HM: Ben, can we start off with you telling me a little about where you’re from?
BB: I’m originally from Epping, New Hampshire and then Monroe, Maine. Monroe, the last I checked had 856 people in it, dead end dirt road with three gravel pits on it.
HM: So you’ve been in NE your whole life?
BB: Yep
HM: Can you tell me a little about your parents?
BB: My Dad ran a saw mill all through when I grew up. My Mom has worked a number of jobs; teacher, school librarian as a kid. She milked cows for a while down the street.
HM: Did either of your parents have an interest in music or were they musicians?
BB: They both like music, but neither one plays for craft. My Dad always says he can play the radio and he’s still working on the kazoo.
HM: Well how did you get into music then, into playing?
BB: I don’t know what first drew me to it, but it started with saxophone in the fifth grade band and kinda went from there..
HM: What do you play now?
BB: Well my main instrument is harmonica, but I also play guitar and try my hand at songwriting every once in a while.
HM: What brought you to country music? Would you consider yourself a country musician?
BB: I’d say I’m a country musician, definitely country influenced. It’s hard to just say you’re a country musician because people always tack something onto that that you don’t always mean. I got into country music kinda the long way. When I started, like I said I played saxophone and I got really into jazz, and from jazz I got really into blues and picked up the harmonica. After blues, after spending a lot of time with the blues, playing professionally I began to come around to country music a lot more and found that I hard a much stronger identity to country music than I did in another music so far.
HM: That seems a little unusual since there isn’t a whole lot of country music, not many country musicians in NE.
BB: Yeah, well country is really a Southern tradition, it comes from down South and it comes from blues and the old country music, but it’s made its way up to NE. It’s real popular in NE in some places. You don’t really see it as much in the cities but when you get out it’s kinda a lot like the rest of the country when you get into the rural parts.
HM: How long have you lived in Providence?
BB: Just about four years now.
HM: What’s the country scene like in Providence?
BB: Well we have one radio station, Cat Country. Pretty much plays nonsense most of the time. Some of the good songs I sing along with, but they just stick to the hits on that channel. So, you don’t have a lot radio wise, there are no venues that are particularly good for country. I saw Lucinda Williams play at Lupo’s a few years ago, and that was about as close as I’ve gotten to country here in Providence.
HM: Is that hard on you as a musician, the lack of venues?
BB: Yeah, I think more so than the venues, unless you’re a full-time professional musician, more so is the lack of any kind of country music community really. You don’t run into people on the street that you can pick up and play some country with. It’s a lot tougher to come by around here than other parts of the country.
HM: Why do you think that is?
BB: Well I think country music has…the reason it’s popular in some places is it speaks to a certain kind of people and a certain kind of lifestyle. And it’s not a city lifestyle or a NE city lifestyle for sure. Not that that’s a bad thing that there’s other types of music here, but the rural class, country type of identity and music isn’t what’s really going on in Providence.
HM: What made you stick with the country genre knowing that there isn’t much of a community here. It seems like you’re going against the flow of the river here.
BB: Well, I’d say music is kinda like if you’re meeting someone, like a significant other or whatever, you can’t just go out and pick the who you want and have that be the one that works. I think that’s how it is with music too, you don’t really get to pick what kind of music speaks to you. I couldn’t just switch over to playing Indy music or electronic music right now. Eventually, who knows? Maybe it will speak to me at some point. But right now, country is what does it for me.
HM: What country musicians would you consider your influences? Who do you most admire.
BB: That’s a tough question because I think it changes day to day. You always have to go back to the classics. A lot of the music I play comes from Hank Williams and Meryl Haggard and guys like those who have just influenced everyone who comes after them. So any guys that I named today like Dwight Yoakam, Robert Earl King, John Prine, Steve Earl’s another one. So while they’ve all had commercial success and all done their thing and changed over the year and done their share of cheesy 80’s stuff and everything else in between. They’ve all had a unique voice, a real country voice and that’s something I really appreciate. Not that I reject everything that comes out of Nashville. I think people fall into a dangerous trap when they reject anything that becomes popular. While a lot of Nashville stuff may stray far from what a lot of us see as the roots of country and what’s good about country, it doesn’t mean that anything that comes out of Nashville isn’t going to be any good.
[00:08:00]
HM: More on that topic involving different types of country and different genres, it seems like people overlook the fact that country means a lot of different things. What do you see your music as, what would you classify it as…classify is a bad word…
BB: I don’t know if I could really nail it down at this point because I don’t know if I’m at a point were I really want to be with it. I could play a little bit and that might let you decide for yourself a little bit. Whatever I play is always going to be a little blues influenced because that’s where my music really grew, being a harmonica player. So whatever I do always has some elements of blues in it. Like I said, now with my songwriting I’ve been trying to go to some new places, try some new things and really work off what I hear all the time. And this year, whether I end up sounding like it or not, a lot of it’s come from the likes of Robert Earl Keen and those guys. Something about them, whether they’d be called straight up country, they have a lot of country behind them.
[00:09:40]
HM: Some of the real storytellers.
Yeah.
(playing)
HM: That’s great. You can definitely hear the blues influence. Do you think growing up in NE has influenced the kind of country you play?
BB: Well, I hope to think that whatever I play I have my own voice to it. I think that voice will come out as being a NE voice. While a lot of country music doesn’t happen up here, I think it can just like anywhere else, especially in the rural America. A lot of the guys I’ve been talking about come from down in Texas or the South, or Meryl Haggard out in California. Music comes from everywhere. But, I think the NE voice will be present in anything I do. Whether it’s explicit or jus somewhere in the music.
HM: Have you played down South at all?
BB: I haven’t played south at all. I’ve only been south a few times. I’m actually moving down there in a few short weeks now to try my hand down there. I’m hoping to find a lot more receptive area, more people to play with. More people who play music that I mesh with. Being a harmonica player it’s hard to find. Harmonica, if you play it cross-harp style then you’re stuck with one key per harmonica. That limits what kind of music you can play, not in a bad way but you run into trouble being a harmonica player because it’s not as versatile as a guitar or piano or bass or drums or something like that. You have to find people that play that kind of music. I’m hoping to get a better reception to that down south.
HM: I take it it’s been hard to find people to play with up here.
BB: Yeah, I’ve played here an there with a few people trying to play blues, but he farthest I’ve gotten with country is with another guy who likes to play songs, but he’s into a lot more experimental stuff and rock stuff. We’d play through a few country tunes but then he’d get bored with it.
[00:13:00]
HM: Where have you played most of your shows? Maine? New Hampshire.
BB: Yeah, most of my professional stuff has been played when I’m home in Maine. We did the summer street festivals, fundraisers at local gyms, bars up there, the University of Maine one night, just all the amateur gigs you think of.
HM: And you’re moving down south this summer?
BB: Yeah, I’m moving down to the Durham/Chapel Hill area of North Carolina, living in a little cabin down there, hoping to find some music to play and working with horses for the summer.
HM: Have you worked with horses before?
BB: Yeah, I worked last summer on a ranch last summer, out in Colorado. And I actually got a lot more into country, because hanging out with guys out there from Idaho and Arizona and Montana, just guys who have grown up on country music all there life. Like I said I came into country kind of late, but those guys were raised on country music. It’s all they know and all they need to know. Being with people like that had an influence on my music, definitely.
HM: There are always questions of class on why country isn’t more popular in more affluent areas.
BB: Yeah, well I definitely think working class culture and country music are inseparable. Not that you can’t go in between once in a while, but I think at the heart of country music is the sense of being a working man. There’s any number of songs that you can find that say that. And it’s a necessary part of country music I think. Because it’s not an art music, it’s not something that you go and listen to in a big concert hall. It’s music that you play on your porch or you hear in a bar when you’re having a hard night and that’s what you wan to hear. It’s music you drink whiskey too and it’s music that you drive to work to in the morning. And I think that’s what it’s for. It’s everyday music for everyday people. And with that I think is a really great kind of art. It’s not music that you put up on pedestal and so separated from reality like a lot of music in more affluent areas tend to be.
[00:16:20]
HM: What’s the state of country music right now?
BB: Country is an enormous industry right now and I think a lot of it is just that, it’s an industry. It’s a business. There’s a lot of guys making a lot of money. There’s a lot of guys up there with their gelled blond hair, playing on CMT and there’s stuff played on the radio. People are making tons of music, the state of country music is like that. But, there’s a lot of amazing stuff going on at the same time. I think it’s easy if you just look on the surface to get lost in the commercial, Nashville part of it. Even in Nashville there’s some good stuff going on. Guys like Brooks ‘n Dunn and Alan Jackson, all the teenage country girls know their songs. They play some great music. They play the same kind of songs as the guys before them did, just in a new style. There’s a lot of good stuff going on in country now, but there’s also a lot of garbage- pop music with a banjo or fiddle thrown in and some synthesized drum beats. Everyone does their thing but I see that as a lot formulaic songwriting that will get them some money, get them some radio airtime. Ifpeople sing along to it, great. There’s a lot of other good stuff going on that’s country music too. I listened to a lot of Texas country. Guys like the Randy Rogers band and Stony Laroo and Charly Robison all coming up right now. I’ve been finding them on iTunes. A lot of good things going on still. Some of the old guys are still doing good things.
[00:18:25]
HM: I see you have your harmonica. You mentioned you had something you wanted to play for me?
BB: Yeah, I’ll play a little bit.
(playing)
HM: That was great, thank you.
BB: This is my latest song that I’ve been trying to work on. Let me find the lyrics.
HM: You write a lot of your own songs?
Yeah, I try to write. It helps me get better all the time, just the more I get written down. This song has just been floatin around in my head. Nothing too fancy. Let’s see if I can get it out. Not finished, but you can get a sense of it.
(playing)
I’ve got a blister on my thumb
From playin too much guitar
I’ve got a limp when I walk
Cause I’ve done gone too far
I’ve got a broke down old truck
Just won’t start up anymore
I’m your secret
Tie me to a tumbleweed
Send me out on the prairie
For some old cowboy to read
I got a crumblin old barn
With only half a roof
I got a few sips of courage
The old 80 proof
I’m blind in one eye
And the other don’t see too good
Refrain
I got a brother in jail
He might be in for so long
Got a tune in my head
But I don’t know the words to the song
I got a broken hearted Mama
She just keep chuggin along
Refrain
I got a dead old dog
Buried out in back of the shed
All day long my hair
Looks like I fuckin rolled outta bed
I met a pretty little girl
But I forgot every word she said
Refrain
HM: Great. That reminds me of what you mentioned when I first got here, about country songs as a kind of storytelling and a way of conveying emotion.
BB: Yeah, with that song and a lot of the songs I write and a lot of the good songs I listen to, country music can say a lot without putting on a lot of pretenses. You can say a little and still get a lot across.
HM: Probably why guys like Hank Williams are popular today.
BB: Yeah, if you listen to what Hank wrote all the time, or what Johnny Cash sang or what Meryl Haggard says. The thing about Meryl Haggard is, he said, “I could be holding you tonight or I could stop doing wrong, start doing right. But instead, I think I’ll just stay here and drink.” He doesn’t say a lot there but at the same time he’s saying a whole lot about a whole lot of people and that really hits home.