Q & A with Ben Ely
Returning home to South-East Queensland after 15 years in the southern states Ben Ely from the band Regurgitator is loving being home again. Over the last two years Ben has stripped back his sound to an acoustic guitar and vocals spending many hours of his day focusing on writing lyrics and practising guitar.
And now, with a new album under his belt, and guitar on his back, he’s making his way ’round, including stopping in at Nambour’s Bison Bar on April 30 for a solo show.
We caught up with Ben in the lead up to the Bison Bar show…
Hey Ben! Looks like we’re getting yearly visits from you, the last few years (having the ‘Gurge’come through a few years in a row), and now you’re heading out on your own for a run of soloshows. Why the shift to a solo project? Has this been on the back-burner for some time now?
I’m still playing in Regurgitator. We played on Friday night at the National Gallery of Victoria for the Andy Warhol Ai Wei Wei exhibition. We had the pleasure of covering the VELVET UNDERGROUND and NICO’s banana album with a chinese classical instrumentalist. It was hard to do the show due to the news regarding PRINCE. We ended up doing a cover of When Doves Cry. The crowd cried… We cried…
Regarding the solo stuff I’ve always really loved playing acoustic guitar home alone. I like to listen a lot of that type of music when I’m cooking or drawing and I’ve always wanted to release an album on my own in that style. It just took me years to feel brave enough to do it. I just enjoy the process.
I can sit and play guitar and sing all day and not get tired of it, though in a band if you play in a loud rock group with a heavy drummer and screaming guitars for hours the noise can really smash my hearing and leave me feeling exhausted.
To most, you’re known as the bassist for Regurgitator, but I remember the punk epicness that was Pangaea (with Dave Atkins and Paulie B), with you on vocals and guitar/bass. Actually, you’ve been in a ridiculous amount of projects…
So, will we see any old Pangaea material re-worked into acoustic tracks? (To be honest, I’d thinkthat would be pretty awesome).
Ha Ha… yeah I’ve actually considered it though those songs are so tricky it would be very difficult to execute and make them sound great. I’m mainly writing new songs and trying to push myself into a new direction. Though saying that I’m planning on playing 1 or 2 Regurgitator songs. Oh and couple covers and a PRINCE cover.
The lyrical content of your solo material focuses on your discomfort with the current government, state of the environment, and our place in this world in general, which on paper. What has really pissed you off with our current affairs, and which song would be the most lyrically-fierce?
I think those lyrics were mainly directed at the Abbott Government. I felt his ideas were completely archaic, old fashioned. I feel that we are in a tricky period of time due to climate change and corporate piracy and we need progressive leaders who aren’t afraid to make bold decisions. Some of these songs I guess are me expressing my frustration…
The songs I’m writing now are a little more up beat though.
‘Goodbye Machine’ is a collection of eleven of your songs for this solo album… But the interesting part is that you recorded old school, straight to tape. Did this feel like it gave a more organic feel to the tracks?
Yes! It was an amazing process. I didn’t look at a computer screen the whole time. I feel music is to be heard not seen from a screen and the way people record today it all to do with computers. It’s kinda odd. The sound of tape seemed to suit the solo singing with guitar arrangements. The technology allows for a lot of space in the sound that digital record doesn’t give you. It was such a pleasure.
Dude… You smashed out those eleven tracks in only three days? How many takes of each song did you do? Did you find the isolation of the studio helped with the recording process?
I did them live with no clip track and it was just me and guitar with a couple overdubs so it wasn’t a super difficult process. I practised all the songs a lot before I went into the studio so I could smash them out. Jamie Traveskis who produced it was super awesome in helping along to make the best decisions.
The title track is really haunting… And it’s bringing me back to songs I would’ve heard on the J’s in the 90s (aaah nostalgia… Loving it). The film clip is pretty dark, too… To me, this song appears to be summing up dissatisfaction of our current state of consumer & technologically-driven lives. Am I off the mark there?
It’s kinda difficult to pin point where the inspiration came for that song. I think a few things influenced it. I guess one idea is that as I get older I feel less ambitious and happy just to play solo more often and not really on the technology of rock music. Another idea is I was living in Melbourne at the time and I was coming up to Brisbane often to stay with my Mum who was dying from cancer and the more time I spent in QLD the more I felt like returning home to the place I grew up. Its so great up here. The sunshine. The venues and cultural scene is a lot stronger than it was 20 years ago…
I guess Melbourne felt like a bit of a machine to me and the song is me saying goodbye to that place and that period of my life. Its funny how songs come about… sometime you can’t exactly pinpoint their heart.
Cheers for your time, Ben. We’ll be seeing you at The Bison Bar in Nambour on April 30!
Awesome. Thank you so much for the interview.