Premiere: Eric Dash pleads Please Don’t Be Far

Song from the past rings true

Songwriter and producer Eric Dash wrote “Please Don’t Be Far” years ago. In a turn that any musician will recognize, Dash’s budget didn’t include the song. Years later, with a little studio time left after a session, Dash pulled it out, and, without prep, the band nailed the recording.

Eric Dash—born Eric Friedman—had been writing songs and playing multiple instruments for years discovered by his first producer and manager, Jack Joseph Puig (John Mayer/Black Crowes/Weezer), that his career got traction. Dash described Puig as “a true genius,” and after parted ways in 2017, Dash started to produce and engineer himself.

In the past three months, Eric has been featured on iHeartRadio twice. With just over 600k streams on Spotify on his own artist page, he also has released music with five other artists this year as a producer, writer, and mixer, bringing that total to over 750k streams. Now he’s getting ready for his last release of 2020 which is his favorite-ever song, called “Please Don’t Be Far.”

Dash said, “I wrote “Please Don’t Be Far” years ago for an album I was going to do with Jack Joseph Puig. There are so many songs that I wrote around that time. I was very inspired by 3/4 time signatures and the lullaby like sounds of John Mayer, Coldplay, and the Goo Goo Dolls – that’s what I wanted. However, I ended up producing and never planned on recording this song because of my budget. I shared it with a few people and they didn’t think it was modern or pop enough to be a single. That’s all people want – singles. So my band and I didn’t prepare the song. We just happened to have extra time in the studio after recording the prepared songs called Green Eyes and Vagabond. “Please Don’t Be Far” came out by far the best in my opinion and it was pretty much just us playing on the 5th take. Really special.”