Patrick
Brayer
Upland, California - July 2001
"I met Ben when he was about 15 years of age. He was
a magic kid as I knew them. He worked in the back room of
his grandparents folk music store repairing zithers, and
would in my memory emerge occasionally with his hair full
of sawdust.
He would repair my swap meet instruments and refuse my money
every time, sometimes even pulling a guitar off the wall
(don't tell his grandparents!) and giving it to me just
because I was admiring the psychedelic pick guard.
When he was eventually called to go out on the road with
Taj Mahal he was in the process of putting a set of small
obsidian wind chimes on the inside of my guitar. But luckily
for the world that never got completed.
I was always intrigued about how he could physically transform
himself, and still does. One day you'd come in and he'd
look just like the guy on the Yazzoo record cover, with
the cuffed pants and straight back Texas State Prison frizzed
hair. The next time you'd come in he'd be wearing a double
breasted suit and be the spitting image of a regal Robert
Johnson.
He once ran up to me, his eyes really big, and gave me a
gift of a photo of just Robert Johnson's hands. From that
i knew that he knew where the poetry was. As a thank-you
gift I once gave him a series of 78 rpm records of Leadbelly
playing the Cajun accordion. It was godhead, but within
my circle of friends, there were only a few people that
would ever understand that, except Ben.
It took him a while to even tell me he played the guitar,
and then he asked me if I'd listen to him. His playing immediately
had great sense of a keen observation of the blues masters,
like Johnson, John Hurt, and Peetie Wheatstraw.
I was producing a nomadic concert series at the time called
The Starvation Cafe (1982-1994) in Fontana, California and
suggested that we document his playing with a concert and
a live recording. I think that might be one of his first
adventures into the elevated stage light, as rickety as
it might have been. He was already pretty well realized,
and that is what I look for, not someone I can shape, but
someone I can help just by naturally being. He worked for
me under three different ensembles, first was Thirsty Dog
(a blues based group), second The Benouds of Mighty Ivory
(a middle eastern slide guitar group), and lastly under
his own name, in which he was already performing his own
compositions like pleasure and pain.
All of us musicians in the Inland Empire (Lindley, Darrow,
York, etc.) are very proud of his recent accomplishments,
and feel, as he himself I'm sure does, that he takes a little
bit of us on his adventures. I joke with him, because every
time we talk, he's either in France, or Guam, or Australia,
that he needs to get his time machine fixed, because he
seems to be just popping up everywhere, while I just sit
at home and eat toast.
He has handled his success with much grace and dignity (which
we all greedily think reflects on us of course) and now
after his five albums with Virgin Records he has certainly
etched his historic and social conscious place as a musical
veteran on a global level."
Interview by Emmanuel Rivet / swer.net | Photo (top)
by William Percell
|
