Daniel Cartier

Daniel Cartier emerged in the '90s as a serious up-and-coming singer/songwriter with guts and an ability to impress fans and musicians alike with his passionate performances and sincere songwriting. While receiving plenty of critical and celebrity support, Cartier failed to generate sales after a considerable buzz landed him a major-label record deal, and the singer parted ways with A&M's Rocket imprint after only one release. Cartier's music is sometimes tender, sometimes frantic, and usually supported nicely by his acoustic guitar playing, causing frequent comparisons to Jeff Buckley, Ani DiFranco, and other singer/songwriters of his day. An emotional performer, Cartier lacked the musical and vocal dexterity of masters like Buckley, but the New England native tried mightily to override these shortcomings with his courage and work ethic. That probably isn't going to be enough for Cartier to be remembered as an important artist, yet there's something romantic about his dogged pursuit of an audience and strong sense of style. His heavily cultivated, urban rebel image was punctuated by a tattoo-covered skull — perhaps an attempt to out-ink the music world's most egregiously tattooed folkster DiFranco.

Cartier was born June 25, 1969, and grew up in Exeter, NH, where he developed a deep love of music as a child while listening to '70s and '80s artists like Patti Smith, Blondie, and the Cars. He learned to play keyboards, started his first band at the age of 11, and remained focused on performing and writing music from that time forward. In 1991, Cartier moved to New York and played his first Gotham performances in subway stations around the city's lower east side. It didn't take long for word to spread to club owners and soon he was a regular at all the folk and rock A&R hangouts around town. Ever impatient, Cartier wasn't about to wait for anybody else to release his music. The singer wasted little time and made his first two recordings (Daniel Cartier: The Troubadour of Avenue A, Live From New York — The Subway Session respectively) available on his own Higher Power record label. The second of these collections was actually recorded in New York's Canal street subway station, and eventually re-released on Ignition Records. The Cartier sound and story was becoming very popular and the inevitable finally happened when the musician signed a major-label contract with Elton John's boutique A&M imprint Rocket Records. The result of that partnership is 1996's Avenue A, the only major-label release of Cartier's career. Much touring and some decent reviews followed, however, there were too many changes in the wind at A&M — which was purchased and basically ceased to exist shortly after Avenue A's release. Cartier wasn't kept on under the new label's ownership. Whether by design or because there weren't any other majors interested, he found himself back among the ranks of independent artists. Undaunted, the musician continued to perform and record. Go Records released Cartier's Glorified Demos in 1999, and after spending a brief period living and working in L.A., the singer moved back to New York in 2001 and released Wide Outside on Jindo Records. From obscurity, to critic's darling, to collaterally damaged victim of '90s style corporate media convergence, and finally back again to relative obscurity in New York — it's been an eventful (in some ways unfortunate) ten years for Cartier, but this is not a man to be counted out. Perhaps the best is still yet to come.