June 5, 2024 • 21 mins
Nick chats to Aria Award winning artist; Ben Lee prior to his Canberra show.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's rating Nick here, and of course I step
out of the Rugula League bubble just for the moment,
because you know, I love my music. And there's been
an array of wonderful artists coming to Canberra, but this fellow,
of course, ARI Award winning man Ben Lee, plays the
Theater House on Friday, the fifth of June, which is
coming up this week. Ben. We fast forward to twenty
(00:21):
twenty two, twenty twenty one, the world gets hit by
a pandemic. We needed something, we needed a voice, and
it took a colorful Ben Lee to come out with
an album called I'm Fun to ease and soften the
blow for a lot of us. Now we talk about
a song. Now we's come back to some noise addict
and inspired a new song to come out from his
latest called heavy Metal. And he comes to Canberra very
(00:42):
very soon, and a man I'm always appreciative of talking.
Always an honor to talk to this guy without embarrassing him.
The goat, Ben Lee, how are you, Ben?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm doing good? What an intro? That was amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I hope it all made sense, mate.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Absolutely yeah, Hey, it'll sounded good.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It all made me sound good.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You are mate, And I don't say that as a
bit of a throwaway line. I mean you've you've really
put Australia on the map in a lot of ways.
And I bought your vinyl of I'm Fine. I've got
the limited edition Glowing the Dark one, and I just
realized how much you've evolved. But it still sounds like
Ben Lee with your music. Let's just start from there.
(01:20):
What is Ben Lee? What is Ben Lee get inspired by?
And when he goes about his days, when he puts
pen to paper.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean, I guess, I guess I'm always inspired by
sort of like the process itself of like the unfolding
of a human being, you know, Like I'm we're each
as humans, you know, on this kind of like weird
self discovery voyage, like just figuring out who we are,
(01:50):
how we can be useful, what our values are, what
we can contribute. And it seems to me like it's
this cool thing where it kind of like unfold on
its own as you live your life and meet your
challenges and stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So I just get I sort of find.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
This joy in the way that's going to manifest through
my music, Like what clues I'm going to learn about myself?
Through making work and then on the other side of it,
like the way I can use my will in art
to become the next version of myself that I want
to be.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Wow, that's quite an answer. As I mentioned in the
intro that we connected for the first time when you
came to Canberra and played at the Albert Hall for
the Ayahuasca or Welcome to the Work stuff. You went
tenuit down a huge spiritual rabbit hole and we spoke
for a couple of hours, one hour on the record,
one hour off the record, and I was going through personally,
going through an experience where I was getting introduced to
(02:46):
these concepts and really embracing that kind of life as
well and modalities to really improve and sort of discovering
and tapping into these places. So it was really timing
with you, and it was quite inspiring man to see
that you were doing it as well. And then your
chat with you can was great and you performed a
few songs you had to chat you engage the audience.
Where is Ben lean now from that place? Because you
(03:06):
went deep, You went deep in that whole process and
then you sprout it out and we saw you with
the Madden Brothers on Telly there for helping them out
with the voice, and then you really took off. And
I remember you said at the time, this could be
this is tricky, this could be career suicide for me,
but you just embraced it, and then you mentioned what
you're still going through. You seem to still adopted that
(03:29):
same principle a bit more of a mainstream where's Ben
lean now with all that?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, I think there was sort of a time in
my life where it was it's probably like sex or
something like there's a time in your life when you're young,
and it's like it's all you can think about, and
it's very like overt do you know what I mean,
Like as these sides of you come into expression, but
(03:56):
they're not yet integrated into who you are. And I
think from me, like a lot of the like philosophical
and spiritual stuff, it was like under a spotlight for
a lot of years, and it sort of got to
a point where.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think just some of the sort of both.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The basic truths about what I discovered about myself, like
the type of person I am, they just became like
undeniable or like irrefutable, and so I didn't need to
like I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's almost like I started.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Valuing you know, in storytelling, like in movies, in scripts
they always say say don't show. I mean sorry, show,
don't say yeah. So when you're telling a story, actually
create action that has the morals in it. Don't have
characters just doing exposition telling you what the point of
(04:56):
the story is. And I think, as a younger person,
this is just what happens. Like I was more prone
to sort of rhapsodizing what do you call it, like
like like philosophical rhapsodizing about these concepts. And I still
think those concepts are like in my work, but they're
like being shown and lived out.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They're not being talked about as much.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yes, I totally feel that you're that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's almost like yeah, it's almost like in comedy, like
it's like if you watch like The Lonely Guy or
The Jerk, like like great.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Steve Marden movies.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I think of them as sort of like some of
the most spiritual and philosophically wise art that's ever been made.
Yet it's all done with this very light energy that's
almost just like it's a.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Clowning, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And I think I've just gotten more and more interested
in like the deepest stuff being just embedded within the
work rather than having a spotlight on it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so you're still doing the same thing. Is still
do that expression, You're still doing the work, You're still
living that conscious lifestyle, you're just doing it without the
purple pajamas.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, but even on that, even in my day to
day life, I think I hide it more from myself.
Like I kind of started realizing that there's something about
sort of whatever you want to call it, like truth
or profundity or transcendence, that like the more you try
(06:28):
and lock it down and explain it, actually the further
away it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Gets from you. And I've sort of realized that for
a long time, Like I.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Had a lyric on Breathing Tornadoes where I said sleepwalking
the last song, where I said, it's blurred against the background,
it vanishes as soon as you tell, And there is.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
There was sort of this.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I inherently knew the idea that there's sort of abstract
concepts within the human mind and heart that cannot be
captured in conversation or in art, and the best we
can do is like in to mate in their direction.
Just generally we can gesture in their direction, but as
soon as you're shine the spotlight, they disappear. So in
(07:07):
my day to day life, I also find myself much
more practical these days, much more pragmatic, much more I'm
building a business, more like responsible with money, more protective
of my relationships, more just like in the nuts and
bolts of being a human being and having an active,
(07:28):
dynamic life, parenting, you know, all of it, like paying
the bills, is just like all very like real, And
that somewhere we've in all that in the day to
day that the meaningfulness, the depth, it's just there. It's
just there. It doesn't need to be like pointed out
as much.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Absolutely so you've integrated that into your life. I remember
wanting one of the best quotes that's always stuck to
mind in our first of a chat we did in
that period was you know, you said you've got a
little backlash from your rock star friends sit for me.
I was saying, oh, you know, we're gonna eave a
big rock star of spontaneity and spontaneity comes and all
the great creativity and ideas come from spontaneity. But you
(08:09):
mentioned spontaneity comes from structure. And that was beautiful, Ben.
I remember that's never left my mind. And you know,
doing all this kind of stuff, it really rings home
when you talk about structure. You just mentioned everything there
you needed to kind of take seriously. Now with structure,
and before we go on to some of your latest stuff,
do you still have within a structure, like a morning
(08:30):
practice that you did, maybe some breath work and stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I mean not really like I go through phases with that,
like we're like playing tennis or exercising it, you know,
whatever it is, I doing yoga.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
But I think I mean.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Even more like with writing songs, like the basic structure,
like the architecture of the way I write songs is
pretty unchanged from like thirteen years old to whatever I
am now forty five years old. Like the the I'm
basically working in like a verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge,
(09:03):
chorus end medium. That's my framework, that's my structure. I
basically write them on a guitar, which is a thing
with six strings, basically in a standard tuning. Maybe I
put a capo, maybe I do an alternate tuning, and
I basically write a little story and I have a
hook in the chorus, like that is a in some ways,
Like I'm a real traditionalist and that's sort of the
(09:25):
old fashioned side, but I kind of find that like
not radically changing the medium sort of it almost gives
me this freedom to play with more subtlety, like and more.
It's just interesting, like when you can look at go okay,
(09:46):
I kind of write pop songs as a singer songwriter.
I've done that for thirty years. It's kind of fun
doing something for thirty years and seeing how you change
and how and just how you've expressed to yourself within
the freedom that you have in the structure. So yeah,
so that's sort of what I think the way structure
(10:08):
informs and obviously like family structure, enjoying living in a house,
you know, structure.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Looking after my body, Like the harder I work, you know,
I do.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I really am working on so many projects all the
time and juggling a lot of things, and I'm just
sort of realizing more and more that like, just like
looking after my body and staying healthy, it's just vital.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
We have to do it because we become at.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And because you sort of what expect you're asking a
lot of your body back, you know, like a the
touring and everything I'm doing, Like, I just all of
that is like they're all structures to me, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And you give a great performance and I know you
put everything in what without embarrassing you.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
What really rings home with you is a sense of
freedom in your music when you were younger, the way
you spoke your mind through the late nineties and the thousands,
you really spoke your mind. You're sort of in trouble
against you know that the mainstream machine, but that's just
their issue. But your music still has freedom. You're podcasting
is so much freedom. You and your beautiful wife. There's
(11:12):
so much freedom amongst your relationship. It's so easy. It
looks so easy from our viewpoint. Man, your life is it?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I mean to a certain degree, like I think the
artistry of life, the it's like being an athlete or
something like.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It should come.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, it should look easy. It should look easy. I mean,
it's funny. I had someone the other day asking me
about this exact thing about you seem to flow really
well with whatever happens in life. I was like, yeah,
but that day, I just remember that day I got
said that my daughter had worken up and said I
need to stop and get pimple patches on the way
to school, and I was like, it's through the whole
(11:57):
morning plan, and I was not flowing with that particularly.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I was quite stressed. Like so, I think that's just
very normal.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
But at the end of the day, my interest is
in flowing with what's happening in life.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So I definitely struggle. I go through a lot of.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I go through my own resistances to things that are happening.
You know, life continues to unfold in very like profound
and unexpected ways, and I often have to go through
my own period of struggle. But at the end of
the day, what centers me is my interest in rolling
with things, not going against them. So it is I
(12:38):
do ultimately think that is the position of power from
which you can have make the most impact. Like you
look at like whether it's entrepreneurs or artists or just
people in their community that like do interesting things. It's
like it's people who are able to say, this is
what life is actually handing me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
What can I do with that?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
The whole lemonade thing, right, Yeah, exactly, you're making lemon
squash over there.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Mine.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's it's great to say. I want to talk to
about heavy metal you did the whole you went back
to Noise Addict quite recently to just do you doctor
tinker there every now and then, like to go back
there every now and then.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, well, it's sort of when I think about what
noise Addict is, it was sort of my.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Low fire teenage projects. So a few years.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Back, it was quite a while now, I was already
almost fifteen years because I remember I and he was pregnant.
I wanted to do a project really quickly at home,
and I just was like, I'm.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Going to call it Noise Addicts because it felt like that.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
But but yeah, I don't know, it's I don't know,
it's not something I really like put a lot of
thought into keeping current.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did heavy Metal the New One come? Was that concerned
on the back of you being a bit of a
noise addict guy?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Again, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
It was sort of like, think like the whole vibe
of the new album from this one's for the old
heads that's coming down in September. It's all very much
rooted in music I loved in the nineties. Some of
it's from before, like the Replacements and but even things
like Smudge and The Welcome Mat and the Hummingbirds and
(14:20):
rat Cat and Teenage Fan Club and just like guitars
like loud guitars and great harmonies, Like I really loved
all that, and that was a pretty conscious like the
rhythm section who play on the record, Jason and John
are you know, from Super Chunk and.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Bubb Mold and the Mountain Goats. So it's like all
just rooted in that.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
And even as recording to tape and with a live band,
like it was all yeah, like just like rooted in
sort of nineties music.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I can't wait for that because what a beautiful tom
that was home.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And that's what's funny, Like this song is called heavy metal,
but it actually just sounds like.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
A grunge song.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
That's sort of the like that's sort of the other
layer of it that is kind of interesting, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Esthetically, you just.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Got this beautiful knack of telling a story in your music.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
It's just I was listening to that before before the call,
and it was just like you just got this brilliant
way just to tell a story and to bring that
to the forward front. And I was listening to some
of your staff, some of your Spotify rotations yesterday and
it was just you've just got this knack of storytelling, man,
and you're making your way. You're obviously in the middle
of an Australian tour. Always good to come back to
(15:31):
the Australian shows, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, And it's just for me. It's funny, you know.
There's a lot of you've probably heard, like a lot
of talk about the music industry and touring and cost
of living and tickets, like it's quite hard to make
touring work. And when I look at my schedule for
the next you know, four or five months, that's like
pretty jam packed, like shows every weekend somewhere in Australia,
(15:55):
I just feel so and that it's profitable, you know,
like I feel and a lot of that's because I
do it very straight back, Like a lot of the
shows I do solo and if I do full band,
it's just two people, no tool manager and no sound guy.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You know, we just do it. So I just feel
really grateful that.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Like, and I've been saying this on stage, like three
decades into my career, with this massive body of work,
there are still people who just come and say, sing
your songs, you.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Know, and we have a good time. And it's like
it's very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
How do you choose your set? Man? You have a
body of water of music that goes such a long
way two decades and three decades. How does Bin Lee
choose his set?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, just a mixture.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I think of, like just perennials, like you know, I've
got to play Catch my Disease and cigarettes or kill You,
and they're funder play because of the reaction they get too.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And then just what I'm into at the time, Like
obviously there's newer songs are exciting.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
There's songs like parents get High from the last record
of Taken.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
On a really Great Life Live. Yeah, so there's sort
of lots of them.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
But then I do generally, especially when I play solo,
I take up a list of like fifty or sixty
songs and I kind of just make it up.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
On the fly.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
What a way to do it. So, yeah, there's your
freedom again. Man, there's your freedom. You're just such a
free man. We're running out of time. I want to
get to the point of some stuff as well. If
there is a song and whether it's a subconscious thing
or maybe this is not a way that someone is interpreted.
This particular song. But your song as something Borrowed, something Blue,
(17:37):
if that to me sounds like a song of a
young a young boy turning into a man.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it's funny. I associate that a lot with my
father's death. I wrote that shortly after he died, maybe
he died a year before.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And there's it.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Was very affected by a story I'd read by this
writer called Donald for me Got the Dead Father, about
this group of boys of young men, brothers, dragging their
sixty foot father's corpse. It was a surreal book, dragging
it through the desert, and it was really about the weight,
(18:16):
the weight we carry of our father.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And and so that song, to me, there's a lot
of I don't know, it's like, it's not like a
song with like.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
An exact point to it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
There's just a lot of, like you said, that young
man struggle for sort of his own identity and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, that's what really warms through that song. And yeah,
as a man, when we always have those situations and
a lot of it for us, it's behind the scenes
where we're driving in the car and stressing about life.
As you mentioned, Yeah, when you hear something like something Borrowed,
something Blue, it's like the soundtrack so to pull you
through Canbra. You're always one of the artists to put
(18:53):
your hands up your love for coming to Canbra. You've
had some really nice performances here. What do you think
of camber Mate in your short time and your and
your Stincy.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, I mean I love it. It's just such an anomaly.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Like I feel like, obviously the you get this very
high like intelligence level in the audience, which is really
I don't.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Know, I find that really fun.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I like, you know, my audience are quite smart in general,
they're quite literate and quite like.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
The humors sort of sophisticated and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
So I always like, always fine, And then I just
find there's that anyway you play that, like you know,
basically not Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, there's this sense of like
people are grateful that you came and so, and I
just think like in terms of the way I perform
where to me, it doesn't really make that much of
a difference if there's like five thousand people or fifty
(19:43):
people in a room, Like my job is the same.
I like, I don't know, I just find like really
rewarding playing places that are don't take it for granted.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
That's amazing that we can't wait to see you in
June for these shows, especially in Nice Point, where you've
got some great turing momentum. Always the pleasure to talk
to you, Ben. I've gotta leave you with this though.
I got to ask you this question. Ask all the
musicians if you're bumped into the alien. And I'm sorry,
I'll spare of the moment. If you bumped into the alien,
what piece of music does Bentley show the alien?
Speaker 3 (20:18):
I mean, this week, I would probably show them this
all day cubsport kind of version of Cigarettes or Kill
You that's come out, because to me, it just embodies
so much of what I love about the way pop
culture can work with people cross generationally, coming at culture
from outside and going let's reinvent things, let's make things interesting.
(20:41):
I just think it says really positive things about what
pop culture can be.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What about just in general, like any music, any song
that's ever been created from the great pioneers of.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, there's a song that I listen to on a
playlist I have of like Australian classical music, and it's
a song called Maralaya by Spinefect's Gum.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think it's something.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
To do with like the guy from like Felix from
cat Empire was involved in it. And it's like an
indigenous children's choir, I think. And it's just singing about
the bush.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's like a song about the bush that is so
beautiful and romantic.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I just love it so much so that to me
just says something I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Human spirit. It's like just it lights you up.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Human spirit. Freedom. That's what this wonderful man, ben Ley
Ooss with positivity got to talk to you again. Might
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Good to talk to you too, man, Thanks for having
me
Hey, it's rating Nick here, and of course I step
out of the Rugula League bubble just for the moment,
because you know, I love my music. And there's been
an array of wonderful artists coming to Canberra, but this fellow,
of course, ARI Award winning man Ben Lee, plays the
Theater House on Friday, the fifth of June, which is
coming up this week. Ben. We fast forward to twenty
(00:21):
twenty two, twenty twenty one, the world gets hit by
a pandemic. We needed something, we needed a voice, and
it took a colorful Ben Lee to come out with
an album called I'm Fun to ease and soften the
blow for a lot of us. Now we talk about
a song. Now we's come back to some noise addict
and inspired a new song to come out from his
latest called heavy Metal. And he comes to Canberra very
(00:42):
very soon, and a man I'm always appreciative of talking.
Always an honor to talk to this guy without embarrassing him.
The goat, Ben Lee, how are you, Ben?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm doing good? What an intro? That was amazing.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
I hope it all made sense, mate.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Absolutely yeah, Hey, it'll sounded good.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It all made me sound good.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You are mate, And I don't say that as a
bit of a throwaway line. I mean you've you've really
put Australia on the map in a lot of ways.
And I bought your vinyl of I'm Fine. I've got
the limited edition Glowing the Dark one, and I just
realized how much you've evolved. But it still sounds like
Ben Lee with your music. Let's just start from there.
(01:20):
What is Ben Lee? What is Ben Lee get inspired by?
And when he goes about his days, when he puts
pen to paper.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
I mean, I guess, I guess I'm always inspired by
sort of like the process itself of like the unfolding
of a human being, you know, Like I'm we're each
as humans, you know, on this kind of like weird
self discovery voyage, like just figuring out who we are,
(01:50):
how we can be useful, what our values are, what
we can contribute. And it seems to me like it's
this cool thing where it kind of like unfold on
its own as you live your life and meet your
challenges and stuff.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
So I just get I sort of find.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
This joy in the way that's going to manifest through
my music, Like what clues I'm going to learn about myself?
Through making work and then on the other side of it,
like the way I can use my will in art
to become the next version of myself that I want
to be.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Wow, that's quite an answer. As I mentioned in the
intro that we connected for the first time when you
came to Canberra and played at the Albert Hall for
the Ayahuasca or Welcome to the Work stuff. You went
tenuit down a huge spiritual rabbit hole and we spoke
for a couple of hours, one hour on the record,
one hour off the record, and I was going through personally,
going through an experience where I was getting introduced to
(02:46):
these concepts and really embracing that kind of life as
well and modalities to really improve and sort of discovering
and tapping into these places. So it was really timing
with you, and it was quite inspiring man to see
that you were doing it as well. And then your
chat with you can was great and you performed a
few songs you had to chat you engage the audience.
Where is Ben lean now from that place? Because you
(03:06):
went deep, You went deep in that whole process and
then you sprout it out and we saw you with
the Madden Brothers on Telly there for helping them out
with the voice, and then you really took off. And
I remember you said at the time, this could be
this is tricky, this could be career suicide for me,
but you just embraced it, and then you mentioned what
you're still going through. You seem to still adopted that
(03:29):
same principle a bit more of a mainstream where's Ben
lean now with all that?
Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, I think there was sort of a time in
my life where it was it's probably like sex or
something like there's a time in your life when you're young,
and it's like it's all you can think about, and
it's very like overt do you know what I mean,
Like as these sides of you come into expression, but
(03:56):
they're not yet integrated into who you are. And I
think from me, like a lot of the like philosophical
and spiritual stuff, it was like under a spotlight for
a lot of years, and it sort of got to
a point where.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I think just some of the sort of both.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
The basic truths about what I discovered about myself, like
the type of person I am, they just became like
undeniable or like irrefutable, and so I didn't need to
like I don't know.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
It's almost like I started.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Valuing you know, in storytelling, like in movies, in scripts
they always say say don't show. I mean sorry, show,
don't say yeah. So when you're telling a story, actually
create action that has the morals in it. Don't have
characters just doing exposition telling you what the point of
(04:56):
the story is. And I think, as a younger person,
this is just what happens. Like I was more prone
to sort of rhapsodizing what do you call it, like
like like philosophical rhapsodizing about these concepts. And I still
think those concepts are like in my work, but they're
like being shown and lived out.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
They're not being talked about as much.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Yes, I totally feel that you're that.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
It's almost like yeah, it's almost like in comedy, like
it's like if you watch like The Lonely Guy or
The Jerk, like like great.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Steve Marden movies.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I think of them as sort of like some of
the most spiritual and philosophically wise art that's ever been made.
Yet it's all done with this very light energy that's
almost just like it's a.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Clowning, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
And I think I've just gotten more and more interested
in like the deepest stuff being just embedded within the
work rather than having a spotlight on it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, so you're still doing the same thing. Is still
do that expression, You're still doing the work, You're still
living that conscious lifestyle, you're just doing it without the
purple pajamas.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, but even on that, even in my day to
day life, I think I hide it more from myself.
Like I kind of started realizing that there's something about
sort of whatever you want to call it, like truth
or profundity or transcendence, that like the more you try
(06:28):
and lock it down and explain it, actually the further
away it.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Gets from you. And I've sort of realized that for
a long time, Like I.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Had a lyric on Breathing Tornadoes where I said sleepwalking
the last song, where I said, it's blurred against the background,
it vanishes as soon as you tell, And there is.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
There was sort of this.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
I inherently knew the idea that there's sort of abstract
concepts within the human mind and heart that cannot be
captured in conversation or in art, and the best we
can do is like in to mate in their direction.
Just generally we can gesture in their direction, but as
soon as you're shine the spotlight, they disappear. So in
(07:07):
my day to day life, I also find myself much
more practical these days, much more pragmatic, much more I'm
building a business, more like responsible with money, more protective
of my relationships, more just like in the nuts and
bolts of being a human being and having an active,
(07:28):
dynamic life, parenting, you know, all of it, like paying
the bills, is just like all very like real, And
that somewhere we've in all that in the day to
day that the meaningfulness, the depth, it's just there. It's
just there. It doesn't need to be like pointed out
as much.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Absolutely so you've integrated that into your life. I remember
wanting one of the best quotes that's always stuck to
mind in our first of a chat we did in
that period was you know, you said you've got a
little backlash from your rock star friends sit for me.
I was saying, oh, you know, we're gonna eave a
big rock star of spontaneity and spontaneity comes and all
the great creativity and ideas come from spontaneity. But you
(08:09):
mentioned spontaneity comes from structure. And that was beautiful, Ben.
I remember that's never left my mind. And you know,
doing all this kind of stuff, it really rings home
when you talk about structure. You just mentioned everything there
you needed to kind of take seriously. Now with structure,
and before we go on to some of your latest stuff,
do you still have within a structure, like a morning
(08:30):
practice that you did, maybe some breath work and stuff.
Speaker 3 (08:33):
I mean not really like I go through phases with that,
like we're like playing tennis or exercising it, you know,
whatever it is, I doing yoga.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
But I think I mean.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Even more like with writing songs, like the basic structure,
like the architecture of the way I write songs is
pretty unchanged from like thirteen years old to whatever I
am now forty five years old. Like the the I'm
basically working in like a verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge,
(09:03):
chorus end medium. That's my framework, that's my structure. I
basically write them on a guitar, which is a thing
with six strings, basically in a standard tuning. Maybe I
put a capo, maybe I do an alternate tuning, and
I basically write a little story and I have a
hook in the chorus, like that is a in some ways,
Like I'm a real traditionalist and that's sort of the
(09:25):
old fashioned side, but I kind of find that like
not radically changing the medium sort of it almost gives
me this freedom to play with more subtlety, like and more.
It's just interesting, like when you can look at go okay,
(09:46):
I kind of write pop songs as a singer songwriter.
I've done that for thirty years. It's kind of fun
doing something for thirty years and seeing how you change
and how and just how you've expressed to yourself within
the freedom that you have in the structure. So yeah,
so that's sort of what I think the way structure
(10:08):
informs and obviously like family structure, enjoying living in a house,
you know, structure.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Looking after my body, Like the harder I work, you know,
I do.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I really am working on so many projects all the
time and juggling a lot of things, and I'm just
sort of realizing more and more that like, just like
looking after my body and staying healthy, it's just vital.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
We have to do it because we become at.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
And because you sort of what expect you're asking a
lot of your body back, you know, like a the
touring and everything I'm doing, Like, I just all of
that is like they're all structures to me, you know.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
And you give a great performance and I know you
put everything in what without embarrassing you.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
Ben.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
What really rings home with you is a sense of
freedom in your music when you were younger, the way
you spoke your mind through the late nineties and the thousands,
you really spoke your mind. You're sort of in trouble
against you know that the mainstream machine, but that's just
their issue. But your music still has freedom. You're podcasting
is so much freedom. You and your beautiful wife. There's
(11:12):
so much freedom amongst your relationship. It's so easy. It
looks so easy from our viewpoint. Man, your life is it?
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Ah?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
I mean to a certain degree, like I think the
artistry of life, the it's like being an athlete or
something like.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
It should come.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yeah, it should look easy. It should look easy. I mean,
it's funny. I had someone the other day asking me
about this exact thing about you seem to flow really
well with whatever happens in life. I was like, yeah,
but that day, I just remember that day I got
said that my daughter had worken up and said I
need to stop and get pimple patches on the way
to school, and I was like, it's through the whole
(11:57):
morning plan, and I was not flowing with that particularly.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I was quite stressed. Like so, I think that's just
very normal.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
But at the end of the day, my interest is
in flowing with what's happening in life.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
So I definitely struggle. I go through a lot of.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
I go through my own resistances to things that are happening.
You know, life continues to unfold in very like profound
and unexpected ways, and I often have to go through
my own period of struggle. But at the end of
the day, what centers me is my interest in rolling
with things, not going against them. So it is I
(12:38):
do ultimately think that is the position of power from
which you can have make the most impact. Like you
look at like whether it's entrepreneurs or artists or just
people in their community that like do interesting things. It's
like it's people who are able to say, this is
what life is actually handing me.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
What can I do with that?
Speaker 1 (13:00):
The whole lemonade thing, right, Yeah, exactly, you're making lemon
squash over there.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Mine.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
It's it's great to say. I want to talk to
about heavy metal you did the whole you went back
to Noise Addict quite recently to just do you doctor
tinker there every now and then, like to go back
there every now and then.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, well, it's sort of when I think about what
noise Addict is, it was sort of my.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Low fire teenage projects. So a few years.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Back, it was quite a while now, I was already
almost fifteen years because I remember I and he was pregnant.
I wanted to do a project really quickly at home,
and I just was like, I'm.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Going to call it Noise Addicts because it felt like that.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
But but yeah, I don't know, it's I don't know,
it's not something I really like put a lot of
thought into keeping current.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Did heavy Metal the New One come? Was that concerned
on the back of you being a bit of a
noise addict guy?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Again, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
It was sort of like, think like the whole vibe
of the new album from this one's for the old
heads that's coming down in September. It's all very much
rooted in music I loved in the nineties. Some of
it's from before, like the Replacements and but even things
like Smudge and The Welcome Mat and the Hummingbirds and
(14:20):
rat Cat and Teenage Fan Club and just like guitars
like loud guitars and great harmonies, Like I really loved
all that, and that was a pretty conscious like the
rhythm section who play on the record, Jason and John
are you know, from Super Chunk and.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Bubb Mold and the Mountain Goats. So it's like all
just rooted in that.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
And even as recording to tape and with a live band,
like it was all yeah, like just like rooted in
sort of nineties music.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I can't wait for that because what a beautiful tom
that was home.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And that's what's funny, Like this song is called heavy metal,
but it actually just sounds like.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
A grunge song.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
That's sort of the like that's sort of the other
layer of it that is kind of interesting, you know.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Esthetically, you just.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Got this beautiful knack of telling a story in your music.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Man.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
It's just I was listening to that before before the call,
and it was just like you just got this brilliant
way just to tell a story and to bring that
to the forward front. And I was listening to some
of your staff, some of your Spotify rotations yesterday and
it was just you've just got this knack of storytelling, man,
and you're making your way. You're obviously in the middle
of an Australian tour. Always good to come back to
(15:31):
the Australian shows, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (15:33):
Yeah, And it's just for me. It's funny, you know.
There's a lot of you've probably heard, like a lot
of talk about the music industry and touring and cost
of living and tickets, like it's quite hard to make
touring work. And when I look at my schedule for
the next you know, four or five months, that's like
pretty jam packed, like shows every weekend somewhere in Australia,
(15:55):
I just feel so and that it's profitable, you know,
like I feel and a lot of that's because I
do it very straight back, Like a lot of the
shows I do solo and if I do full band,
it's just two people, no tool manager and no sound guy.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
You know, we just do it. So I just feel
really grateful that.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Like, and I've been saying this on stage, like three
decades into my career, with this massive body of work,
there are still people who just come and say, sing
your songs, you.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Know, and we have a good time. And it's like
it's very beautiful.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
How do you choose your set? Man? You have a
body of water of music that goes such a long
way two decades and three decades. How does Bin Lee
choose his set?
Speaker 2 (16:41):
Well, just a mixture.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
I think of, like just perennials, like you know, I've
got to play Catch my Disease and cigarettes or kill You,
and they're funder play because of the reaction they get too.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And then just what I'm into at the time, Like
obviously there's newer songs are exciting.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
There's songs like parents get High from the last record
of Taken.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
On a really Great Life Live. Yeah, so there's sort
of lots of them.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
But then I do generally, especially when I play solo,
I take up a list of like fifty or sixty
songs and I kind of just make it up.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
On the fly.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
What a way to do it. So, yeah, there's your
freedom again. Man, there's your freedom. You're just such a
free man. We're running out of time. I want to
get to the point of some stuff as well. If
there is a song and whether it's a subconscious thing
or maybe this is not a way that someone is interpreted.
This particular song. But your song as something Borrowed, something Blue,
(17:37):
if that to me sounds like a song of a
young a young boy turning into a man.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, it's funny. I associate that a lot with my
father's death. I wrote that shortly after he died, maybe
he died a year before.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
And there's it.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Was very affected by a story I'd read by this
writer called Donald for me Got the Dead Father, about
this group of boys of young men, brothers, dragging their
sixty foot father's corpse. It was a surreal book, dragging
it through the desert, and it was really about the weight,
(18:16):
the weight we carry of our father.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
And and so that song, to me, there's a lot
of I don't know, it's like, it's not like a
song with like.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
An exact point to it.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
There's just a lot of, like you said, that young
man struggle for sort of his own identity and everything.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Yeah, that's what really warms through that song. And yeah,
as a man, when we always have those situations and
a lot of it for us, it's behind the scenes
where we're driving in the car and stressing about life.
As you mentioned, Yeah, when you hear something like something Borrowed,
something Blue, it's like the soundtrack so to pull you
through Canbra. You're always one of the artists to put
(18:53):
your hands up your love for coming to Canbra. You've
had some really nice performances here. What do you think
of camber Mate in your short time and your and
your Stincy.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah, I mean I love it. It's just such an anomaly.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
Like I feel like, obviously the you get this very
high like intelligence level in the audience, which is really
I don't.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
Know, I find that really fun.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
I like, you know, my audience are quite smart in general,
they're quite literate and quite like.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
The humors sort of sophisticated and all that.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
So I always like, always fine, And then I just
find there's that anyway you play that, like you know,
basically not Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, there's this sense of like
people are grateful that you came and so, and I
just think like in terms of the way I perform
where to me, it doesn't really make that much of
a difference if there's like five thousand people or fifty
(19:43):
people in a room, Like my job is the same.
I like, I don't know, I just find like really
rewarding playing places that are don't take it for granted.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
That's amazing that we can't wait to see you in
June for these shows, especially in Nice Point, where you've
got some great turing momentum. Always the pleasure to talk
to you, Ben. I've gotta leave you with this though.
I got to ask you this question. Ask all the
musicians if you're bumped into the alien. And I'm sorry,
I'll spare of the moment. If you bumped into the alien,
what piece of music does Bentley show the alien?
Speaker 3 (20:18):
I mean, this week, I would probably show them this
all day cubsport kind of version of Cigarettes or Kill
You that's come out, because to me, it just embodies
so much of what I love about the way pop
culture can work with people cross generationally, coming at culture
from outside and going let's reinvent things, let's make things interesting.
(20:41):
I just think it says really positive things about what
pop culture can be.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
What about just in general, like any music, any song
that's ever been created from the great pioneers of.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
Well, there's a song that I listen to on a
playlist I have of like Australian classical music, and it's
a song called Maralaya by Spinefect's Gum.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
I think it's something.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
To do with like the guy from like Felix from
cat Empire was involved in it. And it's like an
indigenous children's choir, I think. And it's just singing about
the bush.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
It's like a song about the bush that is so
beautiful and romantic.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
I just love it so much so that to me
just says something I don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Human spirit. It's like just it lights you up.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Human spirit. Freedom. That's what this wonderful man, ben Ley
Ooss with positivity got to talk to you again. Might
appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Good to talk to you too, man, Thanks for having
me
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