Speech To Emerson College
My name is Benjamin Wagner. I’m the Executive Producer of MTV News Digital by day, a performing singer/songwriter by night, and an author, blogger, marathoner, triathlete, aspiring filmmaker, son, brother, uncle, and boyfriend in between. I’m here at Emerson tonight to tell you that you can be anything you want to be. Here’s how.
My mother, a nurse, was studying classical guitar while pregnant with me in the summer of 1971. I was born September 4, in Iowa City, Iowa. Three weeks later, my mother, brother and I moved to Washington, DC, to meet up with my father, who had already begun teaching chemistry at a community college. We moved four more times before my eleventh birthday.
There were three constants in the intervening years: music, reading and writing. The 70s were all about the singer/songwriter – the balladeer with an acoustic guitar – James Taylor, Carol King, and Jim Croce. Their music was in constant rotation on a now-archaic piece of technology we called a “record player.” My parents took me to my first concert when I was four-years-old. I refused to believe it was actually John Denver way off on that distant stage, but sang along with every song just the same.
Books were readily available but never forced upon us. I especially remember Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree,” and “Where The Sidewalk Ends.” But it wasn’t until picking up Judy Bloom’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” that I got hooked on reading. Her stories were about kids like us, kids with pimples, braces, and big glasses. Girls worried about their periods, boys worried about nocturnal emissions. This was real stuff, even if it was a few years ahead of my time.
I did ok with math and science, but I excelled at the arts. My parents responded with an avalanche of creative activities: painting and drawing classes, voice, piano and acting lessons – the works. They bought me my first journal — a Preppy Diary (Preppy was all the rage in The Eighties) — for my ninth birthday. It had a lock. These days, some twenty-six years later, I update my Daily Journal on Benjamin Wagner Dot Com every morning for some fifteen thousand monthly readers. There is, suffice to say, no lock.
My first public performance was at the Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary Talent Show. I auditioned with a cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” but was asked instead to perform “The Theme From The Greatest American Hero.” You won’t remember the TV show, but it was the “Lost” of its day. Or at least the “Mork & Mindy” of its day. The protagonist was a reluctant, bumbling everyman who received his superpowers from aliens. The chorus of the song went, “Believe it or not I’m walking on air / I never thought I could feel so free.”
My parent’s divorced that winter. My brother and I spent Saturday afternoons at my father’s. One Saturday, we shot what would now be called a music video — but was then called a Super-8 movie — for the talent show. I played The Greatest American Hero; my brother played the bad guy. Three schoolmates, all named Jenny, co-starred. The short film – complete with a blue screen improvised from a piano bench and a bed sheet – played over my shoulder as I performed at the talent show. The year was 1980. Cable television was in its infancy. MTV wouldn’t premiere for another year.
Music was salve for the adolescent chaos of my parent’s divorce. I spent entire afternoon’s wearing big, puffy headphones plugged into my father’s Magnavox stereo. I listened to Styx “Paradise Theater, Neil Diamond’s “The Jazz Singer,” Journey’s “Escape,” Gordon Lightfoot’s” Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” and Air Supply’s “All Out Of Love” on repeat. I escaped into the pages of Rolling Stone Magazine, relating at ten-years-old – somehow — to these musicians, their addictions, infidelities, madness, and rock and roll fantasies. I fell in love with a Top 40 AM radio station in Chicago called WLS. I listened to a zany morning DJ named Larry Lujack on so often and so loud, that my father broke my transistor radio over his knee.
If rock and roll was the music of rebellion, I had found my cause, and an antagonist.
Cut to sixth grade. I’m the new kid at Devon Elementary in Suburban Philadelphia. The school bully, Brad Daggett, has challenged me to stand high atop the jungle gym and sing Kim Wilde’s “Kids In America” for the entire playground. I assume he thought I’d be embarrassed. To the contrary, I was thrilled with the attention. He may not have appreciated the impromptu show, but the sixth grade girls did. I was hooked.
Six years later, I was Editor of my high school paper, The Conestoga Spoke. My primary objective had been to drag the paper towards global, not local, coverage. It was a tall order for a monthly written by sixteen year olds. I settled, mostly, for changing the masthead from some silly pen-and-ink monstrosity, to a more elegant font, reminiscent of The New York Times. I thought it gave the paper more gravitas.
I was also the front man for an REM, Pink Floyd and Rush cover band — strange combination, I know — called Underground. We played school functions and birthday parties, often splitting our $100 paycheck six ways, which generally meant a burger, fries and Coke from the local Roy Rogers.
But eighteen years later — the paycheck notwithstanding — little has changed. I am the Executive Producer of MTV News Digital, and I perform rock and roll. But I’m getting slightly ahead of myself.
I applied to two great journalism schools: Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. The reply from Northwestern was thin. I didn’t get in. Ends up I had mis-spelled Cronkite, as in Walter. Note to self: when writing an application essay saying you want to be like someone, be sure you know how to spell that someone’s name.
I got into Syracuse, but not the SI Newhouse School of Communication. And so my work was cut out for me when I started classes in the fall of 1989. I had two years to get a 3.4, and pass a Grammar/Spelling/Punctuation entrance exam. By spring, I had a 3.6, and had eked my way through the test (spelling was never my strong suit).
I started my junior year as a dual major: Creative Writing and Journalism. The Arts & Sciences and Communications schools were on either side of University Avenue. One the north side, I was taught that language was slippery: every word has a thousand meanings. On the south, I was taught that word choice was imperative. A “crash” and an “accident,” they reasoned, were not the same thing. (I’ll let you figure out which discipline was which).
I wrote just one article for the Syracuse student paper, The Daily Orange. It was an interview with one of my heroes, REM front man Michael Stipe that I had snagged by faking the paper’s letterhead. When the features editor failed to welcome my Big Get with lavish praise, I resolved to never write for him again.
I didn’t really like The Newhouse School. It felt like a vocation. It felt like science, not art. They taught me things like communications law, rights and clearances, and graphic design. The lessons were hard learned, and lacked poetry. In one class, we were given the elements for the first section of an imaginary paper — masthead, articles, and ads — and told to arrange them as we saw fit. I put all of the news up front, and all of the ads in the back. “No no no,” the Chair of the Newspaper Department said. “Page one is news, then six pages of ads, then a little more news at the back.” If this was journalism, I wanted nothing to do with it.
Luckily, I had plenty of other things to occupy my time. My “alternative rock” band, Smokey Junglefrog, was one of the best and busiest on campus (the other was called Zoo Trip, and was fronted by now-big time Hollywood actor Tay Diggs, but that’s another story). We self-released three records, opened for The Samples, and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and performed in Boston, New York, and beyond. If you asked me then what I was going to be when I grew up, I would have said without hesitation, “Rock Star.”
I had no idea what life after college would look like. I approached graduation with huge trepidation, drinking as much beer, and playing as many rock shows as possible. It felt like time was running out.
One of my favorite professors was an author named Tobias Wolff. I had a creative writing seminar with him. His first book, “This Boys Life,” was Leonardo DiCaprio’s first film. Anyway, I corresponded with him just after graduating. This is what he wrote.
Dear Benjamin:
You’re passing through what I consider to be the most difficult transition. More difficult, I think, than adolescence. Keep writing. Whether or not you eventually become a writer, it will help you see what’s going on with you, and give you a window on your life.
Keep writing.
Now, I hadn’t interned anywhere. I had no skills. I had no clips, no reel, nothing much to show for myself except two degrees, three records, and a wicked hangover. My summer jobs had consisted of running amusement park rides in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, painting houses in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and pumping gas in Telluride, Colorado. Not exactly entry-level mass media stuff.
So I kept singing, kept performing, and kept writing. And I took temp jobs. I spent a week unpacking computer boxes. I spent a week filing TPS forms. And I spent a week assembling plastic medical parts. Which was the final straw. Five days of soul-crushing, mindless labor at six dollars an hour – after taxes – added up to $190. I knew there had to be a better way. But I didn’t have a map.
Everyone talks about “networking” when you’re starting a career. It always sounded like a dirty word to me, a euphemism for “using someone else.” And that might be partly true. But if I’ve learned on thing in the nearly twelve years since graduating college, it’s that people like to help people. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. The worst anyone can say is, “No.”
So I asked for help. I was living with my brother in Saratoga Springs, New York. It was a small town. He knew someone at the newspaper. I got in the door, I got an assignment, and I nailed it. My editor at The Saratogian was Bev Kim. I asked her for a break, and she gave it to me.
Don’t be afraid to ask.
Not like I’d made it at that point, or anything even close. I was freelancing, writing an article or two a week. I was writing concert reports, features on local talent, and light news. But it wasn’t paying the bills. So I worked at the local coffee shop – not, I will add, a Starbucks – and even babysat my brother’s boss’ kid just to make ends meet. I earned $8000 my first year out of school. I was struggling.
And I was making music. I released my debut solo CD in 1994. I played all over The Capital District, got some local press, and used both the newspaper and the coffee shop as opportunities to spread the word. Within a year, I was part of a musical community, and had a column in the paper called, “B-Side.” That’s what they used to call the back of a 45, one of those smaller records – a single. The B-Side was where the artist usually put their random stuff: cover songs, ephemera. Anyway…
I had a friend in Saratoga that we called “Doc.” He was what I’d now call an “early adopter.” I had a second generation Mac – I’d long sworn off PC’s – but his computer was truly tricked. Remember, this is the Early Nineties. Dudes at MIT are the only ones using email. Marc Andreeson is still developing the first Internet Browser. But my friend Doc had a Mac with a CD-ROM player. And he had a modem. It was 4400 baud, which is approximately 80,000 times or so – math isn’t my strong suit, remember? — slower than the first consumer modem. Still, he was able to connect to BBS’s, these Bulletin Boards – early Blogs, if you will. I was fascinated.
Sometime around there, my brother’s company relocated to New York City. He asked me if I wanted to move threw with him. So with $400, a fistful of clips from The Saratogian, my trusty Mac SE and a hand-me-down 4400 baud modem courtesy of Doc, I moved to Hell’s Kitchen, 56 Street & Tenth Avenue, in Manhattan. I was twenty-four years old. And scared shitless.
And so I networked. I made a list of everyone adult I knew, called them, and asked them if they’d suggest three more adults to speak with. There were some major misses. I left messages for one guy at The Village Voice every day for two weeks. When I finally got him, he was annoyed. “Dude, I’ve been in Tokyo all month. I’ve got sixteen messages from you! What the fuck?” But occasionally, I got a hit.
I toured the WNBC, Daily News and New York Times newsrooms. And in April of 1995, just a few days after the Oklahoma Bombings, I met Rolling Stone writer – and Syracuse Alumni – Pete Wilkinson at The White Horse Tavern in the West Village. Dylan Thomas had drunken himself to death there, and here I was having a beer with a bona fide Rolling Stone contributor and his BBC reporter friend.
Meanwhile, though, I wasn’t making rent. The night before taking a job at Starbucks, my brother – who himself was editing television seven days a week to make ends meet – told me not to. “You’ll never get the career you want if you’re working at Starbucks all day.” Chris was my Guardian Angel. We all need one.
And Pete Wilkinson was my Gozer, The Key Master, Rick Moranis’ character in “Ghostbusters.” He got me in the door at Rolling Stone. Here I am a 24-year-old musician who writes a newspaper column — with my face on it and everything — walking into the Wenner Media Offices on Sixth Avenue in New York City. I figure they’re going to welcome me with open arms, and give me a staff gig right on the spot.
So naive.
There were no jobs for me, they said. But there was an internship. It wasn’t a Rolling Stone internship, though; it was for Men’s Journal. Was I interested? Would I like to work for free? For a magazine I didn’t read?
There are maybe a dozen crossroads in one’s life. I dunno, I’m still young-ish — maybe there are more. But this was one of them. I had no money. I was living off of hot dogs and generic Tang. I needed a paycheck. And I needed a career. So I said yes.
College internships are often thankless. I know: one of my current gigs is running the intern program for the department. I can tell you as someone who manages fifteen paid producers and thousands of pieces of digital content online, on cell phones, and via broadband — managing a non-paid, twenty-year-old is not my top priority. It can’t be. But in nearly ten years at MTV News, I’ve hired four of my thirty or so interns. I’ve hired the ones with moxie; the ones who follow through on even the smallest assignment; the ones who work until the work is done.
And so I set out to impress at Men’s Journal. I did crap jobs like organize the equipment closet. I made photocopies. I sent faxes. It was brainless, menial labor, but I poured myself into it. And when I had a second of downtime, I didn’t flip through magazines, or take long lunches. I asked the editors if they needed any help, read press releases, and absorbed every piece of knowledge I could. And knowledge was everywhere: recycling bins, file cabinets, staff meetings – everywhere.
Someone must have noticed. Within two months I was fact checking for $15 an hour. Within three months I was contributing to the magazine for the unheard of rate of fifty cents a word!
Rolling Stone, meanwhile, was just down the hall. Word was they were looking for writers for their new online deal with CompuServe. Don’t look for it now – they lost out big to AOL. I grabbed my clips – which were always on hand – screwed on some courage, marched down the hall and stuck out my hand.
“My name is Benjamin Wagner. I hear you need online writers. I’m your man.”
The dude, Matt Hendrickson, was scarcely older than me. He pawed my clips straight faced and said, “Weezer’s playing Central Park on Saturday. Fifty bucks.”
In less than a year at Rolling Stone Online, I interviewed Ben Folds, Ani DiFranco, They Might be Giants, Goo Goo Dolls, Buffalo Tom, Matthew Sweet and a whole bunch of other artists you’ve probably never heard of. I had been in New York less than a year, but already I was in the VIP section at Irving Plaza, and backstage at The Academy. I was being published, but I never saw the results. My 4400-baud modem wasn’t cutting it. And at $50 an article, I couldn’t afford CompuServe anyway. Still, it was exciting.
But it wasn’t paying the bills. I wrote for anyone who’d pay me by the word. I wrote a freelance article on the desert tortoise for Ralph Lauren’s son’s magazine, Swing. I wrote for CD-ROMs. I edited an LL Bean catalogue. Anything. I was still living off of hot dogs and Tang, and barely making rent.
Still, when Lifetime Television – yes, The Cable Channel For Women – called to offer me a job as a producer for their soon-to-be-launched web site, I balked. Me? At Lifetime? It was a full-time job, and they would teach me how to produce for this brand-new thing, The Internet. My mother, bless her heart, told me not to be stupid. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “Take the job, Benjamin.” So I did.
Now, imagine, if you can, a time before The Internet. You were probably about ten years old. No one had any idea what The Internet could do. All we knew was that everyone could be connected, and that we could put pictures and words and links on a computer. There was no ecommerce. There was no eBay, no Napster, no Amazon. There were no MP3s. Shit, there was barely Real Audio – remember Real Audio? At the time, it was basically what we’d now call “brochure-ware.” For a television network like Lifetime, The Internet was brand extension. It was a place to find out about shows, and what time they were on. It was a place to “chat” with stars from Lifetime Original Movies.
More importantly for me, though, it was a place to learn. I was hired to write, and collaborate with coders and designers on what the web site would look like. But I wanted to know how the coders and designers did what they did. I wanted to know HTML, I wanted to know Photoshop, and Adobe Premiere. I wanted to shoot video, and encode audio. And because this brand-new department was about four-people strong, I could do all of that stuff.
In August of 1996, Lifetime sent a few of us to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I was the first to arrive at the United Airlines Arena. I had two laptops, and a digital camera the size of a football. As I found my way to our press box, I walked through an army of young, hip, pierced and tattooed young people with the coolest and fastest computers I’d ever seen. When I got to my station high above the convention floor, I had no idea where to plug in my computer. I turned to the guy standing next to me, stuck out my hand, and said, “Hey, my name is Benjamin Wagner. I work for Lifetime TV Dot Com. Do you have any idea where we’re supposed to plug these things in?”
That guy’s name was Michael Alex, Vice President of MTV News. He’s my boss.
Michael hired me in October of 1996 to produce MTV News Online’s Daily News. As perfect a fit as it seemed, I was reticent to take the job. I loved MTV. My brother claims it’s all I ever watched. But I considered myself more of a PBS or NPR kind of guy. Still, I thought I’d give it a shot. I’m now in my tenth year at MTV News, and I still consider myself an PBS or NPR kind of guy.
I don’t really know how to summarize all that I’ve learned at MTV. Hopefully you’ll ask me good questions in the Q&A.
It’s been a real coming of age. I’ve gone from Producer, to Senior Producer, to Director, to Executive Producer. I lived through the Internet Boom — when some of my peers become paper millionaires overnight. And I weathered The Bust — when entire companies disappear just as quickly. With consumer adoption of broadband technology, it’s booming again. I’ve seen technology shift from hand-tagged HTML, to content management systems, XML, and Flash. I’ve seen musical trends change from Girl Power to Boy Bands to Hip Hop. The reports of rock and roll’s demise are frequent, and frequently premature.
I released my tenth CD, “Heartland,” last month. For the last four years, I’ve spent the balance of my allotted vacation time on tour. My music doesn’t pay the bills, but it does feed the soul.
I still go to shows, still go to movies, and still buy CDs. I still seek out new music: Matt Pond PA, Augustana. The Hidden Cameras’ “Music Is My Boyfriend” is currently in heavy rotation on my Ipod.
I still write every day. I’ve been posting stories, songs, and photos to my website, Benjamin Wagner Dot Com, since before I knew what a Blog was. It’s been good for business – I earn a couple thousand dollars a year from iTunes and CD sales – but mostly it’s been good for my soul.
I don’t write for MTV News very often anymore. Every so often, I come out of retirement to interview my heroes — Michael Stipe, Aimee Mann, and Cameron Crowe. And I don’t actually produce the web site anymore. I manage the News and Movies area like an air traffic controller, landing major projects on time and under budget, and sending new initiatives off into the ether. I manage aesthetic, editorial, and quality standards. I motivate my team to make great content for the greatest audience in the world. I remind them to remember what it feels like to be a fan. All I have to do is think back to those afternoons I spent in headphones reading Rolling Stone. I couldn’t get enough then, and neither can our millions of users and viewers now.
Which is a tremendous responsibility, really. We like to think of our audience as our younger siblings. We tell them what we think they need to know, whether it’s what their favorite rapper is up to, what’s happening in Washington, DC, that affects them, or what the troops in Iraq are enduring.
It’s easy to think of MTV News as just one big college paper. Most of my colleagues are young. They love to stay out late and see shows. There are posters on the walls, and desks crowded with CDs and DVDs. But the longer I do it, and the further I get away from the age of our 18-24 year old audience, the more seriously I take it. One guy in particular helped me really understand the reach of this little job of mine.
Mister Rogers was my neighbor in Madaket, Nantucket. He summered with his wife there in a beautiful clapboard home — The Crooked House, they called it — on Smiths Point. My family rents the house next door.
The first time I met Mister Rogers, I was nervous like a little kid. It was a hot summer day in September 2001. I trudged across a sandy dune towards his house with my acoustic guitar slung over my shoulder. He answered the door, wearing glasses, a white golf shirt with a sailboat on it, a pair of slacks and slippers. He was smiling, his eyes like slivers of the brightest, most star-strewn sky you’ve ever seen.
We sat in the living room, there in the back overlooking the sea. It was wood paneled, and strewn with photos and art: there was Lady Elaine, King Friday, and Trolley.
We sat and talked a while about New York — he had an apartment a few blocks from mine – and about my job, my plans, and dreams. And then I sang a song called “Summer’s Gone” for he and his wife. I was nervous. Playing for half a dozen people is always more difficult than a hundred. And one of them — his wife — was a concert pianist; the other was Mister Rogers (an accomplished musician in his own right). I finished, they clapped, we drank lemonade, and smiled. It was pretty cool.
He took me on a tour of the house. There were doorways to duck through, narrow staircases, and surprise little rooms around each turn. While there was evidence of many summers spent there — fishing rods, foul weather gear, boots and hats — it was a sparse, almost ascetic house.
In one small room, next to a twin cot where he snuck the occasional catnap, was a pair of his blue Keds — just like on TV.
Later, we stood on the back porch staring out at the water. He asked me about my job at MTV. I told him what I did, how much I loved my colleagues, and music, and reporting on youth culture.
“There is no shortage of media – television, radio, movies — that are shallow and complex,” he said. “We need more television, more movies, more art that is deep and simple.”
His show, “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood,” like Mister Roger’s himself, was pure, unadulterated goodness. It was unfettered by extraneous language, bright colors, or complicated drama. He spoke straight, told the truth, and didn’t worry about being cool or contemporary. He was deep and simple, through and through.
I invited Mister Rogers over the following September. Despite a torrential downpour, and two other commitments elsewhere on the island, he came. He sat next to me on the couch, and watched me open a few gifts: like a tiny book with a mirror on the front and a ribbon bookmark with Trolley on the end of it called “You Are Special.” Inside he had written “Happy Birthday Benjamin! From your neighbor Fred Rogers.”
Sitting there with him, a storm raging just outside the window, I told him how often I thought about our “deep and simple” conversation, and how often I told others the story.
“Spread the message,” he said. “Spread the message.”
So that’s why I’m here tonight. That’s my message to you. Put your shoulders back, stick your hand out, and introduce yourself. Make sure it’s a solid handshake. Look ‘em in the eye. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. And when you get your shot, work harder than you’ve ever worked before.
You can be anything you want to be. Odds are, you’re going to be exactly who you’ve always been. It might be a long, circuitous path to get there. And when you get there, it might not look like you imagined. Plus, it’s gonna constantly change. But keep it deep, keep it simple, and you’ll get there. Take your time. Relish the journey.
Because I know that, right now, it seems like it’s all about being there. But trust me on this: it’s all about getting there.
Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
‘Over it,’ I thought to myself as I approached my ninth MTV Holiday Party. ‘Been there, done that, drank the bottom shelf liquor.’
It’s a big mess of an affair. Five thousand MTVN employees packed into The Hammerstein Ballroom, wolfing down stale sushi, tossing back shots of Mr. Boston Vodka, and shaking their humps to an only-slightly post-Studio 54 soundtrack. It was fun the first time (getting stoned in the wings and taking Polaroids with a live penguin). And it was fun the fourth time (doing one shot of tequila for every Corona and waking up in a puddle of upchuck). But last night? Wasn’t feeling it. Wasn’t even gonna go. Until…
Rachel stepped into my office. She comes by a few times a day, always smiling.
“You’re not going, are you?”
I rolled out a litany of excuses. Tired from the road, sore throat, closet full of dirty clothes, yada yada yada, blah blah blah. She endured it all, smiling, and wisely let me talk my way into it.
“If you’re going over there right now,” I said, “I’ll go.”
“Put on your coat then.”
Seconds later, we were stepping out into Times Square.
“You ok?” she asked crossing 42d Street.
Rachel is sage beyond her 23 (soon to be 24!) years. She reads me pretty well. (Or I’m easy to read.) Still, it’s a difficult question to answer when you don’t know the answer yourself, or it requires more vulnerability than you’re willing to muster.
The answer is, yes, I’m ok (and thanks for asking). I’m tired from the road, have a sore throat, a closet full of dirty clothes, and an apartment choked with sheetrock dust. But that’s not it, really. Or that’s only part of it.
I think I’m suffering from postpartum depression. And one-third-life crisis. Add in seasonal affective disorder, and you have yourself one hell of a December.
There are a lot of hopes and dreams wrapped up in every record release. I’m not even sure what all those hopes and dreams are. Not fame or fortune, really. More like adulation and appreciation. Or acceptance. Or affirmation. Or something to fill this (as Bono calls it) “God-shaped hole.” But despite three weeks of applause, a tiny bit of ink, and whole bunch of very kind, very supportive emails, well, the hole is still there.
It’s one-third-life crisis. I have this MTV career. I have this rocknroll cottage industry. I have these marathons and triathlons. But I’m not a kid anymore. I have other things I wanna be: husband, father, author, and filmmaker. Something’s gotta give. Might as well be the financial black hole that is my singer/songwriter career.
The question is, who am I if I don’t make records? Who am I if I don’t play shows?
Will you still love me if I don’t sing?
These and other minor life questions were floating around my head as I walked into the MTV Holiday Party. Dudes from the mailroom were pimped out in matching Gucci separates and sunglasses. The ceiling was blanketed in twinkling, artificial stars. There was cleavage everywhere. I left my coat on, but stayed over two hours. Every one of my colleagues asked about the tour. Every one of them wanted to know about Iowa, and the new record, and what comes next. Every one of them had warm words.
One in particular, though, saved — if not my life — then at least my night.
“Every once and a while,” he said, “I’ll be sitting at my desk trying to figure out how I’m going to finish what I’m doing at work, get to the gym, and get home to my wife and kids. And I wonder to myself, ‘How does Ben do it?’”
I have no idea. All I know is that I wanna do it again, and again, and again, and again…
But I don’t know why.
Hometown Waltz
Everything I own was stacked against the far wall of my apartment when I walked through the door tonight.
It as all there in a big pile: my couch, my big red chair, my Ikea chair, three guitars, two lamps, and my shag rug all rolled up and sad. And it was all covered in fine white dust.
Welcome home!
I called my landlord well prior to Thanksgiving.
“Remember when it rained for a week straight two months ago? Well, my collapsed ceiling still hasn’t been repaired. But as as luck would have it,” I said, “I’m going to be on tour for ten days. So that’d be a perfect time to have someone come in and patch everything up.”
So when does the nice Mexican dude show up with a ladder and some spackle? Exactly 36 hours after my plane landed.
Welcome home!
Figures. It’s four degrees out, New York is crawling with Christmas shopping tourists, I have a sink full of dishes, a closet full of dirty clothes, and … and cue the construction!
Whatever.
So I dragged everything back where it belongs, shook out the rug, reheated a leftover burrito, cracked a Modello Negro, and slipped “Serenity” into the DVD player.
Welcome. Home.
Roll On
Walker, Chris, and Tony were already on stage when I walked into the venue last night.
I stood alone on stage throughout last week’s tour. It was just me, my voice, and my guitar. Solo acoustic works for moving hearts, but not so much in moving bodies. I like to movie bodies too. So it was great to be surrounded by the band again. They had my back. And we moved some bodies.
I was in the play “Pippin” when I was a sophomore in high school. I played Pippin, a naive, snotty young prince trying to grow up and find his way in the world. (“I don’t know what I want to do,” he says in his first monologue, “Or where I want to go.”) There a scene towards the middle where he kills his father the king in an effort to seize the thrown (don’t worry, the king comes back to life). Hhe’s singing this song “Morning Glow” alone on stage. But on the second refrain, towards the end of the song, a semi-circlular chorus surrounds him and sings. Not only do they back him up, the repeat everything he says. In four part harmony.
I nearly jumped out of my knitted trousers the first time we performed the scene. Twenty people singing four part harmony in one hundred and eighty degrees is staggering. I got goose bumps. And I felt like, if I fell over, or missed a line, they’d catch me.
At some point last year, I decided that my experiences making music in New York Music lacked community. Sure, there are plenty of guys to hire, but few who performed for the love of the music, and the collaboration, alone. So I set out to build some alliances, swap some gigs, perform with some folks, and get together just to talk about music. The conversations I’ve had, the friends I’ve made, and the music I’ve created with Chris Abad, Amy Hills, Wynn Walent, Casey Shea, Jeff Jacobson — the list goes on and on — have been terrific.
Funny thing happened along the way: the community grew. Miraculously, through a mutual appreciation of sincerity, simplicity, and melody, I fell in with The Nadas. They embraced me as one of their own (even if my status as an Iowan was in dispute). Jerry, Josh, Tony — the list goes on and on — made me feel right at home. And when Jason and Mike came to New York, my worlds collided: Kevin talking to Jon talking to Christofer. Crazy.
But it’s not a community without you. I can’t tell you how many emails have come at just the right time. Maybe I felt like giving up, or maybe I felt like I wasn’t good enough, or maybe I felt lonesome. You were there. You had my back.
Songwriting is a solitary process. I write songs in my bedroom. I record them with a team of fellow travellers, and true believers. And I send them off to you. But no matter how personal, or autobiographical, or confessional — they’re all for, about, and by each one of us.
So thanks for that. And everything.
Love For Nothing
My first time at the Eastern Iowa Airport was September 28, 1971. My family was moving from Iowa City to Washington, D.C. It was my first time on an airplane. I was three weeks old. Thirty-four years later, I’m here again, waiting on American Airlines flight #4239 to Chicago, then connecting to #360 to Laguardia.
The Midwest leg of my “Better Than That” Tour is — mercifully — complete. My primary feeling at the end of this grueling road — nausia notwithstanding — is relief. It’s been just one week. They’ve been seven long days, though, each punctuated solely by some three hours of fitful sleep. I’ve done three newspaper interviews, six radio broadcasts (one of which was simulcast state-wide), and performed eight shows for a total of about two thousand people (and yes, I rocked them all). And this is what I call vacation from my day job.
Last night’s Waterloo show was unprecedented. My hosts, Brian and Justin, and all of the great people at Smitty’s, were gracious beyond compare. One gentlemen, by example, handed me a Waterloo Police Department cap and said, “On behalf of the WLP, welcome home.”
I performed five sets over as many hours, trotting out every song I could remember (and some that I couldn’t). My favorite moment came in the small hours of the morning. The venue was officially closed (“We’re serving as long as he’s playing,” Smitty said), but fully packed. The lights were low. I transitioned David + David’s “Swallowed By The Cracks,” into U2′s “All I Want Is You,” then back again. And somehow, those two songs summed everything up: the road (“We could drive around in circles getting nowhere all night long”), the shows (“Getting drunk with strangers / Telling lies and singing along with the jukebox”), the weight of fifteen years chasing this silly rock ‘n roll dream (“Swallowed by the cracks / Our pride warn down / Talking times gone by like everybody else”), and the hole that only love — not even all of the applause in the world — can fill (“All the promises we make from the cradle to the grave, when all I want is you”).
I woke up on top of the sheets, fully-clothed, fully-shredded, fully-loaded, and completely unsure of where I was, or how I got there. My watch read 8:40. My flight — departing one hundred miles away in Des Moines — was scheduled for 9:46. It was obviously a lost cause, so I consolidated my stuff (tour is a constant process of scattering, then consolidating one’s things), dipped my head in a sink full of cold water, chugged a warm Mountain Dew, and stumbled out of the Quality Inn. But before pointing my rental south towards Cedar Rapids, I had two brief stops to make.
The Gardners were my grandparent’s neighbors. Mr. Gardner was the local mailman. His daughter, Becky, was the local hottie. She was a few years my elder, and just as beautiful as could be: bright blue eyes, hair the color of wheat, and a wide, white smile. She used to mow the lawn in a bikini. When we were teenagers, she and I would stay up all night talking. In the morning, we’d walk down the block to McDonald’s for an Egg McMuffin. This morning, when I walked in — pale, pasty, and reeking of alcohol and cigarettes — the teenager behind the counter looked at me all funny and said, “Ummmm, weren’t you just in the newspaper?”
Smiling now, and returning to life just a little bit, I drove west to Mount Olivet Cemetary. There on the crest of a hill beneath a naked red maple, I knealy a minute, thanked my grandparents, told them I missed them, and sketched a heart in the snow in front of their headstone.
It’s a straight shot through vast farmland on I-380 between Waterloo and Cedar Rapids. I travelled 52 miles in 33 minutes, preparing a speech for an Iowa State Trooper the entire way that I never had to give.
Seconds after getting my plane tickets, and checking my guitar, I was paged by the Hertz counter. Walking back, I ran through all of the worst case scenarios. Did I ding the rental? Did I owe them more than the addition $244.37 I was charged to return it to a different airport than I picked it up? Did they find something illicit under the seat? When Igot to the counter, a beautiful young woman — let’s call her Sarah, because that was her name — held up a copy of “Heartland,” and smiled sheepishly.
“You left this in the car,” she said.
“I left it for you,” I said.
I signed her copy, thanked her for paging me, exhaled that the TSA hadn’t found anything, and strode off towards security.
Some of my peers at The MTV or in the record business or with their rock blogs, they might not think very much of travelling a thousand miles for two week’s vacation to play rock ‘n roll with a bunch if Iowa bands. It might not make much sense. On the corner of Rivington and Attorney, it can be difficult to imagaine fifty-two miles of corn fields and sky. And until someone shines a spotlight on Des Moines, until someone gets hip to what’s going on with The Nadas, Towncrier, Josh Davis Band, Jason LeVasseur, Jerry Chapman, and the family that Jason, Mike, and Authentic Records has built, well, it might not make much sense.
But I’ll to you why I spent my free time humping gear up snowy stairs, or playing at a Youth Center in Iowa City, or staying up late and laughing ’til it hurts. Because it’s real. In a world of manufactured authenticity, crass cynicism, and disposable heroes, these guys are the real deal. There’s just one thing that matters with my friends, and it’s at he center of it all. It may be a little bruised, or have some stitches, but it’s still beating. And it’s beating in time with the music.
Better Than That
I just had a fairly major revelation on I-35 between Des Moines and Ames, Iowa. My new record, “Heartland,” sounds fucking excellent.
That might sound a bit arrogant. But I’m as surprised as anyone to hear myself say so (or see myself write so).
It was either absolute serendipity or complete randomness that made this record what it is. 50% of the tracking was done alone in my apartment. I was just recording demos with no objective of releasing them. But a funny thing happened when I got to Iowa to record with The Nadas this summer. I had expected them to a) have learned all of the songs prior to my arrival and b) be available to record all of the songs in one fell-swoop with me.
If I’ve learned anything from spending a few weeks on the road with a working rock band, it’s that getting all the members in the same place, at the same time, and on the same page is almost impossible. As an example, we learned the grand finale of last night’s Nada Silent Night performance over the course of two sound checks. Damn near everything they do is done on the fly. Not because they’re not organized or motivated. I haven’t seen a more motivated group of people in all of my travels. But the logistics alone make it impossible.
And so The Nadas’ contributions to “Heartland” were recorded in fits and starts. Mike would pop in to lay down some lead guitars, Jason would roll through to record some rhythm, while Justin, Jon and I worked every minute we weren’t all performing.
But there were other factors working against “Heartland.” For one, the thousand or so miles between producer Jon Locker and me. The record was 75% tracked, at best, when I left Des Moines in July. Jon added bass and keys in my absence, then sent my rough mixes via email. We’d IM ideas back and forth during the day, then he’d work some more, and repeat. Eventually, all the elements — including guest vocals from Josh Davis, Paul Wright, and Stephanie Walsmith, plus mandolin parks from Mike — were accounted for by mid-September. So it was on to mixing, which was also handicapped.
Given Jon’s schedule, though, and the fact that The Nada’s new record, “Listen Through The Static,” and the subsequent tour, were imminent, I tapped my buddy Kevin Anthony to mix it. Trouble is, Kevin’s in Minneapolis. And mixing is all about dealing with an infinite number of finite details. It’s a super hands-on process. But I couldn’t hang out with Kevin, so I sent him all the Pro Tools files and said, “Knock yourself out.”
To be fair, Kevin was reticent from the outset. He had just moved, so his Control One Studios — where we recorded and mixed both “Almost Home” and “Love & Other Indoor Games” — was scattered in various storage spaces. Plus, he never considered mixing his strong suit. (And I drove him nuts mixing the last two.) But I lobbied heavily, and he relented. We worked the same way Jon and I had: Kevin would mix, send email me MP3s, I’d comment, and he’d take another crack. It was slow going. Making matters worse, he had to help his parent’s deal with two hurricanes nearly blowing their Galveston home away. I don’t think either of us was thrilled with the process, or the results. In fact, The Nadas — at this point my Authentic Records label chiefs — were in town when the first mastered version of “Heartland” was delivered. They were cool about it, and said nice things, but we all knew (including Kev) that the mixes were all over the place. It sounded like a collection of twelve songs recorded in two places and patched together too many cooks.
With all of the press, tour, and radio preparations set into motion exactly two weeks before the official release of “Heartland,” I scrubbed the mixes, and commissioned New York producer Mark Christensen to remix the entire record from scratch. Once again, though, I couldn’t attend the mixes. I had to work the day job. So I gave Marc full reign, and crossed my fingers. I gave him a few edits, some of which he caught, others he missed. Example: there was a hideous “yeah!” during “Milk & honey” which made me cringe. It’s gone. Other artifacts, however, remained. Itty bitty things that only I’ll notice. Forever.
Mark finished the mixes and the masters on November 14th, the day before the official release. There wasn’t enough time for to replicate a full run, so Amy Hills ran off a hundred of ‘em, and hand delivered ‘em to my show. The full shipment arrived at the Authentic offices on Tuesday morning, just a few hours before I arrived.
And so, in all honesty, I hadn’t sat down and really listened to the record straight through until just now. I’ve been too busy, too anxious, and way too close to the process to listen. It’s not that I would put a record out that I didn’t believe in, or that I didn’t think was good. It’s just that I hadn’t micromanaged every tiny detail, every last note, as I had on every other record I’ve ever made. Which in the end, it would appear (or sound), is just fine. Because “Heartland” is fucking excellent.
I’m driving to Waterloo, Iowa, for the last of my Midwest dates. The scenery is straight out of “Fargo.” It is a near-total white out. You can’t tell the earth from the sky. The interstate is down to one lane. Traffic is moving at about 50 miles an hour. But the stereo on my rental is outstanding. And the record sounds fucking excellent.
I never doubted the songs. Their narrative arc is right where I wanted it. The protagonist (Me? You?) passes through a complete lack off faith, hits rock bottom, then picks up and moves on. It’s in every song, and in the whole record.
But until today, I wasn’t sure the sounds were there. But they are. It starts big, gets quiet, then builds again. Jon came up with some amazing sounds, and parts. He steered me towards some creative places I would never have gone.
Listen to “Cry.” Listen to “Better Than That.” It’s all in there: the open spaces, the barren fields, the stormy skies, the heartbreak, and the hope.
And quite frankly, I’m really fucking relieved. We not only pulled it off, we killed it.
Some Sort Of A Homecoming
On Ben Kieffer’s legendary radio performance series, Live From The Java House, Jason described performing for 17,000 screaming fans at the Wells Fargo Arena thusly.
“You know how you feel when you standing on the edge of a tall building or a cliff?” he said. “You’re head is spinning, your stomach feels kind of swimmy, and maybe you feel like you’re gonna throw up? It felt like that. For a half an hour.”
The Hoyt Sherman Auditorium, though sold out for Nada Silent Night III, seats 1200 patrons — far less than 17,000 fans. But that didn’t diminish my anxiety. My head was spinning. My stomach felt swimmy. And I felt like I was going to throw up.
But a miraculous thing happened when I took the stage. Standing there in front of the red curtain, batherd in the blazing white spotlight, I felt like I was a mighty oak tree with huge, strong roots digging deep into the great Iowa soil.
Not that I have any idea what happened, exactly. I performed for just seventeen minutes. My voice was strong. My playing clean. I talked more than I’d planned. And in the last moments of my set, Josh and Jerry joined me for “Do It Again.” We sang three part harmony on the choruses, the second-to-last a capella, before finishing big. I fell to my knees, strumming furiously, drowning in a tidal wave of applause.
Stepping back into the wings, my head was clear, my stomach was settled, my nausia was quelled.
It was a sweet homecoming.
This Moment
Josh Davis just saved my life.
Well, my voice, anyway.
A week on the road in the bitter, bone-dry cold of the Midwest has been brutal on my voice. Radio interviews and a rock show a day add up to one sore throat.
So I’m in Des Moines right now. I’m backstage at this amazing venue called the Hoyt Sherman Place. It’s a gorgeous old 1200-seat auditorium that looks far more Parisian than Iowan. I’m performing in a few hours with most of the Authentic Records roster: The Nadas, Towncrier, Josh Davis Band, and Jason Levasseur. Everyone’s buzzing around backstage. I’m sitting here drinking tea and sucking on Halls, courtesy of Josh.
The “Better Than That Tour” returns to NYC this Tuesday night (December 6), when my band and I perform at Fat Baby, a cool new rock club on the LES. The show begins nice and early. Which at this very moment, is kind of a relief.
Let Me Sleep
I’m sitting in the front lounge of Meat Loaf’s tour bus. We are idling in a parking lot on the edge of the Cedar River in Cedar Falls, Iowa. It’s well after noon on a weekday. Still, my brain is not even close to functional.
Meat Loaf’s former tour bus — a forty-two foot, slate gray, 1985 Eagle with a Detroit Diesel 6092DL engine — is currently owned by my pals The Nadas, with whom I am on tour (as you probably are well aware; given my soul crushing hangover I’m likely to point out the obvious.)
Tour Manager Chardiy Hight and front man Mike Butterworth are currently making radio calls. This is a thankless project that involves calling program directors at every two-bit kwanset hut with an antenna. Mike just got an ad from WALC in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Charidy just hung up with a PD in Warrensburg, Missouri, who assured her he’d “give it an ear.”
Life on the road with a working rock band is, if anything, relentless, constant motion. Yes, it’s a blast. There are numerous dick and fart jokes at which to laugh. Craft services is second to none (yesterday’s menu: coffee, Gatorade, beef jerky, oatmeal raisin cookies, peanuts, Jaggermeister, and beer). And we get to play a big rock show every night.
But Sweet Jiminy Cricket on a Popsicle Stick, I hurt clear through my fucking eye sockets.
My day began in Jason Walsmith’s kitchen. I was drinking coffee. Mike and Jason were live on Channel 8 (“Iowa’s News Leader”), pimping Friday’s show. The time was 7:17 a.m. (I know — I Tivo’d it.)
We grabbed breakfast at The Waveland (their home fries were outstanding, but terribly unhealthy: potatoes, jalapenos, onions, tomatoes, American and Swiss cheese), met up with the crew at the bus barn, then headed north on I-35.
There are eight of us on the bus: the band (5), Charidy, Luke the sound engineer, and me. There’s a front and rear lounge, nine bunks, two TVs, a restroom (number one only), and a kitchen sink, but it’s still something of a cramped space. There’s a lot a debris — the band has traveled 16,000 miles in the last six weeks alone — strewn about, most of which is sent flying upon every major turn.
We did three radio interviews in the hours leading up to the show: KWAR (“The One”), KULT (“The Edge”), and KUNI (“Iowa’s Best Public Radio”). Jason and Mike explained the origin of the band’s name each time. I heard “Heartland” on the air for the first time. It sounds like it belongs.
My opening set time at Reverb was 10 p.m. I was out front talking to my cousin when Mike walked out and said, “Let’s grab a drink.” We walked to another bar, Fourth & Main, where he sometimes performs solo. When owner Kent TK found out I was opening for the band, he asked me to play a quick song. I hedged. “I’m on down the street in ten minutes!”
“So just play two,” he said.
I shook off my nerves with “Harder To Believe,” then taught Mike “California.” (He has three songs by the same title.) Three minutes later, I was on stage at Reverb.
Opening for a five-piece rock band as a solo acoustic singer/songwriter is no easy task. Especially as an unknown solo acoustic singer/songwriter. So I dug deep. I played almost all up-tempo songs, and really pushed the drama on the high notes. The room was about half-full, and maybe half of them were pullin’ for me. I think it sounded pretty good. A buncha’ guys up front were chanting, “One more song! One more song! One more song!” at the end of my set. Smokey Junglefrog bassist Paul Perreault always said to leave ‘em wanting more. So I did.
Besides, I was hopeful (as I always am) that the fellas would call me up for a tune. Their set was as epic and Springsteenian as ever. And at the end of their sweaty, soulful two hour rock show — somewhere around the fourth shot of Jagger, I believe (a beverage I consume solely at Nadas shows) — I joined ‘em on “Where I’m Going,” then strapped on Jason’s ’74 Fender Deluxe for a silly, sloppy, but joyful run through “Sweet Home Alabama.” (Yes, you read that right: “Sweet Home Alabama.”)
There was a fresh blanket of snow on the ground when we stumbled onto the bus somewhere around two o’clock. I spent exactly fifteen seconds in the bunk before ascertaining that there was no way I was sleeping there and not waking up in a pool of vomit. Or not waking up in a pool of vomit. The band had one room at the Trails End Lodge, a lovely $39.99 across the street. Jason — God bless him — slept moved to the floor so I could crash on top of the double bed fully clothed.
Waterloo Bar Invites Iowa Native For Performance
Though Benjamin Wagner has no idea what he’ll face in Waterloo Saturday, he knows he’ll be coming full circle.
When Wagner, a singer-songwriter who was born in Iowa and now lives in New York City, performs at Smitty’s Bar, he’ll fulfill his end of a bargain made months ago. Looking for some funding for his most recent album, “Heartland,” Wagner offered rewards on his Web site — signed CDs, T-shirts, assorted tchotchkes — to those who would donate certain amounts to his recording efforts. Brian Ritter and Justin Smith of Smitty’s offered up $500 for a “performance any time, anywhere,” says Wagner.
“Brian and Justin sent an e-mail … and asked would I come to Waterloo. I said, ‘Are you kidding? That’s perfect! My parents and family are from Waterloo’ … I think it’s a poetic homecoming.”
Ritter discovered Wagner and shared his music with Smith, who ordered Wagner’s entire catalog off the Internet. Wagner’s music now graces the jukebox at Smitty’s, and he’s gained a following before even stepping foot in the bar, says Smith, who realized that a signed photo his father hung on one wall of the bar was a picture of Wagner’s uncle.
“It’s then you realize how small the world really is,” says Smith.
Wagner was born in Iowa City but only lived there a few weeks. After a series of moves, he settled with family in Philadelphia where he spent the bulk of his youth. He still has family in Iowa — including a very proud grandmother in Waterloo — and considers it his hometown.
Wagner is equally addicted, it seems, to writing and music. An executive producer for MTV Online, he keeps a daily journal on his Web site and has a recording studio in his apartment. He didn’t seek out his obsessions, but rather was somewhat born with them.
“I’ve always had a parallel track. I’ve been singing since I was a little kid and writing since I was a little kid,” says Wagner. “The things I did in high school and college, the two things I loved, remain the two things I love. The music thing has grown larger and larger. I would have thought, and others thought, I’m sure, that it would have been the kind of thing one kind of works out of his system. Instead, creatively I’m gaining more traction, I’m getting better at it and growing my fan base. I would be reticent to stop.”
He is far from stopping, releasing three records in the past year — and it’s barely December.
“I got a little carried away,” he admits.
Wagner calls “Heartland” the most current accurate portrayal of his life. His writing touches on the classic themes in rock music — “breakups, falling in love, getting it right, getting it wrong and trying again.
“It’s very personal stuff, it’s a portrait of 365 days. The last three official LPs — ‘Heartland,’ ‘Almost Home,’ ‘Love & Other Games’ — feel mature and cohesive, both sonically and in terms of lyrics,” he says. “I kind of feel like since about 2000 it’s been the real deal and everything else has been rehearsal.”
All that rehearsal time is paying off, with Wagner gaining time on the road with popular Midwest band the Nadas, including an appearance at the Iowa State Fair that “you’d swear was U2 at Madison Square Garden.
“It was one of the most epic five minutes of my life. It was the biggest crowd I’ve played to — 3,000 to 4,000 people — we played ‘Do It Again,’ and the song starts quiet and grows and grows. It’s sonically enormous … it was such a release.”
Wagner calls a life without music “inconceivable,” and says he enjoys every part of making an album, from the writing and performing to the album art and liner notes. But playing live, with which he’ll fill the days until 2006, has its moments too.
“The coolest thing I can equate (performing) to is running,” says Wagner, a marathon runner. “You get out of your head and you’re not thinking, you’re plain old feeling, and that’s hard to come by. We’re always so busy thinking, it’s great to just shut up and get out of your head and heart and let go. It’s a great feeling, and it’s just what happens. It will happen at Smitty’s whether I like it or not.”
Waterloo Courier
