Ever wandering, Ben Lovett has made the entire United States his studio, venue and home. Over a hundred people have learned his music and played with him just in the past year, with the potential of more collaborators in the future. Yet as this composer and musician continues day-to-day in his musical journey, we learn more about his inspiration, creativity and heart.
melophobe: Diving into it! What led you to music?
Ben Lovett: I can’t really say that it was anything specifically different than what leads most people to it. I think I got into making music out of enjoying it so much and just finding some special connection to it on some human level. You’re sort of incapacitated with this limited language that you have to describe it so you gravitate towards creative endeavors as a way to explore that and that’s just what music became for me. It was kind of like looking into a mirror and being fascinated and wanting to get inside the mirror somehow, you know? It was like, I want to be on the other side of that. I want to know what it’s like to put that out into the world instead of just seeing pieces of myself and things I’ve identify with reflecting in what other people make. Maybe that’s what my purpose should be is to try and keep that wheel turning.
melophobe: Share your perspective?
BL: Yeah! Or just make sure that there’s always music. There always has been, I think there always will be, but not unless some people up and decide to devote themselves to fighting the good fight with it, I guess.
melophobe: How has music defined your life then? Are there certain moments from your life, from your past, where you feel like without music it would have been totally different?
BL: Yeah, I had a very intense period with my teenage years. It wasn’t so much playing music, it was just kind of what I mentioned before: finding some ability to communicate with it. Feeling like it knows something about you or is describing a way that you feel and I think at a certain point, it was the only thing in my life that really made a lot of sense to me. I always felt like I had an ally, and that was even preceding playing music or making music. It felt like the most bizarre phenomenon in the world, just the impact of sound and vivid combination of sounds and notes that could evoke emotion. That was the thing for me: endlessly fascinated with how and why combinations of certain acoustics cause you to feel a certain way. It’s just really odd and I don’t think there’s anything else quite like it that’s part of the human experience. It’s as old as people are.
melophobe: I totally understand that. I can definitely relate. There’s certain chords or combinations of notes that just hit you like a nail in the chest.
BL: Yeah! It’s like how and why is that? It’s something that has been so puzzling to people for so long, but it’s the thing that is simultaneously so simple. You don’t need any instruction to understand it and yet it’s not all been done. It’s this infinite wellspring of wonder... No one’s found the bottom of that well yet.
melophobe: A lot of what you’re describing is why we make music to begin with.
BL: I would say on some level that’s what drives most any creative artist or musician. Communicating with something strange you can only really talk about to a point and then you know, music!
melophobe: So I guess in a word, that’s your inspiration?
BL: Yeah! Sure, the inspiration is I’m driven by the ability to communicate feelings through song. I can’t really draw. I couldn’t draw a stick man with a ruler! Some people, they can see the blank canvas and the thing starts to form. That’s not a talent I have. For me, [music] is the one.
melophobe: Now that we’ve got your inspiration pinned down, what instruments do you know and what was the first one you learned?
BL: I kind of like to say that my best instrument is just my ears and that I’ll play anything you hand me if you give me a minute to tinker with it. I never learned to play anything in any way because I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a really rural part of Georgia. There was not anyone around to teach me anything. I first started on guitar. I got my hands on one and I got into playing music really late in my teenage years, because for some reason it just never occurred to me that that was an option and was available to me.
And then I realized one day- I had an epiphany that the only distance between me knowing and not knowing was me picking up an instrument and just sticking with it until it made sense.. From there, in college I got really into recording. I was captivated with capturing sound. So I was sort of learning a lot about the instruments that are used in studios to record things around the same time that I was learning how to play piano, drums, bass and banjo. Anything that I could tinker around on and go, “Oh, I kinda see how this works . . . sort of.” It fused into one discipline for me: making music and making sound.
melophobe: So what’s your favorite to play?
BL: I guess whatever’s around.
melophobe: Even your fingers if you got ‘em?
BL:Yeah, I probably rap and tap my fingers on whatever’s around more than anything else. Just hearing the stuff in my head. [The instruments are] all just means to an end. I would love to play proficiently in all the instruments that I play, but I’m not as motivated or inspired to master the instrument just for the sake of being able to play it well. I’m usually only playing an instrument to make something with it. It’s the ‘thing’ that I’m really interested in.
melophobe: With what instrument do you usually end up writing your favorite or your best songs?
BL: I don’t know. I think other people have favorites. For me it’s just this song or that song. Some are guitar, some are piano, some just start with a drum beat and a bass line. I really don’t have yet a method that shows what I usually do. A song can come from anywhere and can be inspired by any particular sound or beat or instrument. I never really have a sense of what’s going to arrive in what order. I specifically try to avoid having a ‘this is the way I write.’ I think that would probably result in a lot of things sounding the same.
melophobe: So you don’t have a specific place you like to go to write music?
BL: No no, because I’m always moving around. I’m never really in one place for very long. It really tends to be that movement is key. If I am in one place for very long, not much happens.
melophobe: What mode of traveling do you usually use? Does that change how your music is influenced?
BL: Depends on where I’m going.
melophobe: Do you have a favorite mode? I know I keep asking favorites! [laughs]
BL: No, not really. It’s the same as the other thing where it’s about getting to the place where I’m going. Sure, I like to ride on the train, but sometimes a road trip’s nice in a car. I don’t really have any issue with flying but I don’t love airports.
melophobe: I have to admit, I love trains.
BL: I love trains, too! I love riding on trains whenever I have the opportunity. Trains are such a luxury at this point because it’s just as expensive or more for air fare right now, at least in this country. When I get to ride the train it’s great, especially when you get a sleeper car and can camp out in there. You have the big windows and this moving portrait in front of you the whole time.
melophobe: I noticed in the materials that your publicist provided for me that you used to write for films.
BL: Oh yeah, I still do.
melophobe: Oh, cool! I didn’t know that was ongoing.
BL: I’ve always been interested in that. I have an agent for film scoring and they bring me work. It started out with people I knew. Now it’s people who’ve heard what I’ve done on other films. Sometimes those work out and sometimes the scripts are unfortunately not very good and I don’t do them!
melophobe: Any movies we might know?
BL: It’s all indie and film festival stuff. I did this film called The Signal that went to Sundance several years back. It was a big hit at Sundance and it came out in theaters. The last couple of years I’ve been so busy with the song stuff and the other things I’m doing that in the last two years, I’ve only done one each year. They were both these MTV films that were for TV, but they were fun and I did them with a director of something I had done in the past. I had to stop every now and then from my pursuits on the Lovett project, producing another band or scoring a film so I can make money to keep my head above water.
melophobe: How does your mindset or process differ when writing for films or writing albums?
BL: For Highway Collections, I was specifically trying to write songs. In the film you’re usually writing pieces of music for specific scenes or scenes that reoccur, and you’re working within the context of smaller scenes in a larger film. Whereas on the album, each song has its own sort of beginning, middle and end. Each song has its own little mini movie and each one is approached as its own piece. With the films its all about trying to help the director improve the film or tell the story better. So it’s very collaborative and very much me trying to help the director with the vision of what they’re trying to do. Whereas on my stuff, I get to do whatever I want.
melophobe: I noticed with your music videos that they’re consistently very creative and innovative.
BL: That’s because of the variety of people I’m collaborating with. Each of those have a different director, crew and team attached, and usually those are always people who I have prior relationships with from my work as a composer.
melophobe: Do they usually choose the story that goes along with your music?
BL: It’s a combination. The videos aren’t commercials for the band. They’re not supplementary to the music. They’re another area of this project. My interpretation of the idea of certain songs is the recorded song version. This next step is for it not to be just a literal interpretation of that. So it’s really a matter of one piece of art becoming the catalyst for a new piece of art, and that’s really what’s exciting and the motivation behind spending all the energy making those things, because you get to see another angle on the idea. Since they’re interpreting the song, inherently part of that idea that came from me is gonna be in there.
With something like “Eye of the Storm,” the song is about a relationship but it’s taking a metaphor of a person paddling a boat out into a storm in the middle of the ocean. There’s really no mention of water or anything so you get someone like Chris Alender who asks, “Well what if the boat’s in the sky and he’s going straight into the storm and the boat is flying?” It’s so simple and so fucking great! How do we make a boat fly!
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melophobe: [laughs] That’s cool! I did notice you use a lot of hearts in a lot of your imagery, like on the album cover, press photos and the videos. Is there a reason for that shape?
BL: Well, my name’s Lovett, so I have the word ‘love’ in my name.
melophobe: True!
BL: So, you gotta do something. It’s just a thing. Makes more sense than a four-leaf clover. And I figure love’s not such a bad thing to support.
melophobe: Not at all. To quote the Beatles, “All you need is love.”
BL: That’s why I’m saying. There’re worse things to really get behind and identify with. All of this stuff is just matters of the heart. If there’s any one thing that could be the one shape or idea or moniker for me to identify with- it takes so much work and you take so much of yourself to do this and commit yourself to it fully that if its not coming from there, you’re gonna run out of gas. The heart’s probably the only source of infinite, sustaining drive. A lot of these things I do is because I have no good way to talk about them.
melophobe: I feel like I relate to a lot of what you’re saying. I paint here and there, and people always want to put an interpretation on things. They want to know where your head was at, why you made this specific form of art and I agree with you in that it’s great to see other people’s interpretation.
BL: You know how it is. People ask what a painting’s about and you’re like, “I painted it so I didn’t have to talk about it!” It didn’t work as a conversation so you made a painting out of it!
melophobe: That’s pretty much it! What would you like to have accomplished in the next ten or twenty years or so?
BL: Hell, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing ten or twenty days from now! I don’t really think that far ahead. You’re born, then you die, and in the middle you have some time to do some stuff. So make it worth your time. … Right now things change so much within the course of a week or a month that I just try to get through the day. Try to get shit off the to-do list.
melophobe: Is there anything you like to keep constant? Anything that helps you stay sane or solid?
BL: If I had found any foolproof thing to keep me stay sane I would have it around all the time. Whenever I do, I’ll let you know. But it is nice to have an acoustic guitar around, just in case. Sometimes the simple strumming of two chords back and forth is more calming and reassuring than any paycheck, relationship, accolade or anything. I feel like I’m on planet Earth at some brief moment and that makes things simple and easy.
melophobe: That sounds pretty good. Who plays with you live and on your records?
BL: All different people. The record is - if you count kids singing on the pier - about 150 people. Each song is pretty much different people with the exception of a few. There are very few who are on more than one, because the songs were recorded while traveling and wandering around when I was kinda homeless and living out of my car. The shows have been sort of similar. The first three or four shows I did were entirely different groups of people in different parts of the country. I’m not really in one place, so I don’t really have a main band. It just tends to be whatever’s best for the situation. I played a show in L.A. and there were 30 people involved in the performance, and they were all people from L.A. Then the next show I did in Atlanta, and that was a whole different group. This last tour that I did to SXSW, that was a whole band based in North Carolina. It continues to evolve. As long as people are still enjoying playing these songs live I’m sure I’ll find somebody who wants to do it, at least until I get bored of it. [chuckles]
melophobe: So there’s probably over 100 people that have learned your music? At least some part of it?
BL: Yeah, I guess so. The most difficult part about that is I keep having to reteach the songs over and over to different groups of people, which is very time-consuming and tedious. But you know, that’s just how it’s going.
melophobe: Would you ever think about having one set band so you wouldn’t have to spend that time?
BL: Yeah, I would like to do that, plan to do that, for a specific run of shows or tours. I think it’s always going to change based on the approach to the shows, because on the tour to SXSW, everybody knows there’s a huge difference between 12 talented musicians playing the same song at the same time and a band. A band is something different. You can get the most talented people in the world and give them a few rehearsals or shows and it could be really good, but it won’t ever be great. Great is when that other thing comes in and you become a band from that time it takes to gel into one organism. The opportunities I have for that are definitely preferred. You always want to see it improve and great better every night you play. So we had the opportunity to do that on that short Southeast tour. I would like to approach the future shows for this album on a tour-to-tour basis rather than a show-to-show basis.
melophobe: That would probably make things a little bit easier. As an artist, what do you think it takes to get noticed in this day and age?
BL: I don’t think there’s a definitive answer to that. There’s cases and examples of people doing any and all of the things one might suggest and still not being noticed, but I do think that there’s one common thing that you must do, which is just hard work. In every discipline of the arts, the ones that work the hardest tend to be the ones that people eventually hear from. People tend to rely on talent as the thing that’s gonna make it happen for them, but I don’t think that’s true. I think that talent is the prerequisite. If you don’t have talent, you don’t even have a ticket to the dance. Beyond that it’s just working towards something and knowing exactly what it is that you want.
melophobe: Yeah that’s kind of a big deal knowing what you want to begin with.
BL: Right, that’s a hard part of life is trying to figure that shit out.
melophobe: Exactly. Well, is there anything else that you would want readers to know that we haven’t addressed?
BL: I’ve heard that if you take a really deep breath, and hold your breath, and swallow three times before you breathe out, it cures the hiccups.