Sung from the heart

When Bernie Dalton was struck down by disease, Essence Goldman became his voice

By Aidin Vaziri | May 11, 2018

Bernie Dalton hoped to fulfill a lifelong dream of making an album when he replied to a Craigslist ad for vocal lessons.

A surfer living in Santa Cruz, he was helping raise his teenage daughter, Nicole, after a tough divorce. He told Essence Goldman, the voice teacher who posted the ad, that he wanted to learn to sing the blues. He would drive up to her home studio in San Francisco every week for the sessions.

Goldman, a longtime fixture on the city’s singer-songwriter scene, was working as an instructor to help support her young family while she was going through her own separation.

It may sound like a setup for a “Missed Connections” romance, but what would transpire over the next few years goes far deeper.

Shortly after Dalton first showed up in Essence’s bohemian-style flat in the city’s Inner Richmond neighborhood in 2015, he began slurring his words and his voice started to get progressively raspy. At first they dismissed it as a symptom of laryngitis or the cold, maybe even an aftereffect from chlorine exposure from his day job as a pool cleaner.

Two months later, in January 2016, with Dalton hoping to learn the nuances of Freddie King’s “Tore Down,” his voice disappeared.

He couldn’t sing. He couldn’t talk.

And yet Dalton kept showing up for his weekly lessons, and they attempted to press on. Goldman would offer feedback on Dalton’s lyrics and guitar chord structures. Dalton would scribble his handwritten responses to her on a yellow legal pad.

As time passed, Dalton started having difficulty swallowing, eating and drinking. In a few short weeks, he lost a significant amount of weight. On the yellow pad, he wrote and underlined, “30 pounds!”

Then one day during a lesson, he started drooling all over the guitar he was playing.

“It was like, ‘OK, something is really wrong here,’” Goldman recalled, sitting on the couch where together they would pore over Dalton’s lyrics and riffs.

In April 2016, after putting it off, Dalton went to see a neurologist.

He was diagnosed with bulbar-onset amyotrophic lateral sclerosis — an aggressive form of ALS, the incurable motor-neuron illness better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It seizes the voice and throat before rapidly destroying the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord responsible for controlling muscles in the arms, legs, diaphragm and chest wall. It is always terminal.

The doctors gave him a prognosis of one to three years. He was 47 years old.

Two years later, Dalton can still smile, raise his eyebrows and lift his left thumb, but now he’s bedridden and must use a device called the EyeGaze for most of his communication needs.

“Even though he’s in that bed, he’s alive,” Goldman said. “You can see it in his eyes. He’s very much present. Everything is working upstairs. He feels everything as if he’s not sick. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like for him to not be able to fully express himself with his body.”

With the urgency of his situation becoming clear, Dalton asked Goldman a favor: She needed to become his voice. Even though he stopped going to lessons he still wanted to make an album, only now there was a higher purpose. He wanted to leave a set of songs for his daughter and her future children, the grandchildren he would most likely not live long enough to meet.

He kept sending Goldman sheets of handwritten lyrics — songs about longing, frustration and death — and she kept stashing them away.

“I put them in a pile under my bills,” she said. “I wanted to help him, but I didn’t know how it would manifest.”

Dalton persisted.

“I wanted to get my music out of my living room and show my daughter anything is possible,” he said.

Goldman was hesitant. At the time, she was in the middle of producing her own album — a follow-up to her 2016 release, “Black Wings” — and trying to rediscover her own voice after two decades of modest success.

Then one night, while he still had enough strength to drive, Dalton showed up unannounced at her house with the lyrics for a song called “Simon’s Hero.” Goldman pulled out her guitar “and the song came straight through me,” she said.

From that point on, Goldman said, she couldn’t stop thinking about Dalton’s situation.

“I remember I was on a trip to the Grand Canyon with my family not long afterward, and I felt really guilty that I was enjoying this time with them and he couldn’t do the same thing,” she said. “I wanted to launch a GoFundMe so he could take a trip with his daughter.”

But Dalton didn’t want a vacation. He wanted to make an album.

Goldman’s manager tried to talk her out of the project. He wanted her to shop for a label deal for the album she was already working on. But, she said, “I couldn’t stop.”

So she dove in. Goldman had lost her own father to pancreatic cancer 10 years earlier. She wanted to do it for Nicole.

“This took precedence,” Goldman said. “He’s dying. There wasn’t an opportunity to wait.”

Shortly after starting voice lessons with Goldman, Dalton had signed Nicole up as well. Over time, Goldman became like a member of the family, offering a musical bond between father and daughter.

Goldman was there when, in her living room, Dalton talked about his diagnosis to Nicole. She has become his primary advocate as Dalton’s family navigates the complicated world of skilled nursing facilities and home care.

“It grew to love,” Dalton said. “Only way to describe it.”

With her large green eyes welling up with tears, Goldman added that they have connected on another level too.

“Mostly, it was his relationship with his daughter,” she said. “I can’t help it. It struck a chord. Watching him tell his daughter about the disease, I was unearthed. It felt like losing my dad all over again. ... I wanted to give Bernie and Nicole the closure I didn’t get.”

With Goldman reaching out to her network of friends, support for Dalton’s project came pouring in. Goldman found a band, dubbing them Bernie and the Believers, that included guitarist Roger Rocha, drummer Daniel Berkman and engineer David Simon-Baker.

“Essence asked me if I would help out recording some songs with her vocal student who had ALS,” Rocha said. “Because my uncle and stepfather had passed away from it, I had firsthand experience.”

Making the album, a passionate blend of folk and blues bearing the influence of everyone from Lucinda Williams to Otis Redding, wasn’t easy.

By the time Goldman raised enough money to get everyone into the studio, Dalton was losing his mobility. They started recording in June 2017, with Goldman, Dalton and the band, and Nicole. They would start each session with a lyric sheet and finish with a fully formed song.

“In the beginning, he was able to write on a dry-erase board and hold court on the couch and direct us,” Goldman said. “Two thumbs up and huge smiles from someone who can’t speak means a lot.”

Dalton was involved at every step as the album, titled “Connection,” came together. Goldman’s voice carried the music. Nicole sang backing vocals. Dalton’s voice even makes an appearance via an old iPhone recording Goldman made at one of their early lessons.

Working on the album, Dalton said, was “magic.”

But as his condition deteriorated, he lost the ability to move his arms, to walk or to stand. Dalton now lives in a care facility in Cupertino, with nursing staff providing him with around-the-clock care.

“It’s been very much an emotional roller coaster,” said his dad, Bernie Dalton Sr., who put his life on hold in Pennsylvania to come out in late October to be at his son’s bedside.

In February, Goldman and her bandmates hosted a record release party at Slim’s in San Francisco, playing the songs Dalton wrote for him and a packed house of friends, family and his supporters. It was the last time he’s been out in public.

A month earlier, Goldman launched a second GoFundMe campaign, this one dubbed simply “Send Bernie Home.” The goal now: to support ALS-specific home care for Dalton, so he can live out the rest of his days in his own space with his family and dedicated care. The cost is an estimated $8,000 a week.

So far, they have raised a little over half of the $150,000 goal.

“Essence was an advocate for Bernie right from the start,” said his sister Lena Dalton Sutcliffe, who with her twin, Lisa, is five years older than Bernie. “She’s been instrumental in a lot of ways, from making sure Bernie got the right formula to looking into experimental treatments. It’s way more than just the music.”

Goldman has also helped get Dalton’s story told.

With the band, she recorded a video for the song “Unusual Boy” in Dalton’s room at the Cupertino Healthcare and Wellness Center to submit to NPR’s Tiny Desk Concertcontest, which has launched the careers of so many musicians including Oakland’s Fantastic Negrito. Goldman didn’t win, but the exposure led to a feature on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Local news stations have also showed up with camera crews, and letters of support have arrived from all over the world. There are even plans for the band to take Dalton’s songs on tour.

The release of the Bernie and the Believers album and the local attention has kept Dalton’s spirits up despite his grim prognosis.

“Bernie is over the moon that people are taking notice of this story,” Goldman said. “But I would be sad if it was just a human interest story. That’s patronizing to him. He’s actually a good songwriter, not just some guy with ALS. He has a unique and honest perspective that I think this world needs to hear.”

Because the music has become such a life force for Dalton, Goldman has remained deeply committed. But their relationship went from being professional to personal a long time ago.

“It’s upsetting because I lost my dad,” she said. “I saw the love between Bernie and Nicole. I couldn’t help but draw a parallel. ... I wanted them to have a special thing while he was still alive.”

Having Goldman there for Dalton has been invaluable. He calls her “my soul mate.”

At some point, however, Goldman, who has a long-term boyfriend, will have to move on. She’s put countless hours into producing and promoting the Bernie and the Believers album without financial compensation.

She has about 20 other voice students demanding her time — one who was recently diagnosed with stage three lung cancer, and he too would like to make an album. And then there’s the family. And the divorce. And her house that is undergoing renovations, with workers pounding away every time she sits down with her guitar.

When will she be ready to walk away?

“I don’t know how,” she said. “I can’t. I love Bernie. It’s not a romantic love. It’s a spirit love, and it’s deep. I’ve never experienced anything like it.”

Aidin Vaziri is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop music critic. E-mail: avaziri@sfchronicle.comTwitter: @MusicSF

Online resources

To purchase the Bernie and the Believers album “Connection” (a limited amount of CDs feature Dalton’s inked thumbprint on the sleeve): www.bernieandthebelievers.com

GoFundMe page for “Send Bernie Home” campaign: www.gofundme.com/sendberniehome

Watch Bernie and the Believers’ NPR Tiny Desk Contest 2018 entry, “Unusual Boy”: https://youtu.be/8Gv6FHEmbhY