Posts by Benjamin
What We Talk About
My buddy Rick recently hipped me to his blog, Past His Prime In NYC. Like me, Rick moved to Manhattan in his early twenties. And like me, Rick is married, and a dad. And like me, his blog often explores the discrepancy between what was and what is. His most recent post, “You Won’t Believe…
Read MoreLessons Learned From Rocky I – Rocky III*
It’s clear to me now that my expectations were wildly outsized. Abbi, Maggie and I had ten days at The Kellers’ Brays Island home with all the trimmings: running, swimming, golf, fishing, big screen HD movies, and a fridge full of special-ordered Cisco Brewers Wales Tale Pale Ale. Our Christmas Eve flight from LaGuardia to…
Read MoreTop Ten Christmas Songs That Rock
It’s presumably little surprise that I love Christmas songs. Not, like, all Christmas songs. Christmas songs with a backbeat. Christmas songs that rock. You, Dear Reader, may recall that it all began in the passenger seat of my brother’s Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser station wagon, nog in the belly, weed on the brain (sorry, mom), WYSP…
Read More“A Holiday Benefit, Vol. 4” Track List & Album Art Revealed
Last month, a dozen New York City singer/songwriters gathered in Brooklyn get their holiday cheer on early. The group’s recording of Tom Petty’s “Christmas All Over Again” will kicks off “A Holiday Benefit, Vol. 4,” a thirteen-track charity compilation benefiting 826NYC. Since its inception in 2007, in “A Holiday Benefit” has raised over $10,000 for…
Read MoreYou’ve Got A Friend: Benjamin Wagner’s “Forever Young” Track-By Track
I’d been angling to collaborate with Raining Jane’s Mai Bloomfield for nearly three years. It took me that long to find the right song. I first met Mai in 2008. Raining Jane was opening for The Nadas in Des Moines. I was opening for both. The ladies knocked my socks off with their three-part harmony.…
Read MoreBest “Forever Young” Review Ever!
In seventh grade, Mrs. Culp kicked me out of her music class. That she should find me twenty-five years later to tell me that she’s “impressed beyond words” with my new benefit CD, “Forever Young,” then, is sweet relief — and my best review ever. Mrs. Culp’s junior high music class was a south-facing, high-ceilinged,…
Read MoreSweet Baby James: Benjamin Wagner’s “Forever Young” Track-By Track
Jeff Jacobson and Patrick Riley have never met, and are separated by a thousand miles of Heartland. Still, they helped me create one of the most-beautiful recordings of my life. For nearly twenty years, I’ve described my brand of singer/songwriter fare as “Less James Taylor, More James Hetfield.” It’s a stretch for those who know…
Read MoreRainbow Connection: Benjamin Wagner’s “Forever Young” LP Track-By-Track
Though “The Muppet Movie” was released in June, 1979, I didn’t see it until hit cable the following winter. My parents had just separated. My father was living alone in “our” old house while my mother, brother and I lived across town. Chris and my model airplane-strewn bedroom was barren, so my father purchased matching…
Read MoreBenjamin Wagner’s “Forever Young” Album Art Revealed
It may seem obvious that a new album by a new father feature his new daughter on the cover, but it took some time to arrive at this apparently obvious conclusion. “Forever Young” is a collection of ten cover songs somehow connected to my childhood or childhood in general that — over the course of…
Read MoreRock ‘N Roll Coochie Coo
Thank goodness, my week of rock ‘n roll bachelorhood finally came to an end. Abbi, Maggie and I were in Wilmington, DE, last weekend for The Keller’s 40th anniversary. I had to get back to NYC for MTV’s TJ Search Finale on Sunday. So it seemed like a perfect, logical solution. Abbi could relax with…
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