Last night I dreamed I was at some airport and bumped into Ben Kweller. He had his wife and kid by his side but apparently wasn’t going anywhere so we sat down to talk for a little while. Considering I’m a fan I didn’t really relax or stopped thinking about all the questions I wanted to ask him about his recent work. I tried to sound professional but always ended up feeling a little silly.
This has actually happened before, I mean, in real life. Back in February of ‘06, I drove down to Connecticut to watch a concert and got there two hours early (at that point, I was only here for a couple of months and wasn’t so sure about the distance between CT and Boston). When I got there, my curiosity led me into the auditorium and I ended up watching the whole sound check, no one else around. At the end I walked towards the stage and asked Ben if I could introduce myself – I’m not an autograph person. We talked about the coming album “Ben Kweller”, his fans in Brazil and took a picture. He is THE nicest guy in rock n’ roll, no doubt about it.
BK is coming out with a new album, “Changing Horses”, in September and I’ve been keeping an eye on the media for news. The other day the My Old Kentucky Blog posted a great review about one of his last concerts, in which he debuted a few songs off of it.
According to Ben, his new album reflects changes in many aspects of his life. He recently moved back to Texas, where he grew up. After living in New York for years, he’s been looking to buy a ranch and writing country inspired songs. The MYOKB interview also reveals the influence of the ‘truck driver culture’ over his new music: “..he will also release a tour-only EP entitled How ya lookin’ Southbound? Comein… (He was very specific with me about the punctuation and spelling on that title, being that it’s proper trucker lingo and all.)”
Here’s a video I found on YouTube of one of his new songs, “Fight”. That’s pretty much all we can count on at the moment. Kweller decided to kick off the “Changing Horses” tour in Europe and the album won’t be available before the Fall (Wikipedia is saying it will only be released on January ‘09, but I’m keeping my faith here, if you don’t mind).
Also, I found a BK version of Willie Mason’s “Waiter at the Station” and decided to add it to the post. Some blogs are saying it’s another new song, but that’s just poor research. The song is beautiful though, worth the download.
Very nice!!
Hi Thais– I googled your name and found your blog. Hope that’s not too creepy. Now you should have my email address. Cool to find out that you’re a BK fan!