Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, this is Justin Richmond from the Broken Record podcast.
Speaker 1: Join me this June for a live taping of Broken
Speaker 1: Record at the Tribeca Festival. We're all bee in conversation
Speaker 1: with Infinity Song, a New York based soft rock band
Speaker 1: comprised of four siblings who will also be doing a
Speaker 1: couple of songs for us. You'll hear the artist and
Speaker 1: a career spanning conversation about their inspirations and dynamic styles.
Speaker 1: We'll be at the SVA Theater on June twelve at
Speaker 1: eight thirty pm. Defund tickets. Visit tribecafilm dot com slash
Speaker 1: Broken Record all lowercase. That's tribecafilm dot com slash Broken Record.
Speaker 1: Hope to see there. For close to three decades, Benkqueler's
Speaker 1: been crafting deeply personal indie rock that's both intimate and expansive,
Speaker 1: from his early days fronting the band Radish as a
Speaker 1: teenager in the nineties to his acclaimed solo career that
Speaker 1: began in the early two thousands, He's consistently delivered songs
Speaker 1: that feel raw, honest, and almost conversational. But his latest album,
Speaker 1: Covered the Mirrors finds Ben in a different place entirely.
Speaker 1: This isn't just another collection of songs. It's an unflinching
Speaker 1: examination of grief, healing, and the complicated process of moving
Speaker 1: forward after unimaginable loss. In today's episode, we'll talk with
Speaker 1: Ben about the loss of his teenage son Dorian, how
Speaker 1: Ben and his family embraced grief and managed to not
Speaker 1: retreat from their lives and work, and what it means
Speaker 1: to return to making and releasing music. We'll also talk
Speaker 1: about Ben's journey through the music industry, from bidding wars
Speaker 1: with his first band that led to him performing for
Speaker 1: idols like Tom Petty at a private party in Malibu,
Speaker 1: to going independent and moving to his ranch in Texas.
Speaker 1: This is broken record, real musicians, real conversations. This episode
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Defender, a vehicle engineered to
Speaker 1: meet challenges head on so you can explore with confidence.
Speaker 1: Adventure Seekers and takers can explore the full Defender lineup
Speaker 1: at land ROVERUSA dot com. Here's my conversation with Ben
Speaker 1: Queler from his ranch outside of Austin. It's like amazing
Speaker 1: to be you have a beautiful spot.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's like it's in a beautiful part of the country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's beautiful. This bactual physical space we're in.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yeah. This barn was actually moved here from
Speaker 2: Fourth and Lavaca in downtown Austin. It was part of
Speaker 2: the Missouri Pacific Railroad station in the eighteen eighties and
Speaker 2: it was moved here in the nineteen eighties as just
Speaker 2: a horse barn. But it was like four of these
Speaker 2: long classic Texas hill country story. It was like, you know,
Speaker 2: four of these long and there were four brothers and
Speaker 2: each brother got a quarter of the barn. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it's like that kind of thing. I don't
Speaker 2: know where the other sections are, like if they are
Speaker 2: still around or what, but.
Speaker 1: Be interesting to track down if it's possible.
Speaker 2: Exactly you know it was here on this property is
Speaker 2: just a horse barn. This front wall over here was
Speaker 2: just wide open to the elements. And so when we
Speaker 2: moved to this property, we just used it just as
Speaker 2: you know, bicycles and punching bags and kids would our
Speaker 2: boys would skateboard in here, and so it was just
Speaker 2: like a just a gnarly garage space. And then last
Speaker 2: year we decided to renovate it and really turn it
Speaker 2: into a studio. So we put a front wall on it.
Speaker 1: This is only a year's worth of work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it took about a year. Yeah, And a lot
Speaker 2: of this wood is old wood, and you know, you
Speaker 2: can see the old and the new kind of feathered
Speaker 2: in together. And then these huge columns, the blue columns.
Speaker 2: There's six of those, so that's like the original structure.
Speaker 1: I like the old and the new mixtent though, and
Speaker 1: I also like that, you know, it's all just everything's
Speaker 1: in flux, you know.
Speaker 2: And I just love thinking about, like all the energy
Speaker 2: of the people that have come and gone through this
Speaker 2: building on a train.
Speaker 1: It's very fun to imagine that stuff. You know, you
Speaker 1: can just sit and think about it forever. I'll never
Speaker 1: crack it, but now just can only all you can
Speaker 1: do is imagine.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 1: Do you know why this was moved here in eighty one?
Speaker 2: Well, so the ranch originally was the hurl Butt Ranch.
Speaker 2: There's a really famous Central Texas family, the hurl Butts.
Speaker 2: So this was originally like thousands of acres back in
Speaker 2: the day. And in fact, the first Willie Nelson's picnic
Speaker 2: was out here about a mile down the road, but
Speaker 2: on the hurl Butt ranch.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: Because they were friends the hurl Butts and Willie and
Speaker 2: so there's a lot of history on this land. When
Speaker 2: we found this property was twenty fifteen and it just
Speaker 2: sat on the market for a year and no one
Speaker 2: really wanted it. We were in the middle of a drought,
Speaker 2: and we always kind of had that My wife and
Speaker 2: I had that dream search of like okay, we want
Speaker 2: like some acreage, an old house, and some water, natural water.
Speaker 2: And this came up and we kind of watched it,
Speaker 2: and but it was really far away from Austin. We
Speaker 2: were living downtown Austin at the time. And we came
Speaker 2: and looked looked at the property and it was so cool,
Speaker 2: like but it was one of those things where every
Speaker 2: structure on the property was worse than the next and
Speaker 2: so like it was just like it needed so much work.
Speaker 2: Windows were busted in the main house. There were deer
Speaker 2: living inside like animals. Like it was gnarly. It was
Speaker 2: like a ghost house, but you could tell it was
Speaker 2: really cool, you know, like if you just put some
Speaker 2: love into it. Bones it had good bones, exactly, And
Speaker 2: so we went for it. And we originally didn't think
Speaker 2: we would live here. We just knew we wanted to
Speaker 2: have a creative space, you know, recording music, making art,
Speaker 2: a little retreat type vibe. And the more we came
Speaker 2: out here and the more we realized that, well, we
Speaker 2: don't really have a nine to five job, you know,
Speaker 2: we can kind of be anywhere. We were like, let's
Speaker 2: just move full time. So in twenty eighteen we moved
Speaker 2: to the main house, which I'll walk you over there
Speaker 2: in a little while, and we just loved it. We
Speaker 2: loved being out in the country. We're about forty five
Speaker 2: minutes west of Austin, and yeah, I just I can't
Speaker 2: imagine not living where I do. And I think also
Speaker 2: just you know, being a touring artist, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: always in cities, just like all the time, and so
Speaker 2: it really is fun to land at the airport and
Speaker 2: in an hour, I'm back here with the trees and
Speaker 2: the sky and the birds and now the studio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and your whole life is kind of an odd
Speaker 1: mix of urban in country totally. Oh yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: I'm a little bit of this, a little bit of that,
Speaker 2: you know. That's always and you know, my mom always
Speaker 2: said it was because I'm a Gemini, because she's all
Speaker 2: into that stuff astrology and geminized the twins, and so
Speaker 2: we were really good at seeing both sides of every coin.
Speaker 2: And my wife Liz a libro, which is the balance.
Speaker 2: So we actually work really well together, and you know,
Speaker 2: we hardly fight because we kind of just like see
Speaker 2: each other's point of view really easily, which is nice.
Speaker 2: But I just remember that I didn't really answer your question.
Speaker 2: So why was this bar moved here? So it was
Speaker 2: the hurl Butt ranch and it was just land. And
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty one, this local legend, Bobby Stevens, bought
Speaker 2: this parcel of land, which is thirty acres because the
Speaker 2: hurl Butt family eventually, like you know, divvied it up
Speaker 2: and who knows what happened, you know, thousands of acres
Speaker 2: became just little plots. So Bobby Stevens bought this ranch
Speaker 2: thirty acres and he was driving in Austin and saw
Speaker 2: wrecking ball about to knock over this Victorian house. So
Speaker 2: he jumped out of his pickup truck nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 2: was like, yo, what are you guys doing with that
Speaker 2: wrecking ball? And they said, oh, well the bank, the
Speaker 2: bank needs it gone by six pm, you know, and
Speaker 2: and Bobby was like, well, can I have it? Like
Speaker 2: it's a house, you know. He's like, can I have it?
Speaker 2: And they were like, well, if you give us, you know,
Speaker 2: a thousand bucks, sure, and so he was like, all right,
Speaker 2: I'll be right back. And so he gave him a
Speaker 2: thousand bucks, chain saw down the center of the house,
Speaker 2: put it on two flatbed trailers and moved it out here.
Speaker 2: So the house was moved here from West sixth Street
Speaker 2: in Austin.
Speaker 1: And on did he do that all in the four
Speaker 1: to six pms?
Speaker 2: Like pretty much? He at least got it off the property. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like this guy Bobby can do anything, Like he is
Speaker 2: just the epitome of like can fix anything and just
Speaker 2: has that drive and determination, you know. So he moved
Speaker 2: the house here and he lived here for a long time.
Speaker 2: And then shortly after they found this barn you know,
Speaker 2: from the railroad station and moved it here. And then
Speaker 2: there's a little house on the other end of the property,
Speaker 2: which we call the Happy House, which is where the
Speaker 2: band stays when we're rehearsing or if I'm producing an album,
Speaker 2: the artist has lodging and that was moved here from Austin,
Speaker 2: which is actually even crazier because it's from the Zilker
Speaker 2: neighborhood like a block away from where my family lived
Speaker 2: in Austin. So when we saw this property, we're just like, what,
Speaker 2: like that place is from Zilker And there were just
Speaker 2: so many little signs you know that's just pointed to
Speaker 2: this being home for us.
Speaker 1: That's great. Are you a person that's always looked for
Speaker 1: signs and things to know what.
Speaker 2: The ve always I've always been aware of them and
Speaker 2: felt energies from things that happen and numbers and patterns,
Speaker 2: and I mean, gosh, I guess actually going back now
Speaker 2: that I think about it, to the way I started
Speaker 2: writing songs when I was about eight, just like every
Speaker 2: other American kid, I learned heart and soul. Someone showed
Speaker 2: me how to play it dunda dun da dun da
Speaker 2: dun da dud d dante and that just repeats. And
Speaker 2: so I noticed, like, okay, well it's in the key
Speaker 2: of C, which I didn't know at the time, but
Speaker 2: I'm just seeing the white keys and you play this chord,
Speaker 2: you skip one, go down, play the next one, skip one,
Speaker 2: go down, play the next one, and go up one.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, okay, I see that pattern. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, what if you don't play the second chord,
Speaker 2: you go from the first chord to the third chord
Speaker 2: and then up to the second chord and then the
Speaker 2: fourth chord. And that sounded like let it be because
Speaker 2: I was a big Beatles fan because my dad, that's
Speaker 2: all he played was the Beadles and Hendrix and the Hollies,
Speaker 2: like a lot of British invasion rock and roll. That's
Speaker 2: what I grew up on. And so I'm like, wow,
Speaker 2: so let it be is heart and soul, kind of
Speaker 2: inside out. So then I was like, all right, dude,
Speaker 2: well skip the second and third chord. Let's go from
Speaker 2: the first chord to the fourth chord, then the second chord,
Speaker 2: then the third chord. And that sounded like a progression
Speaker 2: I'd never heard before. Meanwhile, there's thousands of songs with
Speaker 2: that progression, you know. But at eight years old, I
Speaker 2: was like, wow, this is incredible. And so I wrote
Speaker 2: my first song, and I would just sing about girls
Speaker 2: in love because that's what the Beatles sing about. So
Speaker 2: I'm like, you write love songs. I guess that's what
Speaker 2: you do. You know, That's all I knew. And so
Speaker 2: that's how it started. And so you know, I'm very
Speaker 2: visually inclined. But yeah, signs are you know, I've always
Speaker 2: sort of felt them and seen a little deeper, I
Speaker 2: guess than what's there. I'm really curious person. I like
Speaker 2: to know how things work. I like to kind of
Speaker 2: peek behind the curtain and really know about life and
Speaker 2: what the hell is all this? You know. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not a very novel thing to say, but that's
Speaker 2: just kind of who I am.
Speaker 1: That's still essential to who you are.
Speaker 2: And then like from a spiritual level, like I've always
Speaker 2: just sort of been fascinated about like what's beyond, you know,
Speaker 2: what is out around us that I don't see?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know you were raised Jewish, right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: were born in.
Speaker 2: San Francisco, born in San fran.
Speaker 1: And then reared in Texas.
Speaker 2: Reared in Texas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't really know you were born in San
Speaker 1: fran But once I learned that, there was a lot
Speaker 1: about you that makes a little more sense, okay, in
Speaker 1: the way that like that, like well even just your
Speaker 1: dad raising listening to British Invasion music primarily, and you
Speaker 1: can hear a lot of that in totally what you
Speaker 1: do for sure, And so would seem to me being
Speaker 1: raised in the Jewish faith in San Francisco at easier
Speaker 1: than out here in Texas.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean we were the only Jewish family
Speaker 2: in Greenville, which is a small town that we moved to,
Speaker 2: and so yeah, I definitely, like, you know, remember hanging
Speaker 2: out with kids who were like, you're going to go
Speaker 2: to Hell? And I'm like, really, like what's hell all about? Like,
Speaker 2: you know, because we didn't really you don't really talk
Speaker 2: much about Hell in Judaism. But yeah, we left San
Speaker 2: francisc go when I was six months old. My dad's
Speaker 2: a doctor. He did his residency in San fran and
Speaker 2: I was born there and he was part of the
Speaker 2: Rural Health Service, which back in the late seventies early eighties,
Speaker 2: the government would help pay for medical school as long
Speaker 2: as you served in a rural community after medical school.
Speaker 2: So he did his residency in San Fran and he
Speaker 2: would get all these offers like, hey, there's a town
Speaker 2: in Ohio or Pennsylvania, are you interested in that? And
Speaker 2: then one came along it's like there's a town in
Speaker 2: Texas that's never had a doctor. And my dad was
Speaker 2: like that sounds cool, like you know, the wild West
Speaker 2: or something, and so they came to Texas. I was
Speaker 2: six months old, so he was doc like. He was
Speaker 2: just like everyone's doctor, pediatrics, geriatrics, calm and cold, like
Speaker 2: even like minor surgeries.
Speaker 1: If need be, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Well, I think they would for deliveries. They would at
Speaker 2: least go to the hospital, which is like forty five
Speaker 2: minutes away. But you know, he did a lot, like
Speaker 2: he's a beast my dad. As a kid, I remember
Speaker 2: just like feeling cool, like to be able to say, well,
Speaker 2: I was born in California, Like there was just something
Speaker 2: cool about California.
Speaker 1: You know, do you remember the feeling when you came here?
Speaker 2: Well, no, I was six months old. Oh never mind,
Speaker 2: I remember no feeling.
Speaker 1: Never mind. Yeah, that'd be a small miracle, ya, No.
Speaker 2: I mean the first memory of San Francisco really was
Speaker 2: probably playing a gig there for the first time with
Speaker 2: my band Radish. You know, like in the nineties, I
Speaker 2: had this s grunge band. I was in high school.
Speaker 2: I was fifteen, and yeah, we went on tour.
Speaker 1: What was the origin of Radish, by the way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the origin of Radish kind of goes back to
Speaker 2: me sitting at the piano and writing songs. Okay. So
Speaker 2: I always say the Beatles made me write songs and
Speaker 2: Nirvana made me start a band, and so I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: I was actually at the skating rink in Greenville, Texas,
Speaker 2: and smells like teen Spirit came on, and I remember
Speaker 2: exactly like where I was, like making this turn at
Speaker 2: one end of the skating the roller rink and I
Speaker 2: literally had to pull over and like hold onto the sidewalks.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the fuck is this? Like this is
Speaker 2: the coolest music I've ever heard, And so I skated
Speaker 2: around a lap back to the DJ booth and I
Speaker 2: was like, what is this? And he pulled up the
Speaker 2: CD with the little baby on and the dollar bill.
Speaker 2: I was like, dude, this is band Ravana. It's really cool.
Speaker 2: I was like yeah, And so, like I went to
Speaker 2: the record store the next day and got that CD,
Speaker 2: and I was like, all right, well I need to
Speaker 2: start a band like this, you know, game over and
Speaker 2: I figured that all you need to have is three people.
Speaker 2: You know, bass, drums and guitar is the bare necessities.
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, every stool, every chair like needs
Speaker 2: a minimum of three legs. It's like, well, okay, rock band,
Speaker 2: it's kind of the same thing, and so I started,
Speaker 2: you know, in my town, there weren't a lot of musicians,
Speaker 2: but eventually I met a drummer and bass player who
Speaker 2: were great, and we had different band names, but eventually
Speaker 2: it became radish and so I got to kind of
Speaker 2: back up a little bit. So, you know, small town
Speaker 2: kid in Texas writing songs, how do you even you know,
Speaker 2: get out there?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And I started trying to get gigs. Literally, I'd look
Speaker 2: in the Yellow Pages and like look for places to play.
Speaker 2: In Greenville, Texas was a dry town, so there were
Speaker 2: like no clubs or bars. But I would call plays
Speaker 2: like the Bowling Alley and be like, hey, I got
Speaker 2: a band, can we come play? And They're like, no,
Speaker 2: we're a bowling alley or like Putt putt golf. Like
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to think of any place where like
Speaker 2: I could set up my band, you know, And eventually
Speaker 2: there was this pool hall called Chauncey's Place. And dude,
Speaker 2: I might have been like twelve or thirteen at this time,
Speaker 2: and I remember calling Chauncey. I would just cold call people.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I was little entrepreneur, dude, like at
Speaker 2: twelve and Chauncey himself picked up the phone. I was like, hey,
Speaker 2: my name's Ben. I got this band called Radish and
Speaker 2: we really would love to come play a gig. He's like, well,
Speaker 2: y'all any good. I'm like, yes, sir, we're really good.
Speaker 2: And I was like, in fact, I can play you
Speaker 2: a song right now over the phone. Oh way, and
Speaker 2: he kind of chuckled because he was like in his
Speaker 2: fifties or something. He's like yeah, He's like, okay, go ahead,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, because he was just getting
Speaker 2: a kick out of this whole thing. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: old school like holding the phone between my shoulder and
Speaker 2: my ear, grabbed my guitar and I play him a
Speaker 2: song and he's like that is pretty good. All right.
Speaker 2: Next Thursday, you got your own gig, you know. And
Speaker 2: so that was our first concert. That was in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety four. I still have the flyer wow for it.
Speaker 2: And so then eventually that led to gigs in Dallas
Speaker 2: and we started playing in the Dallas scene a lot.
Speaker 2: And in the nineties there's a neighborhood in Dallas called
Speaker 2: Deep Elam, which is iconic neighborhood for music, and in
Speaker 2: the nineties it was really a great place, a great scene,
Speaker 2: and I pretty much spent every weekend. As soon as
Speaker 2: I got my driver's license, I would just go there
Speaker 2: for the weekend, just like watch shows or play shows.
Speaker 2: Tripping Daisy the Toadies, like a lot of great bands
Speaker 2: were out of that scene.
Speaker 1: And Tripping Daisy was the precursor.
Speaker 2: To Polyphonic Spree, right, exactly amazing, And so you know,
Speaker 2: we started playing gigs. Now, Meanwhile, there's a really important
Speaker 2: part to my story because we didn't you know, it's
Speaker 2: like we didn't really know anyone in the music business
Speaker 2: except one person, and this person is so crucial to
Speaker 2: the story. So rewind back to the sixties. My dad's
Speaker 2: a drummer in high school and it's the high school
Speaker 2: talent show and my dad's band plays some cover songs
Speaker 2: or whatever, and then this kid gets up the next
Speaker 2: act and does an accordion a medleyon accordion of Beatles songs,
Speaker 2: and it's like incredible, and everyone's like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: that was Who is this guy? And so they went
Speaker 2: and introduced themselves. His name was Nils Nils Lofgren. So
Speaker 2: it turns out, you know, Nils Lofkin is one of
Speaker 2: the best guitar players of all time. He plays in
Speaker 2: the East Street Band with Springsteen. He has played with
Speaker 2: Neil Young, Crazy Horse like just such a legend. Also
Speaker 2: has an incredible catalog of solo records which I also
Speaker 2: grew up on with my dad playing those. So Grinn
Speaker 2: is like the coolest like garage rock band ever that
Speaker 2: no one knows so good. I'm so happy you mentioned that.
Speaker 2: Just made my heart. Loved the shine. So my dad
Speaker 2: and Nils became friends. My dad had the basement, so
Speaker 2: they started a new band called the Radical Five. They
Speaker 2: were also a trio, just three of them, but they
Speaker 2: thought that was cool, the Radical Five, but there's only
Speaker 2: three Like that was psychedelic, bro, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so they would play my dad's basement. My dad
Speaker 2: would tell you, oh, well, I was never good enough
Speaker 2: as a musician to really do music, so he and
Speaker 2: he always had this thing for being a doctor and
Speaker 2: went on to do that. But Nills and my dad
Speaker 2: stayed in touch through the years, and so like, whenever
Speaker 2: Nils would come through town, we would always go and
Speaker 2: see him in Dallas, and so like my first concert
Speaker 2: was Bruce Springsteen in the East Street Band, born in
Speaker 2: the USA Tour nineteen eighty five Reunion Arena, Dallas, Texas,
Speaker 2: Like holy shit, wow, you know. And so Nils was
Speaker 2: like my contact, like he you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like he was like, Okay, this is someone who's doing
Speaker 2: the thing that like I want to do. And so
Speaker 2: ever since that first song I wrote when I was eight,
Speaker 2: I would make little cassettes and send them to Nils,
Speaker 2: you know, and just be like Nils like, check out
Speaker 2: you know these songs I'm writing. And he was always
Speaker 2: so sweet, you know. I'd call him and be like
Speaker 2: what do you think. He's like, oh, it's great, Ben,
Speaker 2: Just like keep doing it, keep writing, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. Yeah, So fast forward back to the nineties.
Speaker 2: Deep LM. Radish is getting more serious. We're playing gigs,
Speaker 2: doing the whole thing. We did make like a cassette EP.
Speaker 2: And then CD became a thing that you could do
Speaker 2: like yourself, you know, like it became possible to duplicate
Speaker 2: like you know, five hundred or one thousand CDs like
Speaker 2: that was the thing. It was kind of expensive, but
Speaker 2: it was attainable. So we saved up money and we
Speaker 2: pressed our first CD, and so of course I sent
Speaker 2: it to Nils and I guess it was on his
Speaker 2: coffee table. He was making an album at the time,
Speaker 2: and the producer was walking by, you know, through the
Speaker 2: living room and was like, oh, what's the CD? And
Speaker 2: he picks it up and the photo of the CD
Speaker 2: was like three young kids behind bars, Like we thought
Speaker 2: that would be a cool album cover. Yeah, we're tough,
Speaker 2: you know, rawdug. So he's like, who are these kids?
Speaker 2: And Nil said, oh, well, that's my friend's son's band,
Speaker 2: you know. And this producer put it on and really
Speaker 2: liked it. And so then we get a phone call
Speaker 2: at my house.
Speaker 1: Who wasn't the god you know.
Speaker 2: His name is Roger Greenawaltz, an extremely talented producer, probably
Speaker 2: one of them I've had many mentors, you know. Roger
Speaker 2: is up there with Nils like in like, well, he
Speaker 2: calls and says, hey, can I speak to Ben? And
Speaker 2: so my parents are like, oh, yeah, sure, who is
Speaker 2: this though, you know, and he's like, well, I'm working
Speaker 2: with Nils so and they're like okay. So I speak
Speaker 2: to Roger and he says, hi, Ben, And he had
Speaker 2: kind of this you know, grandiose voice was really cool
Speaker 2: for me. But being a small town kid. I was like, whoa,
Speaker 2: this is crazy. He's like, Hi, I'm Roger Greenawalt and
Speaker 2: I'm producing Nils Lofgren right now, and I just heard
Speaker 2: your CD and there's this song that I really love.
Speaker 2: I want to come to Texas. I want to rehearse
Speaker 2: your band. We're going to record a three song demo
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna shop it around to major label record companies.
Speaker 2: And I'm probably fourteen right now, and so I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm thinking to myself, I have no idea what the
Speaker 2: fuck you just said, but sign me up, because like
Speaker 2: this sounds like the best thing. This is exactly I
Speaker 2: want to leave school, Like I want to play music.
Speaker 2: This is it, you know. So Roger came to Texas
Speaker 2: like during spring break or something, and we rehearsed every day,
Speaker 2: and he would tell the three of us, He's like,
Speaker 2: I'm taking you guys to art school right now. So
Speaker 2: it's like the first time we ever worked with anyone
Speaker 2: with you know, any kind of producer. And so he
Speaker 2: would do things like one day, he'd walk in one
Speaker 2: day and be like, Okay, today, John the drummer, he'd
Speaker 2: be like, all right, we're gonna remove the rack Tom
Speaker 2: on the floor. Tom, you don't get any symbols. All
Speaker 2: you get is snare kick and high hat and so
Speaker 2: like the whole day, that's all you get to work with.
Speaker 2: He would do things like limiting us, you know, and
Speaker 2: like taking away and just teaching us. And then as
Speaker 2: far as songwriting, you know, he taught me what the
Speaker 2: relative minor is, which is a whole concept. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're in the key of C major, the relative
Speaker 2: minor is a minor, which is that second chord and
Speaker 2: heart and soul. So like I already knew what I
Speaker 2: was here. I could hear it all, but I didn't
Speaker 2: know how to put it to words and so like
Speaker 2: things like that. So anyway, we recorded this three three
Speaker 2: song demo and he starts sending it around and before
Speaker 2: you know it, like the phone starts ringing off the
Speaker 2: hook at my parents' house and it's like all these
Speaker 2: major label record companies and so then you know, they
Speaker 2: loved the demo. They're like, well, but we hear he's
Speaker 2: really young, you know, like we got to see if
Speaker 2: he can really perform. And so then we had to
Speaker 2: go do the showcase, which is like this is like
Speaker 2: some classic nineties shit that I'm talking about right now
Speaker 2: because this is like so many people did this formula,
Speaker 2: you know, but it actually worked for my band, which
Speaker 2: is kind of nuts to think about. So we went
Speaker 2: to New York and we did three shows. It was insane.
Speaker 2: Friday night was at CBGB's and so like my first
Speaker 2: gig in New York, you know, outside of Texas was
Speaker 2: at CBGB's, and Saturday night was at Coney Island High,
Speaker 2: which I don't think is there anymore, and then Sunday
Speaker 2: was at Don Hills, which I'm not sure if that's
Speaker 2: there anymore, but they say that On Friday night it
Speaker 2: was like all the A and rs from the labels,
Speaker 2: and then they would they left CBS and we're like yo.
Speaker 2: They would call their boss, like the head of A
Speaker 2: and R say, Yo, this band Radish. You got to
Speaker 2: come tomorrow night and see them at Coney Island High.
Speaker 2: And so Saturday night it was the A and R's
Speaker 2: plus the head of an R's. After the Saturday show,
Speaker 2: the head of an RS called the presidents and we're like, yo,
Speaker 2: you got to come see this band Radish. On Sunday
Speaker 2: they're playing at Don Hills. This is what I was
Speaker 2: told you know like this is all the legend of
Speaker 2: it all sounds right, and so on Sunday night, I
Speaker 2: remember our lawyer, Jonathan Aralick. He after the show at
Speaker 2: don Hills. He was like, I've never seen this before,
Speaker 2: like and this is like this attorney was at a
Speaker 2: huge law firm like that represented Madonna and Springsteen, like
Speaker 2: big big stuff, and he's like, you had every president
Speaker 2: of every major record label was in that room. Like
Speaker 2: it was kind of nuts. And so we ended up
Speaker 2: signing with Mercury Records, and the album it like didn't
Speaker 2: really do much. It was like, you know, classic big
Speaker 2: budget major label thing. I remember, like really funny because
Speaker 2: I I remember I was fifteen, and I remember the
Speaker 2: publicist from Mercury would come to me all the time
Speaker 2: be like, Ben, you have to stop dyeing your hair
Speaker 2: different colors because like we're spending so much money on
Speaker 2: press shots, like no one's gonna know what you look like.
Speaker 2: And I was like whatever, you know, like stuff like that,
Speaker 2: like just and we went to the UK and actually
Speaker 2: had like a hit song in the UK called Little
Speaker 2: Pink Stars. The like did really well, and we did
Speaker 2: like Redding Festival. We'd sort of faith no more over
Speaker 2: there in Europe, and then it was time for our
Speaker 2: second album. But at this point Mercury was bought by
Speaker 2: PolyGram and it was like all these corporate mergers, and
Speaker 2: then it eventually became Island def Jam music group who
Speaker 2: didn't really give a shit about Radish.
Speaker 1: It's unfortunate. You guys were really cool. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't want to say unfortunate because that ends well, but is
Speaker 1: what it is, like of all the sort of post
Speaker 1: you know, there was a lot of those posts Nirvana groups.
Speaker 1: Most didn't I don't feel got the proper signal from Nirvana,
Speaker 1: you know, like they did a version of Nirvana that
Speaker 1: was like not that great, right, and whatever whatever you
Speaker 1: guys took from it was really actually really it felt
Speaker 1: like the spirit of it continued, you know right on Maneah.
Speaker 2: Well that's cool to hear. You know, Nirvana really was
Speaker 2: always my favorite band, but it was like also the Beatles,
Speaker 2: so there was just definitely like this melodic thing that
Speaker 2: I was obsessed with.
Speaker 1: What was your family thinking they were?
Speaker 2: They were so supportive. I mean that is like the thing,
Speaker 2: you know, it doesn't make sense, but it also kind
Speaker 2: of makes sense because if you look at the timeline,
Speaker 2: like back to eight years old. Like by the time
Speaker 2: I was fifteen, you know, it's the whole ten thousand
Speaker 2: hours and you're an expert thing, right, Yeah, Well, like
Speaker 2: I was already like just so deep in my path,
Speaker 2: so like when it was time to go perform in
Speaker 2: New York, and also I was just so I had
Speaker 2: so much confidence, you know, and determination, and my parents
Speaker 2: were just like, well, this is what he's doing. And
Speaker 2: they were so supportive.
Speaker 1: And you were kind of out on your own. Was
Speaker 1: anyone accompanying you on those.
Speaker 2: Shoe So that's a good question. I mean I remember
Speaker 2: when it was time to go on tour, you know,
Speaker 2: well we called Nils and was like, okay, well what
Speaker 2: do we do, you know, like we need like a
Speaker 2: crew or something. And so Nils's guitar tech, Michael Mtuzac,
Speaker 2: we called him twos Two's was our chaperone slash tour manager,
Speaker 2: slash guitar tech you know, slash driver. So two's another mentor,
Speaker 2: you know, taught me the code of the road and
Speaker 2: how the road life is.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Also, Nils did an interesting thing when the record deal happened.
Speaker 2: He called my parents and was like, I need Ben
Speaker 2: to go to AA meetings. I didn't drink. I didn't
Speaker 2: do drugs, but he was like, as a preparatory situation,
Speaker 2: like he should go to AA meetings and like hear
Speaker 2: stories because there's gonna be a lot of temptation out there,
Speaker 2: and you know what I mean. And that was kind
Speaker 2: of a cool thing. So I would go at fifteen
Speaker 2: to the local AA meetings and sit around with like
Speaker 2: these old people who are smoking cigs and you know,
Speaker 2: drinking coffee, and I'd just chill with them and listen
Speaker 2: to stories. And that must have been helpful, you know.
Speaker 2: I never got lost in drugs and alcohol. I always
Speaker 2: just really stayed clear about the music.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing man, So thanks Nels. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 1: incredible support man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2: So what's funny And I didn't mention it, but like
Speaker 2: in the Radish time, when all the labels wanted us,
Speaker 2: you know, we did the New York thing with the showcases,
Speaker 2: then we to go to LA to meet the West
Speaker 2: Coast labels. And at that time it was Maverick.
Speaker 1: Records, which was Madonna right.
Speaker 2: Madonna's label, and Guyo Siri was running that and Freddie DeMann,
Speaker 2: who was Madonna's manager Interscope. So Jimmy iveen with Interscope.
Speaker 2: Jimmy had a party at his house in Malibu, and
Speaker 2: so it was some famous fight, like a vander Holyfield
Speaker 2: fight that only like you know, ten people could pay
Speaker 2: per view in America, and like Jimmy had it piped
Speaker 2: into his house straight from Vegas in the theater room.
Speaker 2: As it was a party for everyone was going to
Speaker 2: watch this fight. I didn't even not many people watched.
Speaker 2: It was just a party, right, But it kind of
Speaker 2: blew my mind. That was a moment at fifteen years old,
Speaker 2: coming from Greenville, Texas, where my only understanding of pop
Speaker 2: culture was MTV, the radio and like Rolling Stone magazine. Right,
Speaker 2: so we get it. We walk into Jimmy's house and
Speaker 2: it's me and our drummer and my dad and the
Speaker 2: drummer's dad, like you know, and so we're hanging with Jimmy.
Speaker 2: It's like early afternoon. There's a few people there. Dre's there,
Speaker 2: and so we're like, well, that's fucking cool. And so
Speaker 2: we're like hanging with doctor Trey. I think my dad
Speaker 2: smoked a joint with doctor Dre in the in the
Speaker 2: limo actually, because he had his Limo just parked out front.
Speaker 2: But then like later as people started showing up, it
Speaker 2: was like Axel Rose, Robbie Robertson from the band who
Speaker 2: my dad was most stoked about. He was like, dude,
Speaker 2: you know who that is. That's Robbie Robertson from And
Speaker 2: I'm like, I didn't know who the band was yet,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like all I knew was like,
Speaker 2: that's Doctor tre that's Axel Rose. Holy fucking shit. You know,
Speaker 2: Joe's strummer from the Clash was there. What the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven swimsuit calendar Sports Illustrated girls were there, And
Speaker 2: of course Jimmy knew that I was a huge petty fan,
Speaker 2: and he was like, hey, Tom's gonna come later too,
Speaker 2: you know, he said he's coming, and so I was like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, this is incredible. But it just like blew
Speaker 2: my mind because like from my existence in Greenville, texts
Speaker 2: is like Doctor Dre and Axel Rose are in such
Speaker 2: different lanes. They don't even know each other. In my mind,
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's just different worlds, but all being in
Speaker 2: the same room. That's when I realized, I'm like, oh wow, okay,
Speaker 2: so actually they are the same like there, this is
Speaker 2: like showbiz, like they're entertainers, they're artists, and like of
Speaker 2: course they know each other because like who else can
Speaker 2: relate with this life, you know.
Speaker 4: What I mean.
Speaker 2: So like it kind of was real eye opening for
Speaker 2: me because as a consumer, you just see everything as branded, right,
Speaker 2: and that's what I guess people want, but it's it's
Speaker 2: we're all.
Speaker 1: Exactly separate. This this doctor drad gets fed to that
Speaker 1: audience and be audience exactly exactly.
Speaker 2: But it is funny because Jimmy came up to me,
Speaker 2: He's like, all right, Ben, Tom's on his way, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh fuck, I'm so nervous, you know,
Speaker 2: to meet Tom Petty. And so like I walked out
Speaker 2: front and I sat on like the stup like like
Speaker 2: the steps right outside of the front door, just waiting
Speaker 2: like I don't know why, like I'm at this like
Speaker 2: party at some dude's house, Like I don't need to
Speaker 2: go out there, but like in my mind I'm fifteen,
Speaker 2: I'm like, I'm just gonna go sit and pretend like
Speaker 2: I'm not doing anything. Sure enough, a rolls Royce pulls up,
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin gets out of the driver's seat and Tom
Speaker 2: gets out of the passenger seat and they walk and there,
Speaker 2: walking towards me, right to the front door, and I
Speaker 2: remember just sitting there and like them both being like hey,
Speaker 2: and just walked by me and entered the house. And
Speaker 2: so I'm just like looking around and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I guess I'll go back inside the party now, like,
Speaker 2: you know, like what was I doing?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: And so I go back in the party and uh,
Speaker 2: and Rick walks and he goes and sits on a couch,
Speaker 2: you know, and he's like talking to people, and Tom's there,
Speaker 2: and at some point Tom walked by me again and
Speaker 2: he was like, hey, man, do you have any weed
Speaker 2: on you? And that was like the one moment in
Speaker 2: my life where I'm like, God, damn, why don't I
Speaker 2: have any weed on me right now? But I love
Speaker 2: that like of all the people he's asking, like the
Speaker 2: fifteen year old, he looks year olds, probably got.
Speaker 3: Some weed on him.
Speaker 2: And so I'm like, no, man, sorry, He's like all right,
Speaker 2: it's all good. Then later he we circle back, you know,
Speaker 2: and see each other, and he's like, so, Jimmy's telling
Speaker 2: me that, you know, you're a really good artist, you know,
Speaker 2: And I'm like, well, I don't know about that. But
Speaker 2: he's like, well, you know, never sell your publishing. I'm
Speaker 2: like okay, He's like, I sold my publishing. They gave
Speaker 2: me ten thousand dollars. I thought I was rich. I've
Speaker 2: never made a dime off American girl. It's like damn,
Speaker 2: Like that's raw, you know, and we just start talking.
Speaker 2: So you know, it was just like sweet of him,
Speaker 2: like you know, just like going straight to some business
Speaker 2: like bullet points for like this young kid, you know,
Speaker 2: like he was like trying to teach me some shit.
Speaker 2: And then later the party's sort of dying down. And
Speaker 2: this is another thing like at that time in my life,
Speaker 2: like I was just so hungry, you know, and I
Speaker 2: would take my guitar with me everywhere. I would play
Speaker 2: for anyone at the drop of a hat. I want
Speaker 2: to get back into that mindset, by the way, Like
Speaker 2: I've been thinking about that a lot, Like there's something
Speaker 2: so beautiful about like when you're a teenager and like
Speaker 2: you're just naive and all you care about is the
Speaker 2: one thing you love, you know, which in my case
Speaker 2: was music. So of course, like why wouldn't I just
Speaker 2: go everywhere with a guitar and like, why wouldn't I
Speaker 2: just play for anyone, anywhere, at anytime. You know, I
Speaker 2: love that there's something so beautiful that kind of goes away,
Speaker 2: or it did for me, you know.
Speaker 1: I think Neil still has that. And that's why bother
Speaker 1: because when you're around Neil, you realize, yeah, there's something
Speaker 1: going on in them like that, it's just there and
Speaker 1: you don't want to take them out of you. I
Speaker 1: got that, yes.
Speaker 2: So they were like, hey, kid, play us a song.
Speaker 2: And so I was like all right. And so I'm
Speaker 2: sitting in this chair and there's a couch to my
Speaker 2: left and to my right and this big like crystal
Speaker 2: coffee table that's probably like you know, six feet long,
Speaker 2: and then a chair on the other end. And so
Speaker 2: it's like me, Tom Petty's to my right on the
Speaker 2: couch with other people kind of standing around Joe Strummers
Speaker 2: where you're sitting like on the other side of the
Speaker 2: coffee table, and just other people kind of around right,
Speaker 2: and they're like, all right, play us a song, kid.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, pop open my guitar case, pull
Speaker 2: out my acoustic I start playing a song. I finish it,
Speaker 2: and they're all like whoo you know, clapping and like
Speaker 2: screaming like that's awesome, blah blah. And so I hand
Speaker 2: my guitar to Tom and I said, Tom, play us
Speaker 2: a song. It's like all right. And he said the
Speaker 2: coolest thing to my fifteen year old small town brain.
Speaker 2: He said, this is a Bech song. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Tom Petty listens to Beck like I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like this is so fucking cool,
Speaker 2: and so again like I just shattering, you know, genres
Speaker 2: and like realities of marketing and all the shit that
Speaker 2: were fed right and the lanes and the categorical nonsense. Yes,
Speaker 2: like yeah, like, oh, he's so cool. Tom's cool. He
Speaker 2: freaking knows about Beck like that was you know. And
Speaker 2: so not only does he play a Beck song, he
Speaker 2: plays a Beck song I had never heard before, asshole Wow,
Speaker 2: which was on One Foot in the Grave and which
Speaker 2: I didn't which of course I went and found like
Speaker 2: the next day, you know, at Amoba Records or whatever.
Speaker 2: But he plays this song that I never heard it,
Speaker 2: which is such a really unique chord progression. Everyone out
Speaker 2: there should listen to this song. Then Tom says Joe
Speaker 2: and hands my guitar to Joe's drummer, and so he's like, ah,
Speaker 2: fuck off everyone, and they're all like, no, Joe, play
Speaker 2: play London Calling. Play London Calling. And I'm like, what's
Speaker 2: London Calling because I didn't know the class yet. Wow,
Speaker 2: you know, And so they play London Call. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh fucking twas fuck.
Speaker 6: And then he starts going to dank gank gank gank
Speaker 6: good dank gank gank gang good dank gang, London Calling girl,
Speaker 6: and everyone's singing London Calling, and it was just such
Speaker 6: a vibe and then he like you know, does like
Speaker 6: a verse in of chorus and then he stands up,
Speaker 6: hey kid, catch and he throws my guitar across the
Speaker 6: you know, million dollar coffee table, and I stand up
Speaker 6: and I catch it boom and I sit back down
Speaker 6: and then I played another song. So that was like
Speaker 6: my first time in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: I don't know if show business gets any better than that.
Speaker 2: That's kind of the epitome, right.
Speaker 1: And Jimmy wanted you guys on Interscope.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was Interscope. He wanted us really bad, you know,
Speaker 2: and he's the one we should have signed with. Like
Speaker 2: if you look back and really analyze everything. He's the
Speaker 2: one that probably would have been the right move. But
Speaker 2: you know there everything is right like meaning like yeah,
Speaker 2: like no regrets, like I'm so thankful that like history
Speaker 2: played out the way it did, and then I was
Speaker 2: able to have my solo career, Like I'm just happy
Speaker 2: with the way things are, and even if I was unhappy,
Speaker 2: that's still how it is, which we can get to
Speaker 2: in a little bit of like how things go down
Speaker 2: in life.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from ben Queler. After the
Speaker 1: break between Radish and Shasha. Your first solo period, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what what was happening in terms of your your songwriting
Speaker 1: and your development.
Speaker 2: Well, I started to write a lot more autobiographical songs
Speaker 2: a lot. I started to really develop sort of I
Speaker 2: guess what the Ben Kueller sound is, which is just
Speaker 2: very sort of on the nose, straight up direct it
Speaker 2: is what it is. And also when you write for
Speaker 2: a band sometimes there's like a feeling like, well, it's
Speaker 2: like everybody in the band has to kind of vibe
Speaker 2: with the song you write because you're representing the band
Speaker 2: through these songs, right, And so a big moment that
Speaker 2: happened in that period was I met my wife Liz.
Speaker 2: So Radish needed a bass player and a producer. We
Speaker 2: were working with Bryce Gogin, amazing producer. Did like all
Speaker 2: the pavement stuff, a bunch of Lemonheads records.
Speaker 1: That I love.
Speaker 2: Bryce heard about a bass player in Boston, Josh La Tansi.
Speaker 2: So me and John David Kent, the drummer from Radish,
Speaker 2: we fly up to Boston. We auditioned Josh. He's great.
Speaker 2: We're there for a few days. One of the nights
Speaker 2: he had a gig. He was playing with a band,
Speaker 2: so we went to the start to watch him on
Speaker 2: stage and you know, check out his gig. And at
Speaker 2: that gig, he introduced me to all of his friends
Speaker 2: and Liz was one of the friends.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So I meet Liz and we just hit it off
Speaker 2: like it was like we knew each other from another life,
Speaker 2: like another you know, kind of just an energy thing.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen ninety eight, and she said, oh, you're from Texas. Cool.
Speaker 2: I'm actually coming through Texas. I'm going on a road
Speaker 2: trip with my best friend Anna and we're coming through Texas.
Speaker 2: I said, oh, well, you got to stay at my
Speaker 2: place and she's like, oh perfect. Meanwhile, you know my
Speaker 2: place is my bedroom at my mom and dad's house,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'm seventeen at this point, Liz was
Speaker 2: twenty two, and I don't think I mentioned that I
Speaker 2: was seventeen. Looking back, She's like, I totally assumed you
Speaker 2: were at least eighteen, because you're like on a business
Speaker 2: trip in Boston, like with your band, like it was
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, Like didn't realize you were
Speaker 2: like a high school dropout, and so they eventually got
Speaker 2: to textas and the rest is history. Really, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think maybe a month later, I told my parents, Hey,
Speaker 2: I'm you know, most of my friends are going to college.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to go to college. I want to
Speaker 2: get closer to New York, keep pursuing music. So I'm
Speaker 2: going to move to Connecticut and live with Liz. Because
Speaker 2: she left Boston had to go back to Connecticut where
Speaker 2: she grew up, and so I moved to Connecticut and
Speaker 2: lived there with her in her childhood home, and that's
Speaker 2: where I started writing this new body of work. So
Speaker 2: I would go into New York City because Radish still
Speaker 2: had this contract with Mercury, but really now it was
Speaker 2: Island def Jam Music Group, and I would talk to them.
Speaker 2: You know, like, hey, you know, we just made this
Speaker 2: great album with Bryce Gagan at Muscle Shoals, Alabama. And
Speaker 2: it was funny because like I'm trying to tell them,
Speaker 2: like how good this album is. Meanwhile, it's like it
Speaker 2: was like a double album, eighteen songs like really deck
Speaker 2: and like just me spreading my wings, you know, and
Speaker 2: they're just like, it's never going to come out. Basically
Speaker 2: it never did, and in fact, actually we're going to
Speaker 2: release it. We're working. That's a project we're working on,
Speaker 2: like the unreleased Ratish album, which and what's really cool
Speaker 2: about that record is that there's like four songs on
Speaker 2: it that I ended up re recording for Shawsha. And
Speaker 2: at that time, pro Tools came out with this product
Speaker 2: like a do it yourself It was called like the
Speaker 2: Inbox and it was like a do it yourself record
Speaker 2: at home situation because I had like a Taskam cassette recorder,
Speaker 2: but this inbox thing was new, and so I started
Speaker 2: recording songs in my apartment in Brooklyn. We left Connecticut
Speaker 2: moved to New York. So I made a CD called
Speaker 2: Freak Out. It's Ben Queller and we pressed up a
Speaker 2: thousand because I looked around the room. I'm like, I
Speaker 2: don't have a band, it's just me, so that I'll
Speaker 2: be Ben Queller. I'm solo. So I started playing gigs,
Speaker 2: just like you know how I started as a kid,
Speaker 2: like just calling around, and I started getting gigs in
Speaker 2: the Lower East Side. And then there's another band starting
Speaker 2: called the Strokes, and we become friends and playing gigs,
Speaker 2: and the Moldy Peaches are starting. So now it's like
Speaker 2: early two thousands right in New York, which was a vibe.
Speaker 2: And one day I get a phone call from Evan
Speaker 2: Dando of the Lemonheads, which was a complete hero of mine,
Speaker 2: like up there with Kurt Cobain and the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So cool. So I get this message, Ben, this is
Speaker 2: Evan Dando calling. I can't stop playing this freak out record.
Speaker 2: Give me a call back bye. And I was like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, holy shit. So I call Evan back.
Speaker 2: I'm like hey, it's Ben Cohler. He's like, hey, dude,
Speaker 2: you want to go on tour? And I was like,
Speaker 2: yes I do. He's like, great, pick me up at
Speaker 2: the airport tomorrow at twelve and we'll head up to
Speaker 2: Boston for a show. And I'm like okay, I'd like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, like it's like he also just needed
Speaker 2: someone to pick him up at the airport. And so
Speaker 2: I throw my guitar in the trunk of my Volvo
Speaker 2: and I drive to the airport pick up Evan. And
Speaker 2: for like four or five months, all I did was
Speaker 2: open for him. And so like all of my first fans,
Speaker 2: as Ben Koehler, were Lemonheads fans. Yeah, and also like
Speaker 2: this is the other thing, is like Evan calling me
Speaker 2: was such a moment because up until that point, it
Speaker 2: was just like business people that were kissing my ass
Speaker 2: and like, you know, we're gonna make you a stock kid,
Speaker 2: like you know, that was just so fickle and flighty
Speaker 2: and you know, not real at the time. But Evan
Speaker 2: calling me was like the first person that I an
Speaker 2: artist that I actually respected and looked up to and
Speaker 2: wanted to be appeer with, you know, And so that
Speaker 2: was like probably the most meaningful bullet point, you know,
Speaker 2: in this timeline. And so then from there it was
Speaker 2: like he introduced me to Juliana Hatfield, I'd start opening
Speaker 2: for her, and you know, then Jeff Tweety got a
Speaker 2: copy of Freak Out, and so it just like started
Speaker 2: becoming a thing. So meanwhile, I would take these flyers
Speaker 2: to the Island f GM Music Group office of like,
Speaker 2: hey guys, I'm opening for Wilco and or the Lemonheads.
Speaker 2: They would be like how are you doing? Like how
Speaker 2: are you getting these gigs? You're not ready, You're not
Speaker 2: ready to you should be rioting and demoing.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Like I was in there and I'm like, well, I'm already. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: like you know, I did make this bootleg CD without
Speaker 2: telling anybody, you know what. I was just like trying
Speaker 2: to hustle it.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: So one day I was at a gig opening for
Speaker 2: Evan and Ben Lee was also on the bill where
Speaker 2: we became friends, and this guy came up to me
Speaker 2: after the gig and said, hey, my name is Michael McDonald,
Speaker 2: not from the Doobie Brothers stuff, Like yeah, yeah, my
Speaker 2: name is Michael McDonald and I just started a record
Speaker 2: company with Dave Matthews. It's called Ato Records, and we
Speaker 2: really want to sign you. We want you to be
Speaker 2: our first worldwide signing. And I was like, Okay, let's
Speaker 2: do it. And so the day I got Radish basically
Speaker 2: departed from Mercury. Ben Kuehler signed on to ATO Records
Speaker 2: and those early days was that's two thousand and one
Speaker 2: early days at Oh yeah, it was the first worldwide
Speaker 2: they had licensed to the David Gray album, which did
Speaker 2: amazing in the US. And uh so then we went
Speaker 2: in and recorded Shasha.
Speaker 1: What was the process of making Shasha with ATO as
Speaker 1: sort of your label, was it?
Speaker 2: That was cool? Yeah? We recorded in New York at
Speaker 2: this really famous studio called Seer Sound, which used to
Speaker 2: be the Hit Factory back in the sixties. John Lennon
Speaker 2: did a lot of solo work there, so we showed
Speaker 2: up day one. We worked with a great producer, British producer.
Speaker 2: It's funny actually my first three albums were all produced
Speaker 2: by British. British Yeah, kind of a thing, you know.
Speaker 2: That's that's my that's my sixties British invasion. Yeah. So yeah,
Speaker 2: we recorded. I mean at that point it was Josh
Speaker 2: who was in Radish, you know, who introduced me to
Speaker 2: my wife, and then John David, the Radish drummer, was
Speaker 2: the drummer, so it was kind of Radish was the band.
Speaker 1: For different at least from the stuff that got released.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're singing solid changed quite a bit bit
Speaker 1: sure for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, like the Radish stuff that was
Speaker 2: released is this album Restraining Bolt, which was like our
Speaker 2: sort of major label debut, And yeah, I definitely like
Speaker 2: had that sort of classic American singer thing from the
Speaker 2: nineties that you're kind of sounding British, you know, you
Speaker 2: know I want to Fly Take Me to the Sky.
Speaker 2: You know, that was like, oh so common in the
Speaker 2: post grunge era. I kind of outgrew that by the
Speaker 2: time I went in and made Shasha.
Speaker 1: I Thank god the way you developed it seemed like
Speaker 1: it was a really original style.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, and I embraced the piano, you know,
Speaker 2: because like in the Radish there was no piano. I
Speaker 2: just played guitar and sang, but you know, like pianos
Speaker 2: were it all started for me as an artist really,
Speaker 2: and so I had these songs that I loved on
Speaker 2: the piano, in other words, falling. There were just some
Speaker 2: real good piano songs, and I just knew, if I'm
Speaker 2: going to be a solo artist, piano is equal to
Speaker 2: guitar in my book. You know, It's a fifty to
Speaker 2: fifty thing kind of in my world. And also it
Speaker 2: being a debut album, and knowing knowing who the hell
Speaker 2: Bend Coelor was, Like, I really intentionally made the track
Speaker 2: listings just sort of unique and eclectic, you know, a
Speaker 2: rock song into a folk song into a seventies piano
Speaker 2: ballad and the psychedelic like trippy thing. You know, I
Speaker 2: love so many types of music, and I didn't want
Speaker 2: to just be one thing. I wanted to just kind
Speaker 2: of show people a little bit of everything, like all
Speaker 2: my flavors. Here's all my flavors, and then stay along
Speaker 2: for the ride, and I'll make a bunch of albums hopefully.
Speaker 2: That's kind of what in my mind that was like
Speaker 2: the game plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you might get a lot of flavors
Speaker 1: on it, maybe like a maybe Elliott Smith would be
Speaker 1: another person who you might get a rock song and
Speaker 1: take a more of a folk into a piano ballad
Speaker 1: into but in no way sounds like an Elliott Smith's
Speaker 1: record either. You know, Beck was.
Speaker 2: An artist who really like would do that sort of
Speaker 2: like back and forth a bunch of different stuff. And
Speaker 2: I always loved his early work, like all of his
Speaker 2: work's great, but you know, at that time, definitely was
Speaker 2: inspired by a lot of his early stuff. I just
Speaker 2: not even inspired by, but just like I really like
Speaker 2: fucked with it, and like like I related to what
Speaker 2: he was doing, you know, like I would listen to
Speaker 2: back and be like, oh, I feel like I know
Speaker 2: that guy. Like we you know, it was relatable to
Speaker 2: me and probably like millions of other people who listened.
Speaker 2: But you know, that was just in my little world.
Speaker 2: But then also artists like you know, Neil Young or
Speaker 2: Tom Petty like you know, and particularly Neil I would say,
Speaker 2: you know, going back and forth from piano to guitar.
Speaker 2: But then Nil's Lofgren, I mean, and if you listen
Speaker 2: to his first solo album, which is just called Nils
Speaker 2: Lofgrens Great, underrated, amazing album, you know he kind of
Speaker 2: switches between guitar and piano. So naturally that's kind of
Speaker 2: I just as a kid, was like, that's kind of
Speaker 2: what you do in rock and roll. You play a
Speaker 2: little piano here, you play little guitar, then you sing
Speaker 2: on both those songs. You know, Yeah, that's what ties
Speaker 2: it in as the voice.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get feedback from from Dave as like
Speaker 1: an artist like today?
Speaker 2: Dave actually would come to the studio when we were
Speaker 2: recording Shasha. We had a lot of hangs with Dave. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was great. He was so fun to be around.
Speaker 1: And yeah, would he give input or was he like
Speaker 1: hands off and just kind of letting you see?
Speaker 2: He was pretty hands off creatively. I remember he would
Speaker 2: talk about like video ideas, which is really fun, Like
Speaker 2: this song in other words, one of the piano songs.
Speaker 2: He was like, we need to go because it mentions
Speaker 2: butterflies in the song, and he was he was like,
Speaker 2: we gotta go. There's this place in Mexico where the
Speaker 2: butterflies like come alive at a certain time. Like I'm
Speaker 2: just picturing the video now, like let's go, and I'm
Speaker 2: thinking my mind. I'm like, well, dude, you're Dave Matthew's
Speaker 2: like you can go anywhere to shoot any kind of video.
Speaker 2: But I'm like kind of like this guy that's never
Speaker 2: put out a solo record, Like, you know, I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's on the budget.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, at but is Dave Matthew subsidizing this?
Speaker 2: Yeah you really want to spend it on a video?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: What a great guy. I mean, we had some great
Speaker 2: times together. It was really fun. Early days Ato.
Speaker 1: I was not so much pain attention to the mechanics
Speaker 1: of how things worked at that time. But I remember
Speaker 1: the Shasha record and me and all my friends really
Speaker 1: loved that record. We were in bands at the time,
Speaker 1: you know, and just trying to figure things out. And
Speaker 1: then I just remember at some point, and you can
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a memory
Speaker 1: of like there being commercials on TV for like On
Speaker 1: My Way, like your next album, Like yeah, it was like, whoa,
Speaker 1: this guy's getting big.
Speaker 2: That sounds familiar. Actually, there was something in so ATO
Speaker 2: Records went through RCA Records that's just for just au
Speaker 2: and stuff, and I think there was something in Ato's
Speaker 2: agreement with RCA that like if an album Ato puts
Speaker 2: out does certain numbers, you know, one hundred thousand units
Speaker 2: or more whatever, then the next album upstreams to RCA,
Speaker 2: Like RCA was like, okay, well that's good enough for us,
Speaker 2: so you know, we want to be involved. And so
Speaker 2: I think and and Shasha hit that target whatever it was,
Speaker 2: and so then for On My Way, r c A
Speaker 2: definitely got involved. And I do remember there were some
Speaker 2: commercials at that time that I don't remember what they were. God,
Speaker 2: I'd love to find them be fun to watch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Same. I don't exactly remember what they were, but
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking that it was that's wild, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a I'm finding out, there's a new ben coming
Speaker 1: from my TV. That's cool, bizarre, like was unexpected, you know,
Speaker 1: And that's a really that's an amazing album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you. I love that album because it's very raw.
Speaker 2: And that's Ethan John's behind the wheel on that drive,
Speaker 2: the recording console. And yeah, we didn't even use headphones.
Speaker 2: We just set up standing like right in front of
Speaker 2: the drum kit, two guitars and a bass player and
Speaker 2: in a little circle and just played everything live. So
Speaker 2: we played really quietly and without headphones. You got to
Speaker 2: play quietly to really hear each other. This really interesting
Speaker 2: way to record. My guitar player at the time was
Speaker 2: Mike Stroud, who one of the best guitar players I've
Speaker 2: ever known, and we toured together. He eventually went on
Speaker 2: to form Ratatat, which is such a cool group. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's Mike Stroud. So if you go back and listen
Speaker 2: to on My Way album the guitar solo, so Mike's
Speaker 2: and the right speaker, I'm in the left speaker, so
Speaker 2: the guitar solos on the Rules and Disaster, like those
Speaker 2: songs are basically Rattat guitar player. You know, half of
Speaker 2: rat Attat is that record. So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: So, you know, On My Way kind of kicks up
Speaker 1: to the level of URCA feeling like we can we
Speaker 1: can deal with this kid. You know, also like kind
Speaker 1: of broke through commercially to a degree. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you do your self titled record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you know, I'm always an interesting documentation because
Speaker 2: it's like really raw, like no overdubs, no headphones. It
Speaker 2: was just a band playing songs, you know, and it's
Speaker 2: really got a cool vibe to it, which is kind
Speaker 2: of maybe in hindsight, unfortunate because like it had the
Speaker 2: biggest push from the labe from RCA, you know, but
Speaker 2: we delivered like this album that was like super low
Speaker 2: fi and you know, very vibey, but like definitely no
Speaker 2: hits on it kind of a thing, you know. But
Speaker 2: my third album, I really wanted to do something really
Speaker 2: expansive and just very layered, and I heard a bunch
Speaker 2: of instrumentation and I met with Gil Norton, great producer
Speaker 2: in London, and we were talking about the album. We're
Speaker 2: talking about tracking it and okay, like who's going to
Speaker 2: play the instruments? And I'm like, well, I got my
Speaker 2: bass player, Josh and you know John David, you know,
Speaker 2: played on the first two albums, and we can do
Speaker 2: Mike Stroud, you know, and guitar or something. And then
Speaker 2: Gil was like, who's playing on these demos because we
Speaker 2: were listening to some of the demos I made. I said, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I played all the instruments on the demos. It's like,
Speaker 2: oh may. He's like, well, have you ever thought about
Speaker 2: recording the album just you? I was like, well, no,
Speaker 2: not really, but it sounds kind of interesting. He's like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: I think that would be really fun. He's like, I've
Speaker 2: only ever been in the studio with bands, so it'd
Speaker 2: be really kind of fun to just work with one
Speaker 2: artist and just like this does it all? Like you know,
Speaker 2: we could just like layer everything up, and so that's
Speaker 2: what we ended up doing. So he came to New
Speaker 2: York and we recorded this little studio called the Magic Shop,
Speaker 2: and it was like a musical playground. They had two pianos.
Speaker 2: They had two grand pianos, a black one and a
Speaker 2: white one. One was in tune. One was out and
Speaker 2: we had him like facing each other like Yin and yang.
Speaker 2: It looked pretty cool, and so we purposely kept one
Speaker 2: out of tune. Then you got the organ, and then
Speaker 2: there's a glock and spiel, and then at the other
Speaker 2: end is the drum set and then here's a wall
Speaker 2: of amps. We set it up all in a circle.
Speaker 2: Because there's only going to be one source being played
Speaker 2: at any given moments, you don't have to worry about
Speaker 2: bleed or anything like that. So it was just like,
Speaker 2: what do you want to record? Whatever you're inspired to record,
Speaker 2: you just press record and pick up that instrument. So
Speaker 2: it was really cool. So like every track, it's very
Speaker 2: piano heavy. Every song pretty much it's like we would
Speaker 2: do a take of the intune piano, take of the
Speaker 2: autitune piano, then we'd add like glock and spiel. It
Speaker 2: definitely has like this sort of like there's like a
Speaker 2: Springsteen feeler, like more of like a Jeff Lynn style,
Speaker 2: just layered, you know, one hundred acoustic guitars, but it
Speaker 2: all kind of comes together into one sound in a
Speaker 2: really unique way. Also, at that time, Liz was pregnant
Speaker 2: with our first child and so we're living in New
Speaker 2: York and that was an interesting dynamic because we were
Speaker 2: the first of our peer group to actually have a baby.
Speaker 2: That was kind of like an interesting you know, because
Speaker 2: like up until that time, you know, it was like
Speaker 2: touring and rock and roll and going staying out late.
Speaker 2: You know, you don't have to answer to anyone, you know,
Speaker 2: and so like now it's like, oh, we're pregnant, we're
Speaker 2: having a baby, which we're so excited about, and now
Speaker 2: I'm in the studio by myself. So it was like
Speaker 2: kind of like one of the most liberating recording experiences
Speaker 2: but also one of the most lonely. But it also,
Speaker 2: I feel like, has some of my best songs. It's
Speaker 2: got this song called thirteen, which is sort of one
Speaker 2: of my best love songs, I feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that was my self titled album, and then after that,
Speaker 2: as a songwriter, you know, whenever I would write a song,
Speaker 2: I would put it in my sketch books. I would
Speaker 2: always make lists of songs like buckets. I call them,
Speaker 2: like different buckets of songs. They're each buckets an album
Speaker 2: a potential album, I guess. And growing up in Texas,
Speaker 2: you know, we talked about how you know, it was
Speaker 2: all Beatles, British Invasion and then Nirvana. But then there's
Speaker 2: the third pillar of my musical lineage, which is the
Speaker 2: music that would be playing around me, like when I'd
Speaker 2: go to Walmart or like sitting at Applebee's having lunch,
Speaker 2: and that would have been the class of eighty nine
Speaker 2: country music, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: So like, there's like definitely a lot of country. So
Speaker 2: I would write country songs, even going all the way
Speaker 2: back to Radish. I would just sometimes you can't help
Speaker 2: what you're right, you know, it just pops out and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, that's a cool country song. So I'd
Speaker 2: put each one of those in this country album bucket.
Speaker 2: So after the self titled album, I'm like, Okay, this
Speaker 2: will be my fourth album. I have like ten songs
Speaker 2: here that are really good country songs. So that's going
Speaker 2: to be the next one. And so I called it
Speaker 2: Changing Horses. I decided, oh, well, I made the first
Speaker 2: three album New York, maybe I should go back to
Speaker 2: Texas for this one. And at that time, the band Spoon,
Speaker 2: their drummer Jimmy, you know, he had just built a
Speaker 2: great studio in Austin called Public Hi Fi, and Jim
Speaker 2: was like, dude, come down here to Austin, make the
Speaker 2: record of my new studio. You'll love it. And so
Speaker 2: we rented a house in Austin for a few weeks
Speaker 2: and we recorded Changing Horses, which is one of my
Speaker 2: personal favorites that I've made. It's so unique, and you know,
Speaker 2: I call it a country album. It very much is.
Speaker 2: It's got pedal steel and doughbro all over it, played
Speaker 2: by this amazing musician, Ben Kidderman. But it's my flavor
Speaker 2: of country. You know. It's a Ben Coehler album, like
Speaker 2: for sure. So we made that we go back to
Speaker 2: New York. It turns out that the Changing Horses was
Speaker 2: the last album for Ato Records. In the contract, we're
Speaker 2: back in Brooklyn and Liz is like, man, life was
Speaker 2: really nice in Austin. And Dorian, our son was born
Speaker 2: before this. So actually when we came down to record
Speaker 2: Changing Horses, Dorian was with us. He was like one,
Speaker 2: you know, So when we're back in Brooklyn, she was like,
Speaker 2: life was really easy in Austin. You know, having a
Speaker 2: baby there was super easy and cool. And so we
Speaker 2: decided to move to Austin in two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: or nine. So we get to Austin. I always, in
Speaker 2: the back of my mind knew that I wanted to
Speaker 2: have a record company because I've just always been a
Speaker 2: record nerd and I've just been obsessed with recording other
Speaker 2: people and loving bands and records and the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And so instead of renewing with ATO, I told him,
Speaker 2: I'm like, hey, I love you guys so much, but
Speaker 2: down in Austin just had a baby. I'm like, just
Speaker 2: changing up everything. I'm going to start my own record label.
Speaker 2: So the Noise Company was born, and that was in
Speaker 2: twenty ten, and we put out an album for me
Speaker 2: called Go Fly a Kite, which did it for an
Speaker 2: independent release. For our first release, did really well, ended
Speaker 2: up getting nominated for a Grammy for Best Album Art.
Speaker 2: I will say a non music Grammy, but hey, it's
Speaker 2: as my publicist said, dude, we can still say Grammy
Speaker 2: nominated artist. But really proud of that release because artwork
Speaker 2: is always actually really important to me, the aesthetics and
Speaker 2: I just love the tactile, you know, experience of an
Speaker 2: album and a record and so yeah, so we did that.
Speaker 2: We discovered this great band wild Child signed them. So
Speaker 2: that's it. So now that this is our like real
Speaker 2: community at this point, you know, the locals.
Speaker 1: Can Can you talk a bit about Dorian and your
Speaker 1: relationship with him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Dorian, it was a lot like me,
Speaker 2: just very musical, super creative, and we joke that like
Speaker 2: in second grade, he was given you know, at the
Speaker 2: end of the school year, every kid gets award for
Speaker 2: some different thing, and he got the friend to all
Speaker 2: Ward and he really was you know, he wasn't concerned
Speaker 2: with mundane, just sort of everyday stuff that most people learn.
Speaker 2: Like he like, you know, we'd be having dinner and
Speaker 2: he'd be like, Mom, this is amazing chicken, and she'd
Speaker 2: be like that's beef, and like, you know, and that
Speaker 2: was like when he was like, you know, a teenager,
Speaker 2: you know, like he just never learned the difference between
Speaker 2: Like he didn't care if if you were like conservative liberal,
Speaker 2: like what, like, none of that shit mattered to him.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: He was just like he just saw you for you
Speaker 2: and if he jibed with it, all good, if not
Speaker 2: all good, like you know what I mean. He just
Speaker 2: like did his thing and he was like a true connector.
Speaker 2: I mean it's amazing. Like the funeral, so many people
Speaker 2: showed up, Hundreds of people showed up, Like we met
Speaker 2: so many kids that would just come up to us
Speaker 2: and say, you know, Dorian reached out to me and
Speaker 2: like brought introduced me to these people, like he would
Speaker 2: put people together and just like people have come up
Speaker 2: to me since, like you know, we're friends because of Dorian,
Speaker 2: like we never would have known each other or and
Speaker 2: in all different scenes from like the skaters to the
Speaker 2: band nerds like cool uncool again, like none of the
Speaker 2: just people. You know, that's all it was.
Speaker 1: For him, seated.
Speaker 2: Yes, we started, you know, he started making music like
Speaker 2: in his bedroom here and dripping springs. Like when we
Speaker 2: moved here full time, he really started playing guitar a
Speaker 2: lot more, and I would hear him in his bedroom
Speaker 2: coming up with original stuff, and I'd go in and
Speaker 2: we'd talk and be like, dude, that's cool. Like then
Speaker 2: he started learning fl fl Studio, which is like the competitor,
Speaker 2: you know, it's one of these like recording softwares, but
Speaker 2: it's like a real hip hop like a lot of
Speaker 2: the hip hop producers use FL And he loved hip hop,
Speaker 2: and so he started making beats. I mean, he would
Speaker 2: like the incredible beats would be coming out of his bedroom.
Speaker 2: I'd be like, dude, like this stuff is so good.
Speaker 2: And then the last piece for him as an artist
Speaker 2: was like his voice, Like he's started finding his voice
Speaker 2: and it was such a like soultry sort of his
Speaker 2: voice tone is a lot of people are like, oh god,
Speaker 2: he sounds just like you, but really, if you listen,
Speaker 2: it's actually a deeper register than me. It's a lower voice,
Speaker 2: and it's like very raspy and just sultry is like
Speaker 2: the word I always think when I think of his singing.
Speaker 2: And he was like, Dad, like I want to put
Speaker 2: out some of these songs. And so we started like
Speaker 2: he would come over here to the barn and I
Speaker 2: would sort of help him mix stuff. And he decided
Speaker 2: he wanted to release his music under his middle name,
Speaker 2: zev Zev, which means wolf, and so we started dropping
Speaker 2: songs like as Zev you know, on Spotify, and it
Speaker 2: was just so cool, you know, and he was sixteen
Speaker 2: and it was really interesting, Like there was this period
Speaker 2: of time where he just would we would have these conversations, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, at dinner. We'd always have dinner together as
Speaker 2: a family, Me, Liz, Judah and Dorian. And for a
Speaker 2: minute there, like there's this like two week period where
Speaker 2: he was constantly like god, guys like mom, Dad, Like
Speaker 2: I just feel so weird, like I can't fit it
Speaker 2: all in, Like I need, like Dad, we need to
Speaker 2: be putting out a song like every Friday, Like let's
Speaker 2: I want to put out his song constantly. And then
Speaker 2: of course I'm like trying to explain well, like you know,
Speaker 2: Spotify really prefers if it's like a four week ramp
Speaker 2: up period and then then you got to pitch it
Speaker 2: to editorial like all the bullshit that is driven into
Speaker 2: our brains, you know, as professionals, and you know, he
Speaker 2: but he's just like, no, dog, like I want to
Speaker 2: I need to be dropping a song a day, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know in his mind. And he but just this
Speaker 2: interesting vibe where he was just like but yes, a dad,
Speaker 2: like I need to put out music. He's like I
Speaker 2: need to go hang with my friends. But like then
Speaker 2: I feel bad, like I want to hang out with
Speaker 2: you guys, you know, like, and I just can't fit it.
Speaker 2: Like there was this weird thing that was happening, and
Speaker 2: then one day Liz comes home, and she's like, God,
Speaker 2: everyone who drives a black pickup truck is an asshole.
Speaker 2: We're kind of like, really, okay, ha ha, like what
Speaker 2: like she like, so she kept seeing these black trucks
Speaker 2: that were like, I don't know, like running off the
Speaker 2: road or like. She kept having these weird things, these
Speaker 2: mother instinct vibe things.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So one night we're sitting around the dinner table and
Speaker 2: Dorian's it's like a Monday or Tuesday. It's school night,
Speaker 2: and he says, Mom, Dad, I'm gonna go over to
Speaker 2: Dylan's house after dinner and skate. And they're like, oh, okay. Well,
Speaker 2: and Liz kind of gave it to him a little bit.
Speaker 2: She kind of went into the thing of, well, Dorry,
Speaker 2: you know you have that test this week at school.
Speaker 2: You probably haven't studied, Like you need to study for that.
Speaker 2: It's a school night, like you really need to start
Speaker 2: thinking about your future, like you really need to start
Speaker 2: getting your act together and like get serious about school,
Speaker 2: you know, and just kind of giving him that talk,
Speaker 2: and he was so sweet. He was like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: know you're right, but I'm still gonna go to Dylan's
Speaker 2: and skate. You know, we kind of like chuckled, and
Speaker 2: we're like okay, you know, and so then he's like,
Speaker 2: all right, love you guys. So we have dinner. He leaves.
Speaker 2: Then Judah, me and Liz were watching some lame show
Speaker 2: on Netflix. I don't remember what it is because we'd
Speaker 2: never watched it since this night, and he always was
Speaker 2: home by nine, and so it's like nine thirty, right,
Speaker 2: and Liz said, hey, call Dorian, make sure he's heading home,
Speaker 2: you know, by nine thirty. I didn't really want after
Speaker 2: the whole conversation we had at the dinner table, I
Speaker 2: didn't want to be like, dude, good look, you know.
Speaker 2: So I looked on Find my app or whatever to
Speaker 2: see his iPhone see where it was, and I saw
Speaker 2: the blue dot was heading home on McGregor Lane in
Speaker 2: Dripping Springs, and so I'm like, I told Liz, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's on his way home. I see him. He's good
Speaker 2: and she's like all right, cool. As we keep watching
Speaker 2: the show, and like twenty minutes later, he's not home,
Speaker 2: and he would have been like ten or fifteen minutes
Speaker 2: away from home. So that was a little weird. So
Speaker 2: I pull up Find My and the dots in the
Speaker 2: same spot that it was when I looked twenty minutes ago,
Speaker 2: and so I stood up and I'm like, hey, something's
Speaker 2: not right. I'm gonna go check on Dorian, like maybe
Speaker 2: flat tire or something or you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I'm just like anything. And there's like not really good
Speaker 2: cell phone service over there. That's you know, we're in
Speaker 2: the boonies. So like I know that road, and and
Speaker 2: so I hop in the car and I just like
Speaker 2: race down because you know, it's like every parent's worst
Speaker 2: nightmare is that thought. You always think.
Speaker 1: This is a thought.
Speaker 2: It's always a thought. Be the worst of the worst
Speaker 2: is what you think, and it never happens luckily, and
Speaker 2: so you know, but I'm having a feeling, so like
Speaker 2: I'm fucking speeding, racing down, and it was kind of
Speaker 2: first weird thing was there were no deer on the side.
Speaker 2: Usually at night out here there's you'll see deer on
Speaker 2: the side of the road or see it's kind of
Speaker 2: you know, but there was like the seas were parted.
Speaker 2: It was a kind of the only thing I can
Speaker 2: think of is like there were no animals. There was
Speaker 2: one car that kind of drove towards me, that passed
Speaker 2: me on the road at one point headlights and then
Speaker 2: I'm just like hammering down and I make this turn
Speaker 2: and I'm going on straightaway and I see all the lights, blue, red, flashing, spinning,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, fuck, okay, what something's up. I
Speaker 2: race up fire trucks, cop cars. There's a little red
Speaker 2: car on the side of the road with a young
Speaker 2: lady standing there, shell shocked, just kind of standing by
Speaker 2: her car. I pull right up to there's cones. I
Speaker 2: jump out of the car. I start running towards the
Speaker 2: police and everybody. I'm like, where is he? Where is he?
Speaker 2: He's my son? Where is he? I look to my left,
Speaker 2: I see the car. The door has been cut off.
Speaker 2: He's not in the car. So I'm like, oh, and
Speaker 2: so then a big officer, whoa, whoa, whoa, sir, sir, sir,
Speaker 2: you're not allowed to be here. This is a you know,
Speaker 2: active investigation, the whole thing. I'm like, where is he?
Speaker 2: He's my son, I'm his father, Like what you know?
Speaker 2: Where is he? And he was like, sir, you don't
Speaker 2: want to go over there, And I'm like, what do
Speaker 2: you mean, Like, hey, I do want to go over there,
Speaker 2: Like I'm his dad, you know, like you don't know me, Like,
Speaker 2: I appreciate you trying to do your job, but like
Speaker 2: if my like is he dead, you know? And he said,
Speaker 2: you don't want to go over there. That's how he
Speaker 2: answered me. And so I knew. So I call Liz.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm just like, honey, you gotta get down here.
Speaker 2: And it's really bad. And she said, what it is
Speaker 2: the worst scream I've ever heard through the phone. Her
Speaker 2: and Juda get in the car the other Luckily we
Speaker 2: had two cars, and her and Juda race down and yeah,
Speaker 2: and Dorian was dead. Car crash, the red car that
Speaker 2: was there. This young lady, she said she was driving
Speaker 2: and Dorian was in front of her, and she saw
Speaker 2: a big black truck driving toward them, and the black
Speaker 2: truck went into Dorian into their lane. Dorian tried to
Speaker 2: correct to the right. A month prior, we had that
Speaker 2: huge freeze. This is twenty twenty three, there was some
Speaker 2: crazy blizzard freeze in Texas that kind of made the news,
Speaker 2: you know. So there were all these broken branches. The
Speaker 2: weight of the ice would break branches and so the
Speaker 2: side of the road was littered with these branches. Okay,
Speaker 2: broken branches Dorian swerved to the right, and a branch
Speaker 2: happened to be exactly at his head height, pierced through
Speaker 2: the windshield and hit him in the head and that
Speaker 2: was it. Instant, didn't feel a thing, didn't even probably
Speaker 2: know what the hell happened. And so the girl in
Speaker 2: the red car basically saw him swerve, but also thought
Speaker 2: that maybe he just turned into a dry and then
Speaker 2: when she went by him, she saw no, there's like
Speaker 2: a car in the woods, and so she freaked out,
Speaker 2: called nine one one, Thank god she was there. She
Speaker 2: you know, called nine one one. They said the black
Speaker 2: truck might not even know what happened, like it could
Speaker 2: have been just like kind of didn't see what was going, like, oh,
Speaker 2: kind of swerved and then you know, you don't think
Speaker 2: that like just a little action is going to like
Speaker 2: kill someone. So we don't know who was driving the
Speaker 2: black truck. And like, also it's probably good we don't know,
Speaker 2: like I don't, you know, like that's just it is
Speaker 2: what it is, and hopefully they don't have any clue.
Speaker 2: That'd be a lot better to live with just not knowing.
Speaker 2: So yeah, so that was when my life really changed.
Speaker 2: Driving home, the three of us instead of the four
Speaker 2: of us, you know, wof And finally one of the
Speaker 2: guys let me go see him. It's like, I have
Speaker 2: to see him. And they apparently when they got to
Speaker 2: the scene, they tried to resuscitate him. He was so
Speaker 2: gone instantly, but they had him in the middle of
Speaker 2: the road covered in a blanket, and I lifted the blanket,
Speaker 2: I saw him and kissed him, and then the judge came,
Speaker 2: the local Hayes County judge to pronounce him dead. It's
Speaker 2: like all the craziest stuff, you know that I find
Speaker 2: myself saying, like this stuff, it's unbelievable. I mean, everyone's
Speaker 2: devastated at this scene. You know, I just lost my
Speaker 2: sixteen year old son. And the judge said, if you
Speaker 2: need anything, twenty four to seven, here's my cell phone.
Speaker 2: And then of course they're like, what are we doing
Speaker 2: with the body? And I'm like, well, god, like, I
Speaker 2: don't even know what we're doing with my parents when
Speaker 2: they die, like, let alone my son. So I need
Speaker 2: to think this through. Now this is really weird. Rewind
Speaker 2: four years. We're here, we just bought the property, and
Speaker 2: we're hanging with my mom and dad and we're talking
Speaker 2: about end of life, you know, we're talking about. Okay, Mom, Dad,
Speaker 2: like what do you guys, Like, where do you want
Speaker 2: to be buried? Like, you know, in the spiritual side
Speaker 2: of me. And I think the way I am is
Speaker 2: because I'm an artist and I've lived in chaos my
Speaker 2: whole life since i was a kid thrown into music.
Speaker 2: I really crave order and a schedule and a routine
Speaker 2: and consistency. I really crave it, you know, So conversations
Speaker 2: like this is kind of I think part of me
Speaker 2: trying to like know what the hell's happening. So having
Speaker 2: this conversation with my mom and dad, like, well, we
Speaker 2: got these two plots up in Maryland, you know. I'm like,
Speaker 2: well that sounds lame, like I don't know, And I
Speaker 2: was like why. I know, Like I've heard of like
Speaker 2: family cemeteries out in Texas, you know, like on ranches
Speaker 2: and stuff, and so I started looking into it four
Speaker 2: years ago and I'm like reading the criteria and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 2: like we check all the points, like you have to
Speaker 2: when when you create a cemetery on your property, you
Speaker 2: have to basically section it off and survey it. It
Speaker 2: becomes a detached from your property and becomes Parkland, Texas state. Well,
Speaker 2: it's private parkland, but it's part of the state of
Speaker 2: Texas at that point because like who knows what happens
Speaker 2: to your property, but the cemetery is forever told my
Speaker 2: parents and Liz, I'm like, dude, we could actually do
Speaker 2: like this family cemetery. And they're like really, like that's
Speaker 2: a little morbid. I'm like yeah, but like it could
Speaker 2: be a thing, like then we'll all know like where
Speaker 2: we're buried. And and the boys loved this, by the way,
Speaker 2: like Judah and Dorian were all about having a cemetery
Speaker 2: because they were like, oh in like ghost stories and
Speaker 2: like you know, like just like cool like boyshit, you know,
Speaker 2: kids stuff. And so we actually hiked around, the three
Speaker 2: of us to like try to find our spot. And
Speaker 2: so we seriously found a great spot for our family cemetery. Okay,
Speaker 2: that was years ago. Then everyone's like, dude, kind of
Speaker 2: give up them, and I'm like, you're right, it's a
Speaker 2: little weird. So I moved on from that. So we're
Speaker 2: driving home, We're like, what the fuck do we do?
Speaker 2: And Liz said, well, we should call the rabbi. And
Speaker 2: that's when you realize like, oh yeah, like priests and
Speaker 2: rabbis like, no matter what you think, times like this
Speaker 2: is when you realize they serve a really good role
Speaker 2: in this world, you know. Yes, And so we called
Speaker 2: Rabbi Folberg, who bar Mitzvah Dorian, who's been part of
Speaker 2: our lives ever since we moved to Austin, you know,
Speaker 2: since he was a little baby. So I called Rabbi Folbrog.
Speaker 2: I'm like, you're not going to believe this. Dorian's dead
Speaker 2: car crash. And so he introduced me to this funeral director, Mitzi,
Speaker 2: who is incredible through the process. And so I get
Speaker 2: on the phone with Mitzi and she's like, oh, Austin's
Speaker 2: very populated cemeteries. She's like, I'm like, this is kind
Speaker 2: of weird, but like, have you ever done a family burial,
Speaker 2: like on people's property? And she's like, oh, I did
Speaker 2: one in West Texas. Once I said, well, I know
Speaker 2: this sounds weird, but like I already know I researched
Speaker 2: this a few years ago and I know that we
Speaker 2: qualify to do it. She's like, oh, well, that takes
Speaker 2: like months, you know, to approve for the state to
Speaker 2: approve something like that, and She's like, but you told
Speaker 2: me that judge gave you his number and said call
Speaker 2: him twenty four to seven. He's like, if anyone can
Speaker 2: make something like this happen, it would be that judge.
Speaker 2: So it's like, okay, So I called the judge of
Speaker 2: Hayes County and I said, Judge, it's mister Queller, Dorian's dad.
Speaker 2: I know, you know this is a little strange, but
Speaker 2: we can do a family cemetery on our property. I
Speaker 2: just I never set that up, you know, like it's
Speaker 2: that is we want to bury him here on the ranch,
Speaker 2: can we? He said, ah, he said, dude, that takes months.
Speaker 2: You know. He's like telling me the same thing. He's like,
Speaker 2: but he said, let me make a call. We'll get
Speaker 2: back to you. So an hour later, the judge calls
Speaker 2: me and says, mister Queller, your son was so important
Speaker 2: of this community. The state of Texas is going to
Speaker 2: green light this. Just get him into the ground and
Speaker 2: we'll deal with the paperwork later. And that was the
Speaker 2: first moment where I felt like I could control something.
Speaker 2: Because when something like this happens and it shatters you
Speaker 2: so wide open, it's complete chaos, and it shows you
Speaker 2: how little control we have over anything, and so for
Speaker 2: me to be able to call a shot, you know,
Speaker 2: was like just it was everything in that moment for me.
Speaker 2: And so then Jewish custom, you know, you're supposed to
Speaker 2: get the body in the ground pretty quick, twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: We don't do embalming or anything. You go in a
Speaker 2: pine box that just you know, goes back into the earth.
Speaker 2: Very simple, very you know. And so I called Mitzi
Speaker 2: from the funeral home. I said, and I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: who who digs the grave? You know? And she's like, well,
Speaker 2: you really just need someone who can dig. She's like
Speaker 2: there's a specific measurements. She's like she's rattling off the
Speaker 2: measure She's like it needs to be like seven feet long,
Speaker 2: by this and by this depth, you know, real deep.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I know who I'm gonna call.
Speaker 2: Bobby Stevens, the dude who moved the house here, who
Speaker 2: moved the barn here. Yeah, he exactly. So I called
Speaker 2: Bobby Stevens and word it guy. I mean people knew
Speaker 2: at this point. This is maybe a two days later
Speaker 2: or something. And I called Bob, having, Bobby, have you
Speaker 2: ever dug a grave before? And He's like I can't
Speaker 2: say I have, but I would for you. And I
Speaker 2: was like, I just start crying. I'm like, oh, Bobby,
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, dude, bring your whatever, your back
Speaker 2: ho or tractors, you know, your digger, bring it over,
Speaker 2: you know. And dude, that guy dug the grave. So
Speaker 2: before you leave, we'll walk over to that spot. I'll
Speaker 2: show you. So now this is acred land like it
Speaker 2: already was, but it's like it's like such another level
Speaker 2: for me to be creative here and like and Dorian
Speaker 2: was just trying to get home and so we were
Speaker 2: able to bring him home and he's here so we
Speaker 2: can go sit with them. You know. We got his
Speaker 2: picture up over the door. He's always looking down on
Speaker 2: us and so yeah, he's still with me.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: We'll be back with more from Bankweller. How did you
Speaker 1: guys as a family process or not process or continue on?
Speaker 2: Well, they say God only gives us the things we
Speaker 2: can handle. And I believe that. It's really funny, like
Speaker 2: all the cliches and you find as a father, like
Speaker 2: you know, it's there's so many cliches you hear, like
Speaker 2: when you you know, have kids, like oh, someone will
Speaker 2: tell you you're having your first baby, and they're like, oh, man,
Speaker 2: savor every moment, and you're like, hey, you know, but
Speaker 2: like all the cliches are so true. You know, That's
Speaker 2: what you realize as you get older, right, and just like.
Speaker 1: The priests and rabbis, Yeah, you sometimes lived your life
Speaker 1: not considering them.
Speaker 2: No, but like actually like not liking them and whatever reason.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, And then you realize there's
Speaker 1: a moment where you need them, and cliches like tradition
Speaker 1: in that way, cliches are really this just universal thing glee.
Speaker 2: And so there's that one. You know, someone told us,
Speaker 2: you know, well, God only gives us things we can handle,
Speaker 2: and and maybe that's true, and maybe it was always written.
Speaker 2: You know that Dorian was only going to live to
Speaker 2: be sixteen. And luckily Liz and I were so strong
Speaker 2: and our bond with Judah and Judah and Dorian were
Speaker 2: so close. And my mom has a theory that we
Speaker 2: choose our parents like that, like you know, before you
Speaker 2: you're born, you get kind of they're like, hey, you
Speaker 2: can go to these parents or these parents, and you
Speaker 2: kind of get your soul gets to decide, and so
Speaker 2: it's kind of this interesting fun game to kind of
Speaker 2: think through of, Like, so Dorian souls about to come
Speaker 2: to earth and they're like, well, so there's this Ben
Speaker 2: and Liz. You know, the dad's a musician. You always
Speaker 2: wanted to be a musician and you weren't able to
Speaker 2: really do it in your past lives. But this one's
Speaker 2: gonna could be really good for you. Dorian. You're gonna
Speaker 2: have this little brother, Judah you're gonna really love. But
Speaker 2: the bummer is you're only going to live to be sixteen,
Speaker 2: you know, So it's gonna be like a short bang
Speaker 2: like you know, but dude, you're gonna do so much
Speaker 2: and you're gonna make such a big impact, and that
Speaker 2: Judah is gonna be good. Like we're making it where
Speaker 2: Judah is going to be really strong so he'll be
Speaker 2: able to handle this. Your parents have already been through
Speaker 2: dimer tragedies. You know, your mom lost her mom when
Speaker 2: she was eight. So like that, I like to kind
Speaker 2: of game that out. It's again, it lets me feel
Speaker 2: like everything is okay because it was meant to be
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's a really beautiful thought.
Speaker 2: So yeah, how did we handle it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: We just one step at a time, one breath at
Speaker 2: a time.
Speaker 1: As a musician, How did it impact you creatively?
Speaker 2: So immediately, absolutely zero drive or desire to create anything.
Speaker 2: That's actually thinking about cliches. That's actually one cliche that's
Speaker 2: always been false, at least for me, you know, the
Speaker 2: one where they say, ah, to make good art, you
Speaker 2: got to be depressed and fucked up, and I may
Speaker 2: I don't even make art if I'm depressed and fucked up.
Speaker 2: I actually have to be in a good state of mind.
Speaker 2: So when this all went down, I'm just on the couch,
Speaker 2: like we're just mourning and it's so horrible. And so
Speaker 2: I think it was only you know, maybe a few
Speaker 2: months later when when song ideas start coming to me
Speaker 2: and I wanted that music. Songwriting has just been the
Speaker 2: one thing in my life since I was eight years old.
Speaker 2: That's been the constant, you know, through everything, and so
Speaker 2: I was really happy when a melody came to me
Speaker 2: or a phrase idea or something. I'd walk out to
Speaker 2: the grave, you know, be like, dude, send me some songs, man, Like,
Speaker 2: send me some cool ideas. Dude, Like let's keep this going,
Speaker 2: you know, like let's write a song together, you know.
Speaker 2: And so I would. I started writing, and so that
Speaker 2: became this new album which is called Cover the Mirrors,
Speaker 2: and I call it sort of a moody album, but
Speaker 2: maybe it's not. I'm really bad at talking about my music.
Speaker 2: I really know nothing, but to me, it's a moody,
Speaker 2: sort of down tempo album. There are some rockers and
Speaker 2: there's some like up tempo things, but generally for me,
Speaker 2: it's definitely like a somber feeling.
Speaker 1: Do the songs directly deal with your loss.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah, I think they all do. They all
Speaker 2: definitely to me touch on all the aspects of what
Speaker 2: I've gone through since losing him. The casual list and
Speaker 2: you might not hear every reference being like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: that's about he lost his son, but it is. You know,
Speaker 2: still I have most of the same emotions that I
Speaker 2: did prior to losing him. It's just this big wound
Speaker 2: in my heart, you know, that's the difference now. But
Speaker 2: I'm still like the same guy. And talking to other
Speaker 2: people that lost children has been a great help for me.
Speaker 2: And there's one guy that I spoke to and he
Speaker 2: told me something really interesting that was, you know, I
Speaker 2: hate to tell you this, but but like now you
Speaker 2: have a superpower. You never wanted it, but you have
Speaker 2: it now. And what it is is like your normal
Speaker 2: happiness scale, Like happiness is kind of here up here,
Speaker 2: and your sadness is like down here. But now your
Speaker 2: happiness is way up here, but your sadness is way
Speaker 2: down there. And also your like spectrum band of empathy
Speaker 2: has just increased. And so like it's like this weird
Speaker 2: like what you've lost everything, but you've also gained this
Speaker 2: new superpower. That's always explaining it to me. It's kind
Speaker 2: of interesting because I feel that, and so it's kind
Speaker 2: of been fascinating too, like just in the songwriting process too,
Speaker 2: and just like lyrics and I don't know, they hit
Speaker 2: differently from me, you know, certain ideas and concepts.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the new album is really it's really beautiful,
Speaker 1: you know, thank you, not only just the writing, but
Speaker 1: there's a depth that sonically and in your voice and
Speaker 1: in the chords and yeah, just anthing to it that's
Speaker 1: really just sounds gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Oh well, thank you.
Speaker 1: Would you mind if you're up for playing breaks?
Speaker 2: Whoa Breaks?
Speaker 1: It's one of my favorite songs from it so far.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm so.
Speaker 2: Happy you want to hear this one because I've actually
Speaker 2: never performed it before, so this is the first time
Speaker 2: to sing this for anybody. This is called breaks.
Speaker 3: When you think about being away from you want to
Speaker 3: you convince yourself it'll be okay, but it's not being
Speaker 3: u at first, it's enough, but time makes it.
Speaker 4: It's the breaks. It always breaks a.
Speaker 3: It's the breaks, it always breaks the hard.
Speaker 4: It's the ticks.
Speaker 3: It always takes, feeling that wakes, the moment that the
Speaker 3: falls a pr Yeah, A word sounds sweet. On the
Speaker 3: other end of that line, I'm paralyzed by the state
Speaker 3: arm in lou it's in.
Speaker 4: My mind, my crag.
Speaker 5: Z min crazy haze in mind.
Speaker 3: It's the breaks, it always breaks the hard.
Speaker 4: It's the breaks, it always breaks. The hart. It's the text.
Speaker 3: It always takes, the feeling that at a wakes, the
Speaker 3: moment that it falls apart. Yeah, walking hotel always like
Speaker 3: Olympic tracks, shoot after shoot, talking to myself to stop
Speaker 3: and stretch my back, just boiling for you.
Speaker 4: For two There's absolutely nothing I can do because it's
Speaker 4: the breaks.
Speaker 3: It always breaks the hart. It's the breaks, it always
Speaker 3: breaks the hard. It's the takes, it always takes the
Speaker 3: feeling that awakes the moment.
Speaker 4: That it falls Apard.
Speaker 5: Yeah, same phone call.
Speaker 4: What you do today?
Speaker 5: Cool?
Speaker 3: Gotta go? How could all those hours give us nothing
Speaker 3: to say? I never know.
Speaker 4: My day.
Speaker 3: Move slow still, they give me nothing. I can't show you.
Speaker 3: But the breaks it always breaks.
Speaker 4: The harr Yeah, the breaks, it always breaks.
Speaker 5: The harr.
Speaker 4: It's the takes.
Speaker 3: It always takes, the feeling that awakes the moment that
Speaker 3: it falls. Oh yeah, I want to see the world
Speaker 3: through your eyes again. Want my friend standing by, Wanna
Speaker 3: touch a body, Wanna kiss your skin, tuck in, nest
Speaker 3: on mine, hand on your chest, and cry.
Speaker 4: Cry baby cry.
Speaker 3: It's the breaks, it always breaks, the hard. It's the breaks,
Speaker 3: it always breaks, the hard. It's the tikes, it always takes,
Speaker 3: the feeling that awakes the moment day falls apart. It's
Speaker 3: the breaks, it always breaks. The hard Yeah, the breaks,
Speaker 3: it always breaks the hard.
Speaker 4: It's the eggs and make you feel the wounds that
Speaker 4: want to heal.
Speaker 2: From way too much time.
Speaker 7: Apall cry, Babby cry, cry babyaby, cry, cry Babby crying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really beautiful man, Thank you for requesting
Speaker 1: that one. That song. It's like it's like the course
Speaker 1: is already good. With the it's the breaks always break.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love that.
Speaker 2: I don't even know, like grammatically if it even makes
Speaker 2: itse like. But so I've like thought this through, you know,
Speaker 2: because I got called out on a song once. I
Speaker 2: was hanging out with some friends and William H. Macy
Speaker 2: was there. Oh I love this guy, legend Yeah, And
Speaker 2: I played my song Run, and in the chorus of Run,
Speaker 2: it says, since I I was fifteen, I have ran
Speaker 2: everywhere you can run, and Macy was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's correct. Since I was fifteen, I have ran.
Speaker 2: It's I have run everywhere. But but I have ran
Speaker 2: sounded so much better than run, do you know what
Speaker 2: I mean? And so now ever since then, I'm like
Speaker 2: really think through my lyrics in a different ways. I
Speaker 2: always think of Macy And so with the breaks, that
Speaker 2: always breaks the heart. So I'm calling the song breaks
Speaker 2: b R a k e s like the breaks of
Speaker 2: a car, you know, like the stopping of it. And
Speaker 2: then it's those breaks like it's the stops right right
Speaker 2: that then breaks b our eaks heart. So That's where
Speaker 2: I'm coming at it from.
Speaker 1: That bit is so loaded, but then it goes somewhere else,
Speaker 1: and so then it becomes even like this more rich
Speaker 1: song because it because in the the changes on the
Speaker 1: it's the takes that I was taken. It's do lyrically,
Speaker 1: but it takes.
Speaker 2: Changes, takes the feelings that awakes, the moment that it
Speaker 2: falls apart.
Speaker 1: It's so simple, but it's there's so but it's so.
Speaker 2: It's like this like uh, cathartic. I get into this
Speaker 2: meditative state on that song, you know, And it's actually
Speaker 2: it was around the self titled album. I think I
Speaker 2: was saying, how you know, I was like really like
Speaker 2: zeroing in on my songwriting in a way, and kind
Speaker 2: of I felt like on that album, I finally felt
Speaker 2: like I found I found Ben Kuehler's sound like Run
Speaker 2: was kind of the beginning of that. But there's this
Speaker 2: song Penny on the Train Track and thirteen where it's
Speaker 2: like I just went through this moment where I just
Speaker 2: kept writing verse after verse and but still with like
Speaker 2: a poppy chorus.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Breaks is sort of one of those songs where it's
Speaker 2: just it's definitely a story. You're in the long ride.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, buckle up, this is gonna take a second.
Speaker 2: I hope that it keeps the listeners attention. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's another thing, is like I never want anything to
Speaker 2: be I don't enjoy making overly self indulgent music, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, And like I am a firm
Speaker 2: believer of like don't boris get to the chorus and like,
Speaker 2: if you're gonna say something like it better be good. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope that And that's sort of a
Speaker 2: challenge when I'm writing a song like breaks. I want
Speaker 2: to take you on a journey, but I like, every
Speaker 2: word's got to mean something, whether it literally means something
Speaker 2: or the rhyme of it is interesting enough to just
Speaker 2: keep you listening, you know. I want it's kind of
Speaker 2: a fun trick to see if how long I can
Speaker 2: keep your attention.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's a great song.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I really I am really flattered that you
Speaker 2: chose that one for me to play. And this one, now,
Speaker 2: this one was like a very private song and I
Speaker 2: even recorded it when no one was here, like I
Speaker 2: just set up to my and then we built it
Speaker 2: on top of that vocal and guitar performance the strings.
Speaker 2: That's another thing about Cover the Mirrors as an album
Speaker 2: that's different for me from my past albums, is that
Speaker 2: there is a lot of strings on this album. You know,
Speaker 2: I've had songs over the years where it's like maybe
Speaker 2: an album will have like one or two songs that
Speaker 2: has strings, or you maybe have one ballad with strings.
Speaker 2: But this one, almost half the album has strings. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't intentional. I just kept hearing these string parts
Speaker 2: in my head now looking back, and when I listened
Speaker 2: to it, there is like this sort of dare I say,
Speaker 2: like a funeral element, memorial vibe that just because of
Speaker 2: that sound, I don't know, but I love it. I
Speaker 2: mean it's really comforting. Also, like the lead violinist on
Speaker 2: all these tracks as a friend of mine in Austin
Speaker 2: Warren Hood, the best violinist fiddle player ever, so good.
Speaker 1: You know what's interesting us who talk about or write
Speaker 1: about music often boil albums down sometimes for finding an
Speaker 1: easy way to just reference something like that album is
Speaker 1: this and you just come up with this very But
Speaker 1: do you do that with your own album?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I like think like Shasha is like okay, that was
Speaker 2: the opening debut, like a bunch of different types of
Speaker 2: songs on one like here I Am and I can
Speaker 2: do like these different things on my Way is just
Speaker 2: like garage rock. Just right there, band in the room,
Speaker 2: press record on the tape machine, let it run, do
Speaker 2: three takes, pick your favorite and move on. Ben Koehler.
Speaker 2: When that's me playing all the instruments, that was me
Speaker 2: really layering and going for a very lush sound and
Speaker 2: just there's a lot going on in the speakers of
Speaker 2: that one, and then of course changing horses. I think
Speaker 2: of that that's the country.
Speaker 1: Album, you know, Yeah, but.
Speaker 2: I am figure. I mean, this is I guess I'll
Speaker 2: maybe in a years think of it as like the
Speaker 2: Dorian album. I mean, because it is. It's the first
Speaker 2: music I've made since he died.
Speaker 1: So well, I did want to ask to just you
Speaker 1: mentioned thirteen a couple of times. Yeah, that's that's d
Speaker 1: Seron's favorite song of yours.
Speaker 2: Ye it is, man, it's so sweet. Ed is obsessed
Speaker 2: with that song. I think also one of the things
Speaker 2: he really loves about it is like it's like an
Speaker 2: anti pop song. There's no chorus to that song, like
Speaker 2: it really is just verse verse. It was so fun
Speaker 2: to write that song, and that was I finished it
Speaker 2: in the studio when I was doing the self titled album.
Speaker 2: So Gil was there in the control room, I was
Speaker 2: in the live room. I had the opening phrase, We've
Speaker 2: been in the rain, We've been on the mountain, We've
Speaker 2: been around the five And I just kept writing verses,
Speaker 2: and I had like a sheet of paper for each verse,
Speaker 2: and I would shuffle him around on the floor and
Speaker 2: to create eight, What's verse one? What's verse two? And
Speaker 2: I orchestrated the like I knew that the first verse
Speaker 2: and the last one. So I knew I was going
Speaker 2: to end in the taxi when you told me you
Speaker 2: loved me, and then I wasn't alone. I knew that
Speaker 2: was it. You got to have your book ends, at
Speaker 2: least in my mind, that's you know. If I have that,
Speaker 2: I'm good. And then so I just orchestrated each verse
Speaker 2: and what number you know, when they appeared. Ed has
Speaker 2: been a friend now of mine for many years. We
Speaker 2: met funny enough. It was like a Thursday. I was home,
Speaker 2: I was here. I got a call from a booking
Speaker 2: agent and she said, hey, BK, are you in Austin
Speaker 2: tomorrow Friday? And I said, yeah, I'm around. She said,
Speaker 2: can you open for Ed Sheeran? And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I guess so like what happened?
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: She's like, well, the opening act is stuck in Australia
Speaker 2: something with immigration and like the passport and isn't going
Speaker 2: to make the show, so can you fill in? And
Speaker 2: I was like sure. So I showed up to the gig,
Speaker 2: like I sound checked. I just played solo acoustic and
Speaker 2: I sound checked, and his crew's like getting the stage going,
Speaker 2: and there was just one guitar stand and one guitar
Speaker 2: and I remember asking his crew guys, I'm like, so,
Speaker 2: where's like all the back line, where's the band? He's
Speaker 2: like band? What band?
Speaker 1: Man?
Speaker 2: He just played solo and I was like, oh no, shit,
Speaker 2: like we're in an arena, you know. And I was
Speaker 2: like that is so great, Like I love that because
Speaker 2: I love performing solo, and so many times as an
Speaker 2: artist you're told like you gotta bring a band on
Speaker 2: or like Saturday Night Live didn't let Ed play solo
Speaker 2: on Saturday Night Live because they were like, you gotta
Speaker 2: have a band. So even Ed had to like get
Speaker 2: a band just to do Saturday Night Live, you know.
Speaker 2: But anyway, so I was like good for him. So
Speaker 2: then anyway, we ended up meeting that night. He came
Speaker 2: up to me after my set and he was like, dude,
Speaker 2: and he was like, what do you are You? Can
Speaker 2: you come to Dallas and open tomorrow in Dallas? And
Speaker 2: I'm like sure, And so I did Dallas and then
Speaker 2: he was like, can you do Oklahoma City? And then
Speaker 2: eventually he was just like, just do the rest of
Speaker 2: the tour. The other guys can't make it. And so
Speaker 2: I ended up doing this whole East Coast run with
Speaker 2: Ed back in twenty fifteen, and so we became close friends.
Speaker 2: And he called me when him and his wife Cherry
Speaker 2: were getting married and I was like, mate, can you
Speaker 2: play thirteen at our wedding as our first dance? I
Speaker 2: was like, I'd be honored, you know. So we did
Speaker 2: that and it was really fun, and I just remember
Speaker 2: in a haze that night during the party him stumbling
Speaker 2: towards me with Harry Styles and their arms are around
Speaker 2: each other, and Ed comes up to me. He's like,
Speaker 2: this has ben fucking quella, Harry. Can you believe that
Speaker 2: song thirteen that he played earlier? And Harr's like yeah, man,
Speaker 2: and Ed's like it doesn't have a fucking chorus, and
Speaker 2: then Harry's like, yeah, wow, like a song without a chorus,
Speaker 2: Like they were just like loving that, and I love that,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, because I mean these are
Speaker 2: like so two of the biggest pop stars in the world.
Speaker 2: Like if you don't have a chorus, you're done, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think that's one of the reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: it's obviously like very heartfelt song and you know, it's
Speaker 2: like taken straight out of my love life with Liz.
Speaker 2: And then I think, you know, people like Ed and
Speaker 2: Cherry can relate with that, and you know other people.
Speaker 2: But from a technical standpoint, I just loved that he
Speaker 2: loved that it doesn't have a chorus.
Speaker 1: That's incredible. Man. Well, hey man, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me out and being so generous with your time and
Speaker 1: with your music, and.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for having me on Broken Record of course, honor.
Speaker 1: In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
Speaker 1: playlist of some of our favorite Bank Collor songs, and
Speaker 1: be sure to check out YouTube dot com slash Broken
Speaker 1: Record podcast to see all of our video interviews, tunes,
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