New Ben Sollee

[FiddleCastro]

  Awesome stuff

New Song "DIY" here:
http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2012/09/ben_sollee_read.html

[Mr. White]

I will be seeing Ben play the first of his two nights at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville, Kentucky on October 5, 2012.
Here is a video he just released of "Unfinished".
http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2012/09/11/160938488/first-watch-ben-sollee-unfinished

[Jon T.]

Really liking this new album.  Ben takes a big step here, vocally and musically.   Got to see him play a few of these songs a couple of weeks ago and they're great live, as well.

[wolof7]

Half-Made Man is his best work yet 

he was recently on Stuff You Should Know Podcast and it was a really interesting topic and inteview with Ben on Music and Emotion. Played DIY I believe, great performance.

http://podcasts.howstuffworks.com/hsw/podcasts/sysk/2012-09-20-sysk-music-and-emotion.mp3

[slappymoe]

i know it's a long shot but........

i have 4 extra standing room tix for saturday's show.  i'll be the mildly inebriated guy outside headliners trying to sell them before the show.    discounted (15 bucks).    tell your family and friends.

he played wfpk's live lunch today, sounded great.

[Mr. White]

Great Show! Ben Sollee - Live at Headliners Music Hall in Louisville, Ky. on Oct. 5, 2012






Ben Plays a second night at Headliners tonight (Oct. 6, 2012). Go see him!

[Mr. White]

Here is an article The Courier-Journal had on Oct. 5, 2012. It points to Jim James as being an influence on how he approached the recording of his new album, Half-Made Man. It also lists the artists who contributed to the new record. Carl Broemel played guitar on every track.

Ben Sollee's first two albums had plenty of moments that soared emotionally, and they were filled with meticulous performances, but they were also missing a spark that his live shows never lack.

Sollee is lucky enough to have honest friends, however, and one of them offered some advice that profoundly shaped Sollee's excellent new album, "Half-Made Man." Jim James, of My Morning Jacket, told Sollee that he needed to capture on record the same raw qualities that lifted his shows.

"He really encouraged me to do as much live in the studio as I could," Sollee said. "I look to Jim as a mentor in a lot of ways and took his advice seriously, and I feel like what came out is something that's a lot more personal, a lot more alive."

Sollee, who lives in Lexington but spent many years in Louisville, celebrates the release of "Half-Made Man" tonight and Saturday at Headliners Music Hall. He'll be with his road band, Jordan Ellis and Luke Reynolds, but doesn't rule out a guest or two. Reynolds and Silver Tongues open tonight; Reynolds and Whistle Peak open Saturday.

Sollee went into "Half-Made Man" with specific thematic ideas. If the album was going to sound more like people sitting in a room, making music, then he wanted the songs to be equally intimate. He describes the album as a collection of self-portraits, many of them informed by his transition into full-blown adulthood with the addition of a son.

"I'm 28, and that's a really interesting age to be at because you're transitioning from a lot of the things that you thought you would be to all of the things that you are," he said. "I really wanted to document that."

Sollee made the album in Louisville with Kevin Ratterman engineering and recording. Ellis joined him along with My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel, Alana Rocklin, Jeremy Kittel and Abigail Washburn. Sollee said that he trusted the band completely, which allowed him to let go and set aside the perfectionism that drove the making of "Learning to Bend" and "Inclusion."

Sollee trained to be a classical musician, and he's toured and recorded extensively with Washburn and Bela Fleck as part of The Sparrow Quartet. Both can be tightly wound scenes.

"In that world, there's a sense of trying to make sure that what you play is impressive, and how it's recorded is impressive — there's a feeling that you need to get it just right," he said. "For the Sparrow Quartet record, for a couple of those four-minute songs, we cut 9½ hours of audio.

"This record ('Half-Made Man') is almost the polar opposite of that, but it takes a plan. You need to sit down from the beginning and dedicate yourself to going for the raw performances. ... I leaned on the musicians a lot, because if I tried to arrange them too much, then I wasn't going to get the Polaroid image that I wanted. I was going to get a doctored-up PhotoShop image."

Political activism has been a consistent element in Sollee's career, from stumping for clean-air initiatives to raising awareness about mountaintop removal mining. He hasn't abandoned any of that — people who arrive at this weekend's shows by any means other than a car get a $5 voucher for the merchandise table — but he has shifted his viewpoint somewhat.

"I think it's becoming more and more humanistic, which is just a more basic way of living," he said. "In some ways it's almost more intensely political because it's happening on a human level, a person-to-person level, connecting to the fact that we all are struggling, and that supersedes all of the political, socio-economic stuff."

[Jon T.]

great article

[mahg33ta]

I knew of Ben Sollee through his MMJ connections but never explored him until he was announced at Forecastle and Newport.   I enjoyed both his albums and his shows but put it all back on the shelf once Newport was over.

Curious, I grabbed the new album and really like it.   I agree that it's strongest work yet.   I've come back to it a bunch over the last week and I'm now thinking of trying to see him live again next week, since he's in Boston at a dinky venue.

Check it out if you haven't yet....

[FiddleCastro]

Sollee made the album in Louisville with Kevin Ratterman engineering and recording. Ellis joined him along with My Morning Jacket's Carl Broemel, Alana Rocklin, Jeremy Kittel and Abigail Washburn. Sollee said that he trusted the band completely, which allowed him to let go and set aside the perfectionism that drove the making of "Learning to Bend" and "Inclusion."

Ha! I was listening this weekend and was wondering if Carl was playing pedal steel on one of the songs.  It had such a Carl vibe