BEN ARTHUR

CHARACTER STUDIES

Singer-Songwriter Ben Arthur comes back home to Virginia with a new novel and album

By: MATT ASHARE |  

Published: September12, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/2012/sep/18

THE WRITE STUFF: Ben Arthur’s new album is intimately intertwined with his new novel.

Writing and recording an album is, almost by definition, no easy task, particularly if, like Ben Arthur, you happen to be a serious singer-songwriter bent on capturing the ephemeral essence of emotional turmoil in poetic verse. Penning a novel that aims to do the same is no walk in the park either. Combining the two, so that one mirrors, accents, and/or complements the other, raises the endeavor to an entirely new level of complexity. And yet that's exactly what Arthur, a Virginia native who moved to NYC in 1999, set out to accomplish three years ago with his newly released If You Look For My Heart, his sixth album and second book.

       "I wanted each to stand on its own," says Arthur. "I want people to be able to engage with either of those pieces and not feel like they're missing out anything because they haven't read the novel or heard the album. But, if someone brings them together, they should each change the other so that the narrative can unfold it in different ways."

       Arthur, who's playing house concerts in Richmond and Roanoke on September 14th and 18th before returning to Charlottesville for a gig at the Garage on September 19th, grew up in Harrisonburg, where he was drawn into a rootsy music scene that would go on to spawn Old Crow Medicine Show and the Hackensaw Boys. In fact, Arthur has fond memories of gigging with Hackensaw Boys co-founders Robert St. Ours and David Sickman.

       "I've known David forever and I'm a big admirer of his work. I used to do shows with him every other week back when he was an indie rocker, sensitive guy with an electric guitar. And Bobby St. Ours was my main musical collaborator when we were in high school."

       At the same time, Arthur was being unwittingly introduced to a style of music that would come to play a big role in the sound he would begin to develop when he arrived in Charlottesville in 1991. "My mom lives out in Lexington County, and she would take my brother and I to picking parties, which, by the way, we thought were really boring. I had no interest in that music whatsoever. But I did get to see and meet plenty of great bluegrass musicians like Rooster Ruley, who i played with a few times, and Danny Knicely, who played mandolin on my third album. So, yeah, a lot of the bluegrass was happening around me, but it wasn't something that I was particularly drawn to until I got a little older."

       Arthur's Amercana roots aren't immediately apparent on If You Look For My Heart. The disc opens, much like a novel, with a "Prelude," a short, melancholy, vaguely orchestral instrumental that leads into the waltzing title track, a subdued, foreboding ballad underpinned by spare acoustic guitar and dark piano chordings. "If you look for my heart/You will find it/Hollow and cold/I hope you don't mind it," Arthur begins in a near whisper reminiscent of Leonard Cohen. As the drums make their entrance, Arthur's voice gains some strength, the air of defeat gives way to something close to defiance, and a character sketch of someone damaged by the vagaries of romance emerges.

       But Arthur quickly moves in a brighter direction with the deceptively upbeat roots rocker "So Far," a ringing anthem with a sturdy backbeat that carries with it the seeds of a happy ending. "So far, I want to spend I want to spend my whole life with you/So far, and all the days before that too," Arthur sings with something resembling the hope that, despite various complications, he's at least wanting to commit. And some old-time banjo arrives to take Arthur all the way back into Hackensaw terrain, as his old pal Bobby St. Ours sings a classic rambling tale of a restless soul who's gotta be "movin' on."

       Elsewhere, on “Desolate,” fellow NYC singer-songwriter Rachel Yamagata takes center stage for a loungey, longing torch song that lives up to its title. And, while most of the rest of the album sticks to the Americana side of the tracks, Arthur takes a major left turn with “Love Your Enemy,” and ominous hip-pop tune outfitted with distorted guitars and an artful rap by the underground hip-hop artist Aesop Rock. “You’ve got to kill your enemy/Kill him as you kill yourself,” Arthur croons menacingly once Aesop is done rhyming.

       Arthur, who remembers arriving in Charlottesville just weeks before the Dave Matthews Band played their first show, has always embraced a certain eclecticism. Indeed, along with Yamagata and Aesop Rock, he’s collaborated with artists as diverse as DMB members Boyd Tinsley and Tim Reynolds, hip-hop DJ Big Whiz, and American Music Club frontman Mark Eitzel. But there’s clearly a defined method to Arthur’s mild madness on If You Look For My Heart, and he’s the first to admit that it has everything to do with the novel, a tale of three characters trying and failing to make romantic connections that includes references to Aesop Rock and a scene in which Yamagata performs “Desolate” at a club.

       “I tend to write in a lot of different styles,” Arthur explains. “And I try to keep the best ones, regardless of the genre. In this case, I was conscious about using the songs that worked best with the book. In fact, in some ways the book pushed me in even more eclectic directions that maybe I normally would have gone. Having the songs tied into the narrative meant that they couldn't really all be the same kinds of. At least, that's how it felt to me. I mean, the songs couldn't really be about me because they’re really meant to reflect the feelings and experiences of the characters in the novel. And there were things I was doing in the book and in the songs that morphed as I tied them together and soldered pieces where they needed to fit.”

       A stroke of good fortune — namely, the advent of multi-media eBooks – gave Arthur the opportunity to literally tie the album and novel together, by embedding songs at various points in the narrative. “The eBook is really the purest marriage of the project because you flip a page and there will be a song you can listen to as you continue to read,” Arthur explains. “The songs are in a different order in the narrative than they are on the album because I felt they needed to be sequenced different in the book than on the album. It's a fun thing to see because when I started this project we didn't have eBooks that had multi-media elements. It was really only in the last two years that I realized we could actually do this together as a single coherent piece. At the same time, ideally you should be able to read the book on its own or listen to the album on its own. Or you can put the album on as you're reading the book or put them together however you want.”