I went to the Rhythm Room very early on Thursday to do my best to get an interview with Ben Bridwell. I waited almost silently at the bar smoking, drinking water and trying to be invisible until the right moment. I was waiting to get a general feel for the mood of the band and Bridwell in particular, since I’d heard he is very sensitive and critical about the shows even if the audience is eating it up.

Everyone in his crew was joking. They seemed pleased with the sound check and were having a few early evening beers. I was still nervous about approaching him. I was pretty sure he hadn’t granted an interview in about two weeks and all of my efforts with the proper channels had been quashed.

After the sound check I noticed the band guys were just kind of shooting the shit and I approached Bridwell, said my name and that I was a writer, and asked if he had a few minutes to talk with me. From observing him with everyone at the club pre-show I had no doubt he would be courteous and polite but my feeling was that he would tactfully decline.

Photo by Ian Shiller
With Ben, left, after the show

Instead, he instantly said yes and was ready on the spot to talk to me. Below you will find a fairly long interview I conducted with him on the patio of the club. Before the interview here’s a quick show review.

The bar was packed with mostly 21 and up, and we arrived toward the end of Mt. Egypt’s set which sounded good and which I wish I could have seen more of. There was almost no room to breathe and when Band of Horses came out Bridwell played the first few songs seated at a pedal steel, and while the band sounded great, you couldn’t see him unless you were in the tightly-packed front of the stage or 9 feet tall.

I was near the bar and was enjoying the sound, but when he stood up to sing I enjoyed it much better. They sounded as good as the album if not better on most songs, though a couple of the quieter tunes didn’t translate as well in the live environment. The audience was loving it. I could tell a few times Bridwell was freaking out about something to do with the sound. I couldn’t pinpoint any glitch in the music but it was clear that he isn’t completely used to the spotlight, which made his performance that much more interesting.

He was honest, real and expressing a full range of real emotions, mostly generated by his powerful music and the response from the crowd, but it was clear that while this was a performance there was little artifice or affectation going on.

They played almost the entire album. Bridwell was interacting with the audience a lot and once he started feeling good, some five songs into the set, they were pretty amazing. He even sang “Happy Birthday” to a dude who was turning 29. They played some new material that sounded like a natural continuation to the debut that made me salivate.

The best part of the show for me happened after the fake encore, after Bridwell announced that they were going backstage to smoke half a ciggi and then coming back. When the band came back onstage the crowd had thinned some and for once I got right in the middle and allowed myself to get lost in the music. It was an intimate performance and I doubt you will be able to see them in such a small space again.

The last song was just Bridwell and the pedal steel. It was a new song that was very sad and seemed very personal to him. This personal expression was almost ruined by three girls in front of the stage apparently more interested in texting each other or exchanging numbers than what was going on onstage. Bridwell himself was affected by this, and more than once, mid-song he told them to shut up, which was kind of funny but also kind of took me out of the moment.

After the show Bridwell and the band seemed elated and hung out outside the back of the bar and spoke with fans.

The guy was nice to everyone which was very refreshing. Here’s what we talked about, and while some of the replies may read a little dire or serious, he was smiling and laughing the entire time we spoke.

AZNightBuzz: How’s the tour going?

Ben Bridwell: It’s been great. It’s been really great. It’s exceeded all expectations on my end. I didn’t know what to expect. This is our first one, so it’s been awesome.

AZNB: You guys played here (Rhythm Room, March 21) the day the album came out. Was that a national tour as well?

BB: That was a Western half of the U.S. tour. We kind of went down into the Midwest and to Texas to go do SXSW and then back around.

AZNB: So since the record came out and you’ve been getting all kinds of write-ups, has the crowd increased ridiculously?

BB: It has increased. (We were sitting outside on the patio of Rhythm Room after the sound check and before the doors opened. A curious fan walked up on the other side of the patio, separated by a fence and asked Ben about the show without knowing who he was. He politely answered his queries and said a very friendly “See you soon!” This interaction sums up my experience with this nice person. When the guy walked away we had a good-natured chuckle and went on with the interview.)

AZNB: Are you freaked out at all about it?

BB: There’s been moments when I’ve definitely been freaked out. We did three shows in New York – one in Manhattan, one in Brooklyn and one in Hoboken, which might as well be in New York. They were all sold out and it was pretty scary. I think by the third one – the third one was Brooklyn, and we’d done pretty well the first two nights and I was really nervous I was going to fuck it all up and ruin the whole trip or whatever. It actually ended up being really good but I was like gripping an air-conditioning unit just to stay cool I was so freaked out.

So there’s been moments, you know. But sometimes if you’re not nervous like that, or not feeling pumped up you have to question what the hell you’re doing. Even if it’s like a small room like this, they should all be kind of scary.

AZNB: Hopefully you can translate that energy into a better performance.

BB: Exactly.

AZNB: I have a couple of Arizona specific questions. I know you lived in Tucson a while ago for some time. Is it strange playing in places that you’ve lived?

BB: It is. Tucson’s stranger because I didn’t live there long enough to really make any solid group of friends that are still there anymore, and the people I did know have moved on or gotten into a more settled life and don’t come out to shows anymore. It’s more like when I go home to South Carolina and the South, then it’s just like a bombardment of family and old friends.

So to come to Tucson it’s a little strange because I don’t know anybody even though I lived there for like three years.

AZNB: Do you have a favorite show so far on the tour?

BB: I guess it would have to be that Brooklyn show, just because those three shows kind of felt like us arriving or whatever. It was like “Here’s a big test: you’ve got thousands of people you have to play for in these three days.” So when that one was over, just the relief of it, I mean it was really fun to play as well, but the relief of it being over felt like we’d stepped to another level.

AZNB: Where did you guys play those three nights?

BB: The first night was the Bowery Ballroom, the second night at Maxwell’s in Hoboken and the third night in the Warsaw in Brooklyn, and it was huge and scary.

AZNB: You got through it.

BB: Yeah.

AZNB: I like road stories. I like things that happen on the road. Do you have something interesting that happened while you were driving or anything fucked up or weird?

BB: We’ve had a few. Two hours into tour, outside Spokane, Wash., we get pulled over by the cops and I have ridiculously stinky marijuana in my bag, not being smoked or anything, but the cops walk up to our window and he’s like, “Whoa! Obviously you guys have weed.” So we just show him where everything is, like “Here’s this; here’s my pipe.” We were on our way to play a gig with Shooter Jennings, Waylon and Jessie Colter’s kid. So we mentioned that we were playing with Shooter Jennings and they pretty much let us go so we could get on our way to get to the show on time. They said, “Well, we’ll say you only had this amount of marijuana so we can’t take you in right now.” They totally helped us pack up our van after the dogs searched it. That was really intense.

AZNB: Wow. That sounds rough. Some Carrisa’s Wierd (sic) stuff. Did you guys play in Arizona?

BB: We played a lot. We played at Modified. God, one time we played at Modified with the Shins and 764 Hero. We played Modified all the time and it was always so hot. We’re always here in the summer! We played there a l lot and we played Tucson as well.

AZNB: Fronting a band, (he played drums in Carissa’s Wierd [sic] and never wrote a song before these) was that a strange transition for you?

BB: It was at first. Now I really enjoy it. When I was the drummer, and I was a very bad drummer to begin with, but that would make me more nervous for some reason. Sure, I have my moments where I get nervous now, but holding down the beat really kind of sketched me out because I felt my job was really important. But now, even though I have to remember lyrics and shit like that, for some reason I feel like some of the pressure is off me.

AZNB: I’m just amazed by the fact that you didn’t play guitar and didn’t write songs and you came up with all these amazing songs. Did you have some kind of a creative surge or an epiphany? Was it all written in one quick period?

BB: Yeah, it was because I’d never done it before. I had so many options. When you don’t have songs that sound like songs you’ve already written there’s plenty of options out there. At the same time I would just mess around and hopefully find the melody in there somewhere. And with help from other guys it sounds fuller and you can’t tell how bad of a guitar player I am.

AZNB: I am just impressed with the quality of the songs. Obviously the music sounds great on the record but to write these kinds of songs the first time out is impressive.

BB: I guess I understand that. Secretly in my mind I’m sure I’ve been wanting to do it my whole life.

AZNB: You would think that being a musician already in a band you might have at least tried to contribute some tunes over the years.

BB: Shit no!

AZNB: Does it bother you to be so sought after right now and kind of the darling of the indie press?

BB: It’s a double-edged sword. Because that stuff – you’re not supposed to read about it when it’s bad and you’re not supposed to think about it too much when it’s good. At the same time, I can’t help but check out what the reviews say. Unfortunately I’m affected by it so I try to lay off reading any of that shit or thinking too much about it. I’ve also got a lot more work to do.

This record – I’m really happy with it, but I think there’s still a lot more we can do. Of course who doesn’t think that before going into their sophomore record? I’m hoping that all those references to sounding like other people and that kind of shit – hopefully, I can stay away from hearing too much about that stuff and focus on what it is I’m supposed to be doing, which is trying to make happy music for people.

AZNB: The old cliché is that you have your whole life to write your first album and that’s why sophomore efforts aren’t as good. But in your case you didn’t really have that long so hopefully…

BB: Right. (laughs) One would hope. I’ve got new ones, so hopefully…At least it’s not hard to write new ones, which is nice.

AZNB: I want to talk about Sam Beam. I’m aware that you were the person that brought his early home recordings to Sub Pop and that you knew him for a long time before that.

BB: I did. We’re from the same town in South Carolina and he’s a friend of my brother. He’s my older brothers age; they’re like three or four years older than I am so I didn’t really know him until I was already living in Seattle. I came home to South Carolina for Christmas and he was staying with my brother for a little bit and he had recorded his first song. I just completely freaked out about it and then he just kept sending me stuff. He would send me like 12 songs every month and a half or so. He just kept writing amazing stuff.

And I was going to put him out on my label, called Brown Records (which primarily released music by Carissa’s Wierd [sic]) but then once I realized what I was dealing with, I was like, “Man, I’ll fuck this up.” So I passed him on to other labels and hoped that they would see the brilliance that I heard in it and luckily they did. And so did lots of people.

AZNB: Not hard to hear the brilliance. And he took you guys out on tour before you’d put anything out.

BB: Yeah, he took us out last summer on two tours.

AZNB: That’s a nice way to reciprocate.

BB: Exactly. It was wonderful, man.

AZNB: You were talking about a new album at some point. Do you have new material?

BB: Yeah, we have like five or so new ones, some of which we play now, and some that are just like the songs from Everything All the Time. I kind of want to demo them first and see what I like about them and what I don’t like about them. Mostly that’s what I did with all the songs from the record, kind of spend some time with them to hear what I like and what I don’t like about them and try to clean them up.

I’m really looking forward to having a break after this year. We have so much more touring to do this year but after that hopefully taking a break and maybe writing some happy songs because right now, the songs I’m writing are terribly sad. Happy songs are kind of harder to write so I need some time to get away from thinking about all this stuff and just get back to what is basic about being a songwriter.

AZNB: As a music listener, do you find that depressing or sad music actually is helpful?

BB: Oh yeah. Man, I’m a sucker for sad songs. That’s my favorite thing. There’s so much emotion in a sad song. There’s emotion in happy songs too, but there’s something about…I guess I like to wallow in my own pity or something but I love a sad song.

AZNB: Your former partner Mat Brooke is on the record and wrote some of the material and his music is a big part of this but he’s not on tour. I know he’s opening a bar…

BB: A bar, yeah. It’s just mayhem up there. He’s really quite busy. It’s a bummer he can’t be with us but we do OK. We scrape by, at the same time the train can’t stop rolling. You gotta get out there and work and try and sell some records. I like being on tour, so the train keeps moving.