One Easy Song, Three Elusive Ones

Hi, my name is Ben and I have the power to regenerate severed limbs.

A few little bits and pieces to tell you about for the new album - firstly, this is how the tracklist is shaping up so far (this is so open to change in practically every way):

The song subjects, in red, appear to be stuck in my college days.

In fact, the evening that this was drawn up, I went on to write and finish an eighth song. It came together really quickly once I started writing, partly because of how clear and crystalised the inspiration was. Maybe one day I'll tell you all about that, but for now (or at least when you get to hear it), it can just live as a song that I suppose can be interpretted by everyone in that magically ambiguous way that songs are.

Whenever a song is easy to write, or I have such a well-defined subject to write about, or an extensive and apt metaphor lands itself in my lap, I feel like I've almost been gifted the song. I've written before about how I see songwriting as more 'finding out how the song goes' and this song is a textbook example. Unfortunately, the song is also destined to be the eleventh song on the album. While I would love for the product of such an unlaboured, organic writing process to be able to fill one of the three spaces in the list above, it will only ever fit as an epilogue to what is shaping up to be a collection of songs that I'm very proud of. Trying to put the reason for this into words is kind of difficult, but it's partly to do with the nature of Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained, partly to do with the style and subject of this new song, and on an even greater, meta-level, partly to do with the relationship between these two songs. It's a decision that ultimately fits into that greatest of artistic reasons - it just feels right.

The reason why it's an unfortunate eleventh song and why I'm bothering with struggling to justify the new song's avoidance of one of the empty three slots is mostly to justify to myself the fact that this leaves three songs still left to be written; the reason why I even need to justify that is that I need to get this album written - I have a start date for recording.

Black and white is WAY more arty.

My good friend and long-time collaborator, Frank, is stepping up once again to play drums on the album and we're going to start tracking in early January. We're going to spend time with Joe doing some live rehearsals/tweaking sessions over the next month (especially since we're playing a rare collaborative gig on the 30th) to hopefully keep the final recording process as slick and natural as possible, as well as uninterrupted too much by on-the-fly re-writes or uncertainties. 

For this album, the recording process is going to be drawn out over a much longer period than before - the plan is that once the drums are tracked, we can spend a few days (or even weeks) wrangling the written bass line so that it doesn't miss any musical opportunities that present themselves in what Frank's played. That's the plan, anyway - I refer you to the golden rule of studio recording, which is that although preparation can make the process easier on the day, everything changes once you're in the studio.

However, one thing that is (nearly) always a given is that you'll probably only record songs that you've, you know, written. Hence why I'm kind of keen to fill those three gaps. I'll let you know how that goes.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Believe it or Not, That's Not Barry Chuckle.

Hi, my name is Ben and I've eaten fifteen pens at one sitting before.

I am very much feeling the Christmas love right now. Don't get me wrong, it's still very early to be actually celebrating Christmas, but it's never too early to start singing Christmas songs in front of around 10,000 people. That's what I was doing at the weekend - being part of the entertainment for Barnstaple's Christmas lights switch-on. I was part of a group of some very talented local musicians, who first got together last year to play for the 2010 switch-on, and had the best time doing it.

I want to be right here for Christmas

I'm lucky enough that not only is everyone involved in the group a very talented artist, but as a collection we get on so well; we've gone from being thrust together in the name of Yuletide to being friends, collaborators and, at times, emotional support groups to each other through the rest of the year. Being a part of this Christmas Crew represents everything I love about playing music - everything from taking a shitty Christmas song that I scribbled on a napkin a few years ago to the heady heights of being sung by a town-full of people, to mixing creative juices with other humans and seeing what comes out, to the near-psychic communication of performing live with long-time collaborators on stage.

Sure, the amount of time it takes to practice fifteen or so songs that aren't exactly ingrained in your memory (for eleven months of the year, at least) and the effort to stay afloat in the maelstrom of different artists' rehearsal times can get a busy boy down at times, but there's no question that it's worth it for that very short hour on stage.

Jackie and Ellie, two of the girls from our Christmas supergroup, are hopefully going to be collaborating on a song for the album, too - the song's currently called Go Team and it's loosely about a night we spent drinking and talking a lot of shit. I guess their input and eternally talented performances will mean that at least one song on the album is worth listening to :)

With the lights switch-on done, I can not only devote more time to finishing writing the album (six-and-a-half songs done so far), but also to road-testing the new songs at open mic nights and late-night shopping performances coming up (I'll probably be posting a load of guff as each one comes up so you won't miss it, don't worry).

It's nice that the stars seem to have aligned between not having to worry about too many serious things for a while (other than, of course, the everyday, mundane dramas) and feeling the creative urge off the back of being so festive.

It's also nice not to have to remember G Em A7 D7 for at least another few months. EDIT: Thanks a lot, Ellie. OK, starting from... now.

- Ben x

How Many Songs Make Five?

Hi, my name is Ben and I shoot lasers from my left eye (but not the right one).

Just to keep you posted, progress on the new album is going very well indeed - five songs have kind of coalesced into being ready to perform live, so with those five the real work starts now. Playing them over and over again in different ways - with a guitar and singing, playing them to an audience and singing (which is absolutely different), singing them out loud to a recorded guitar demo at home, singing them in my head with an MP3 player on the bus - helps me to figure out where the vocal melody eventually needs to end up. Playing songs so much before eventually going into the studio to record also starts to highlight where there's room for ad lib improvisation in guitar parts or vocal melodies, or even lyrics; it's much better to start to hear that stuff before recording and let some of it make it onto the record, rather than kicking yourself a week after mastering for only just noticing how a final chorus could have worked much better.

I think I promised you in an earlier post that I'd start naming the songs I'd written for ease of reference, so here goes: Big Enough & Ugly Enough is the song that Joe and I worked on before; Those Aren't Ants, Those Are Elephants is a kind of more subdued song at the moment (but who knows how it'll end up); In Remembrance of Fun is the result of a couple of different musical and lyrical ideas that I had floating around that work well when kind of mashed together; Nothing Wasted, Nothing Gained is going to be the album-closer, I think - it's a bit nostalgic, but in a totally awesome way; I'm Uneasy, Eleanor came together in about two days and is the newest of the songs - one of those tunes that practically wrote itself and I think it did a good job (you can see a very rough video of it here, if you like).

All of those titles are subject to change, I guess - and I might get a bit more secretive about album details now that I'm starting to move into the second half of the songwriting process, but who knows - I might get drunk and post naked performances of all of them one night - you can never be sure.

Anyhows, I'm looking forward to taking these five new songs for a test drive live - let's see how they go down.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

In an Interesting Twist, Ben Talks About Himself on Video!

Hi, my name is Ben and I can recite all the words to Boom! Shake The Room.

The last few days have been fairly productive in Benji One Lung Land (although it's not great that that kind of contracts to 'Bland'). Firstly, I did an interview for Arts and Entertainment North Devon, a great website that's kind of a central gathering place for everything (as the name would suggest) arty or entertaining in North Devon. Talli Black wrote a very kind review of Ben Dies At The End for the website a little while back and I was asked to be the inaugural interviewee for a new video series they're going to host on the site.

No photo set is complete without me with my eyes closed.

I think the slot has the working title 'Three Minutes With...' and I look forward to seeing it take off with musicians who have much more interesting things to say (and much better hair) than me. If you like me talking a lot about me and a little bit about time travel, you can watch the interview here.

As well as being dashingly handsome on camera, I've broken the back of a couple of the songs for the album over the last couple of days. One, which I think will probably be the album closer, came together with lyrics really quickly and naturally - I sense it's going to be an effort to record, but hey - what hasn't; another is a more mellow track, about not feeling you have to be ordinary - the only problem with it so far is that it's a bastard to play and sing at the same time. That's not the end of the world, but it does slow down the writing process a little bit... when I can make the transition from 'writing' the song to just 'practicing' it, that won't be a problem any more. I hope. There're also a few lyrics floating around for a song that I've pretty much finished the music for; I feel like I'm finding my pace with the writing process, so things should hopefully move on quite consistently from here.

I'm off to lock myself away in Kent for a couple of weeks from this weekend, doing real-non-musical-life stuff. Supposed to be doing non-musical stuff, but in actual fact I should be able to spend a fair amount of time writing - I guess we'll see how that works out when I get back.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

The Halley's Touch

Hi, my name is Ben and I once punched a tiger square in the face.

Last night, I joined forces with Joe and showed him some of the song ideas for the new album. Working with Joe on music has become second nature now, like how walking or breathing stops being novel after the first thousand-or-so repetitions, but in the same way that running or the occasional gasp can feel liberating and exciting, these collaborations never stop being fresh and satisfying.

One song (I should start giving these songs names, to avoid being so necessarily vague with them) in particular twisted and thrashed its way into a new shape, one that I feel is probably fairly close to where it's going to set. Plugging in the Les Paul and strapping Joe to a small bass combo (which has two settings - 'dirt' and 'slut') transformed what was a light-hearted, bouncing song into something closer to an old-school punk monstrosity, complete with a range of mid-90s Rancid walking bass. To be fair, the only proper way to describe it currently is that it's definitely a Benji One Lung track, just pulled around a bit by Halley's Apparition (yes, yes, the astute among you will notice that that's precisely what it is).

I also had a lyrical breakthrough for the same song, which stands at this point at the 'one verse down' stage - the new-fangled chorus is going to need something pretty special, lyrics-wise, to make the most of a song I'm growing to really like; it might take a bit of time to get perfect, but for this album, I have that time.

Also, this happened:

 

Yeah, that's me and Luke sitting in the back of an articulated lorry, singing Theme From Chicken On The Run to a bunch of about ten people, sitting in the rain. We were soundchecking my set (which was eventually to even heavier rain and even fewer people) ... (It was the rain that made them leave and go inside) and needed a song that we could both bust out at short, unpraticed notice. Let me get this straight - I have a lot of love and pride for what we did for One Day Down. I just don't know why that song is sticking around to haunt me.

Oh, wait - because it's awesome.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

Get ON IT!

Hi, my name's Ben and I haven't ever seen the back of my own head.

Just a quick one - I'm thinking of starting a competition soon, to win CDs and stuff. You'll have to be on the mailing list to be involved, so head over either here or here and get on it and hear more details as... well, as I decide them.

YOU ARE UPDATE!

- Ben

More writing

Hi, my name is Ben and I occasionally pick up FM radio through my teeth.

Over the last couple of days I've started the very first steps of working on a new album, so I've spent a bit of time just tidying up the ole' online presence in preparation. We've been using Reverbnation for Halley's Apparition for a while (it's a great site for bands, you should check it out) and now I've finally gotten round to setting one up for my solo stuff - it brings together what's going on on various different other sites, as well as having a very neat merch system.

Because of that, you can now visit the very cool Official Benji One Lung Store to pick up guys' and girls' tees, as well as (finally) physical copies of both Too Much Like A Person and Ben Dies At The End - I've rejiggered the artwork for the two releases and I would probably recommend that you buy both for your collection. Now (and a t-shirt).

So, now that the long, beautiful writing process has begun again, I should be updating all of these fancy bloggermajigs more regularly over the next few weeks. So far - one song musically written and structured (I think), one song's chorus (music and lyrics) and maybe riff written, one other idea for a main theme of a song.

YOU ARE UPDATE.

- Ben