Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Roque.
Hi Ben, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start, maybe you can share some of your backstories with our readers.
I grew up in a small railroad town in Vermont. Used to watch the boxcars – covered in graffiti – go by while waiting at the crossings. They looked like moving art galleries to me. I guess that’s where I started to romanticize that sort of restless lifestyle. Figured maybe I could turn myself into a traveling gallery, so to speak.
But it was a cartoonist who gave me that first spark of creativity. I don’t remember his name, but he visited my 2nd-grade class to demonstrate some illustrations for us. He asked us to make up some crazy scenario, and to my pure delight and astonishment, he drew exactly what we suggested – with his eyes closed. His hand literally traced everything onto the page that we put in his mind. I’d been drawn to music and words before that, but that was the moment I figured I could make up things of my own.
Fast forward many years, and I realized that restlessness became inseparable to my creative process. Being in-between places seems to lend itself to creativity. My creativity seems to thrive on the feeling that there’s always someplace I need to get to but somehow can’t quiet. So that sentiment has led me every which way across this country for years, churning out albums, short stories, poems, collages – anything to satisfy this mysterious drive. I’ve been joking for a long time that the sheet music to my music is actually a road map.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I think the real challenge for me is to keep feeling like I’m evolving as a songwriter. It’s easy to keep writing the same old tune once you start to think, “Hey, that one off my last record was pretty good.” I can’t tell you how many ideas I’ve set aside for sounding like pale versions of things I’ve already done.
I guess you just have to keep your antenna up and be receptive. Sometimes you allow an idea in and try your best not to interfere, and other times you have to chip away at it. I think it’s good to regularly shake up your writing process. Some tunes for me will start as melodies I’ll just be humming or scat-singing to myself while stomping down the sidewalk. Others will start at the piano, where I’ll just be trying to play along with the rain coming down on the roof, or people speaking in the other room, or some far-off sound. Some bass or guitar riffs, I’ll just think sound like something rhythmic and good to sing along to. They seem to come from everywhere you allow yourself to search. I guess you have to be brave – and don’t worry if you suddenly don’t recognize yourself in your own song. You’re in there.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I think what sets me apart is that songs and stories are all collages to me. They’re made of things I’m drawn to: dark alleys, burned-out lights, gamblers, femme-fatales, dirt roads, carnies – I think songs should be full of cities, weather, characters – some welcoming, some not so much, like in real life. I’m probably also different because I write, arrange, and handle each instrument myself. I have to sort of take on different personalities throughout my writing/recording process. Songs full of Jekylls and Hydes.
I was always drawn to lo-fi music. Anything with some grit to it and didn’t sound as if it had been corrected in a studio. It just seems more honest to me that way. It’s funny; the only “genre” I ever really considered was “does this seem honest?” Like when the world is rough, why shouldn’t a song be rough?
Also, I was young when I realized how interesting music is to trace. Each song is a gateway to an older song. I would pore over each album’s liner notes to find out who’d inspired what I was listening to. Then I’d look them up and do the same thing. I used to joke that I was looking for the origin of music. Inevitably I delved into rural blues and those Appalachian songs – music with roots as old as weather. It’s music that often can’t be traced to its writer – its origin a mystery. I’m fascinated by that. Songs that insist that mystery is essential to them. Sort of an acceptance of darkness, you could say. That’s probably why my tunes often play with darker subjects. I’m just drawn to it.
After I put out my most recent book, The Midnight Cabaret in 2018, I stopped writing lyrics from first-person point of view and began populating my tunes with characters, mostly oddballs I’d come across late night. Amuser was the first result. And thanks to that album and the nice notices it received, I was invited to play the Burlington Jazz Festival, which was a very proud moment. I ended up doing a cross-country tour, 18 shows in 12 cities, some impromptu and some scheduled. There was a show on Son House’s front porch in Rochester, New York. Another performance in which a staggeringly talented New Orleans bar band joined me onstage at the Frenchman Street Hotel. I played piano at Sun Studios in Memphis, which was just down the road from the bar I’d played the night before on Beale Street – just some wonderful high points where I felt like a part of the history of each place. On the road, I wrote out the stories from which I whittled out the next record which turned out to be The Old Hush, which came out mid-2020 to another round of nice recognition.
The Old Hush, being the travelogue it is, led me on another cross-country tour. Along that one, I opened up for Jack Tempchin at a dive in San Diego, which was another high point. I’ve never been particularly drawn to The Eagles’ version, but there wasn’t a dry eye in the place the way Jack sang his tune “Peaceful Easy Feeling.” I have to admit, though, as far as high points go, I walked into a crowded bar one night in my hometown, Burlington, Vermont, and as I sat there at the bar talking to a couple from Montreal, my own songs started blasting over the house speakers: “Get Behind the Eight Ball,” “Off Your Tiltawhirl,” “Money in the Doll,” it took me a moment to recognize them, I was so surprised. It was a wonderful moment.
At one point on The Old Hush tour, I showed 20 collages in a private gallery in Connecticut. The collages usually serve their purpose as album art and book covers, but it was nice to see them recognized for their own merit. Since The Old Hush, and the tour, I’ve been working on a collection of new short stories, but I’m always saying, “What doesn’t become a song stays a story.” Since The Old Hush, I’ve released the singles “No More Red Than a Rose,” “A Lullaby Away,” and “Spilled Perfume,” which will all be featured on the next full-length record.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you, and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I learned more than ever how important it is to keep yourself occupied. When you’re feeling helpless, it’s easy for the mind to turn pretty bleak. But that sense of helplessness and loneliness was so widespread that it seemed to be something we all shared. A strange thing to take comfort in, let alone share – but it was comforting, somehow, to know that no matter how lonely it got, we were all in the same boat.
So, the next thing I learned was how high my tolerance for loneliness actually is, being pretty good at amusing myself. The day job I had shut down, so I was really stuck at home. I went for long trail runs every day, spent a supernatural amount of energy writing short stories and songs, did the occasional virtual concert. I finished work on my record The Old Hush during that period and waited as long as I could to put it out. Felt selfish to keep it to myself when I thought it would give people something to take comfort in – so I let it go out while we were still in the midst of it rather than waiting until I could sell it in person. And I was more than glad to do so. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Oh, I also learned how to fix my car during lockdown. Changed my alternator and tested it by high-tailing it out to Joshua Tree. If you’re ever short on inspiration, I swear that place will always do the trick. That and St. Louis.
Pricing:
- $12 for The Old Hush (side opening jacket 1CD)
- $10 for The Old Hush (digital album)
- $10 for Amuser (digital album)
- $10 for Feeding the Flowers (digital album)
Contact Info:
- Website: benroque.bandcamp.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bent_roque/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCY8v0aiDQlDHvzk9kwL3ZZQ/featured
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5jPVvuacwJCVAgGCzFacIv
Image Credits
Kim Kaminski
Ryan Fauber
Stephanie Bergen
