My Interview with the Clever and Accomplished Musician Ben Arthur

Talent knows talent. I just made that quote up, but it sounds pretty wise, doesn’t it? (Someone else probably said something like it much more eloquently, but let’s not let that distract us.) I may not be able to sing, play guitar, or write lyrics (unless you count strumming on an old acoustic guitar while creating random rhymey-songs for your disinterested but esteemed audience of a cat and dog) but I still know that Ben Arthur has serious musical and writing talent. I’ve written about Ben Arthur before, and now I’ve had the chance to interview him. Read on, gentle readers, read on.

SofaChip: Following up 2004’s album Edible Darling, now there is the 2008 release Mouthfeel. Both are unusually great names that convey that ‘lush imagery’ you’ve said you like. What is your process for deciding upon a record title? Does it drive you bonkers to decide on a title, or does it unfold itself to you more organically?

Ben Arthur (BA): Thanks.  Titles are tricky.  The best come unbidden (like the best songs), but then sometimes you have to really work to find something that fits. I had a bitch of a time with my first novel, which just defied naming for years and went through at least three tester monikers before settling in to The Lure of the Distant Sound last week.

While there’s room for interpretation among your lyrics, you have said that you do (naturally) draw from yourself to compose them. Putting ‘yourself out there’ is a universal fear shared among many (*raises hand*). Is it ever a bit unnerving or daunting to release your albums with - not to sound dramatic - your soul rather, well, exposed?

Ben Arthur's Latest Release: Mouthfeel

BA: Part of the job.  If you don’t expose your soft chewy interior then you’re not doing it right. Art is saying something true about the amorphous and wordless reality that’s easy to know but not name (the best art tells you something you didn’t know you knew.) And like describing a dream, you feel like you’re not only powerless to do it justice, but that you are changing the dream by the very act of describing it.

What is most often the case: having lyrics that lead you to make a song, or having a tune in mind that has you thinking up lyrics to set to it? (Is this a question akin to ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ By the way, which DID come first?)

BA: Depends on the song.  Sometimes a lyric comes that I want to hear in a song, sometimes a melody, and rarest of all is a lyric with a melody (which is, again, the best kind.)

I have lyric ideas and songs ideas scribbled on a million scraps of paper and little melodic riffs that I hum and think about when I’m walking around the city, sitting in the park with my daughters.  Sometimes an idea will be with you for years.  And then something clicks and it becomes a song.  Or a novel or a screenplay.

Many of your songs seem substantially serious in some way (tonally or lyrically, not always both), but if one watches you on YouTube.com it would appear that you’re actually a tremendously lively and fun kind of guy. As a musician, is it difficult to walk the line between gravity and levity? Do you ever worry about being painted as too solemn of a guy?

BA: Great. Question.  I don’t worry about being painted anything, as that’s not something worth worrying about, but I do think about the seemingly contradictory nature of what I do. I actually get a good number of people who come up after the shows and say they were surprised that I was funny, and not, I guess, some sort of pouty goth.  At the end of the day, I do have to take the art very seriously (even when goofing around) but that doesn’t mean I have to personally be a mope.

Ben Arthur - Edible Darling

And the truth is, there’s no contradiction.  If you listen to the music you find pretty much everything in there–pain, laughter, sex, love, desolation.

Hopefully the deeper you go into any artist’s work, the more you discover.  It’s the ones where everything is right there on the surface that usually disappoint (and probably, in the short term at least, succeed).

We love book suggestions, and it’s also interesting to see what kind of words (and genres) a songwriter surrounds themself with in spare moments. So, what kind of books do you read (and/or, what are some of your favorites)?

BA: Most recently finished Pictures at a Revolution by Mark Harris, a history of film in the late 60’s, which was fascinating.  On the novel side, Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky is breathtaking, and then a book by a neighbor with whom I did a reading recently, Homegirl, by Judith Matloff, is very funny.

Speaking of books, you actually recently wrote a book! Tell us something about it?

I think I mentioned the new title already… It’s a story about a middle-aged television producer who gets caught cheating on his wife and tries to weasel out of it.

Wait - I’m not done talking about the book. How did you decide that you wanted to write a book? That’s a pretty big undertaking.

BA: Not really. There’s a lot of downtime, both business-wise and artistically, and it helps to have a lot of projects up in the air at the same time, so that when you hit a wall with one thing you can turn to another.  Actually I just finished my fourth novel, which I’ll be releasing along with my new studio album in 2010.  It’s a concept novel/concept album, where there are songs that track themes from the book, and also ‘artifacts’, songs that the characters themselves hear during the course of the story.  Most of the latter will be sung by other artists.

Where are you, and what are you currently up to? (Don’t: tell us if involves mafia crime. Do: mention touring and where people can next see you play!)

BA: I’m back home in NYC and will stay here through the winter months, but will be back on the road in the spring, when I’ll release both my fifth album (a live album tentatively titled Roadkill) and my first novel.  I’m looking right now at a southern leg starting in February, through TN, GA, SC, NC and VA, and then a northeast jaunt during April/May.  Then, as I do every year, I’ll do a European tour in the fall.

www.benarthur.com / Ben Arthur on MySpace / Ben Arthur on Last.fm /Purchase Ben Arthur CDs on CD Baby.

To add a finishing note, I find writing about music to be terribly difficult for myself. As much as I love music, the territory of notes and chords is foreign to someone who couldn’t even master playing the fluteophone in 4th grade (I faked it the entire time). But I do know the points to hit upon to give you a good idea of the music. For instance - genre. You’d like to know the genre, yes? To my ear, it’s Indie, Folk, Pop and Acoustic. Next! Namedropping is maybe kind of an annoying cheat, but I’m not stopping that trend. And I’m going to go an extra step.

You’d very possibly like Arthur if you like artists such as: Lisa Loeb, Regina Spektor, Howie Day, John Mayer, Sarah Harmer, Josh Kelley, Matt Nathanson, Sara Bareilles, KT Tunstall, Pete Yorn, Fiona Apple, A Fine Frenzy, Patty Griffin, Jude, or The Counting Crows. To finish off the business of namedropping, let me add that Rachael Yamagata does a duet called ‘Sun Also Rises‘ with him on Mouthfeel, the guys from Dave Matthews Band appear to be fans, and Ben Arthur’s opened shows for gifted people like Shawn Colvin and Tori Amos. Bottom line? I’m a really big fan, so listen already. (Especially to the song ‘Keep Me Around’ - my favorite track on Edible Darling.)