dechen Hawk © Copyright

Dechen Hawk - Vocals, 8-string Guitar Josh Stohl - Drums

Mixed & Mastered at home by Dechen & Josh license all rights reserved

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    Shine

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    Sagittarius

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    I Love You

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    Me & You

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    Mother (Extended)

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Eventually, I moved back to Boulder to get my bachelor’s degree in music at Naropa University. Because my music was leaning in the direction of neo-soul, and piano is the prevalent instrument in that genre, I decided to make piano my main instrument at school and spent hours a day getting my piano technique caught up with my guitar chops and my understanding of music theory. My friend, Ryan Fenson-Hood, a fellow musician and filmmaker, commissioned me to write some music for an Indie film he was creating. I flew back to North Carolina to collaborate again with my buddy, Josh. The result was my third album, Djedi, named after the Indy film Ryan was working on. This album is still soulful and funky, but hits harder, with gritty guitar tones and a bigger production sound. This was another home recording, though the technology was getting better and we were getting better at using it. There were several recorded song ideas that we came up with for the film that didn’t make it onto the album.

Djedi

Dechen Hawk

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Djedi

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Second collaboration by Dechen Hawk & Josh Stohl credits released January 1, 2005

All songs written by Dechen Hawk © 2005

Dechen Hawk - Vocals/Keys/Guitar Josh Stohl - Drums

Josh Stohl - Recording/Mixing/Mastering license all rights reserved

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    Sagittarius

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    I Try

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    My Sweetest Friend

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    Oh Mama

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    Why

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During college, I studied abroad in Prague. I loved living in that city. It was beautiful and romantic. My classes were in writing and poetics. I liked Prague so much I took a leave of absence and stayed an extra semester to teach English and explore the city. I kept writing. Josh and I would send ideas and recordings back and forth across the pond until we compiled the songs for my fourth album, Alone Together. Because of the nature of being abroad and having little recording equipment, many of these tracks have more of an electronic element, as I wrote and composed most of them on my computer. As with the previous albums, several of the tunes I had been writing at the time made it onto the album, but many others didn’t.

Alone Together

Dechen Hawk

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Alone Together

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Third collaboration by Dechen Hawk & Josh Stohl. Written and recorded while living on different continents. credits released January 1, 2007

All songs written by Dechen Hawk © 2007

Dechen Hawk - Vocals/Keys/Guitar/Bass Josh Stohl - Drums

Josh Stohl - Recording/Mixing/Mastering license all rights reserved

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    Lips of Yours

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    Through Your Smile

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    Scream My Name

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    The Thought of You

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My sound continued to evolve. I graduated college and formed my fourth funk and soul type band A Murder of Prose, with me on keys/bass and vocals, Mirco Altenbach on saxophone, and Todd May on drums. It was a great outlet for all the tunes I had been writing in college. We performed a lot. I was able to allow the material to evolve as we performed for a variety of audiences. Once again I flew out to North Carolina to record my fifth album, aptly titled, A Murder of Prose. On this album, the neo-soul sound starts to emerge as well as some more experimental concepts. This was another home recording. I love this collection of tunes, and once again there was not enough time and resources to include all the songs that I had been writing in college.

A Murder Of Prose

Dechen Hawk

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A Murder Of Prose

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Fourth collaboration between Dechen Hawk & Josh Stohl

All songs written by Dechen Hawk © 2009

Dechen Hawk - Vocals/Keys/Guitar/Bass Josh Stohl - Drums/Bass Mirco Altenbach - Tenor Sax Andrew McNew - Trombone

Dechen Hawk & Josh Stohl - Recording/Mixing/Mastering

© all rights reserved

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    Shrubbery

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    Under The Sun

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    Let It Show

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    Coming Home

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    Higher Love

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    Will You Wake Me

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