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The purpose is to not be myself. I want to forget that I am even there. I want to let music just flow. Let it all happen and make something that people can connect with. We can then come back to reality and everybody can bid farewell. -Marco Benevento |
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Photo by: Greg Aiello
"I just did a little ten-date run with my Trio and five of those dates were with Jon Fishman, Reed Mathis and Nathan Moore. I wish I was rolling tape while we were driving because we got into really interesting conversations along the way," Benevento adds. "Fishman is an encyclopedia. He is a really interesting dude and a great drummer. We all just talked. It is cool to hear what people are thinking. It is like being interviewed; we are here to get into each other's heads, like, 'What are you really about?' It really comes out and getting to know somebody like that transfers through into the music."
"What you have to understand about being on the road is no matter how many times you go, it is still incredibly exciting," he offers. "The journey is important to the development of an artist whether it is five or ten years of your life. Just straight up going for it. When it gets to that point as an artist you can really hear how music takes over. You realize you have absolutely nothing to do with how the song is written anymore."
Me Not Me
In the wake Invisible Baby, the creative urge to resume recording flooded Benevento's consciousness during 2008's touring, a pinball run that started in New Orleans and traveled to San Francisco and Seattle before finishing in Boulder, and ultimately yielded the tracking sessions for Me Not Me. The album features three new Benevento originals - "Mephisto," "Call Home" and "Now They Are Writing Music" - alongside instrumental interpretations of My Morning Jacket's "Golden," Led Zeppelin's "Friends," Leonard Cohen's "Seems So Long Ago Nancy" and Beck's "Sing It Again." Cuts by The Knife and George Harrison also find their way into this current exhale of music. Me Not Me features Reed Mathis on bass, with percussion duties shared by Matt Chamberlain and Andrew Barr (The Slip).
 Marco Benevento |
"This record really just boils down to tunes that I absolutely love," Benevento offers. "The Leonard Cohen number I have been performing since 1999. I played it for my friend Brad [Barr] in The Slip and he melted at the coolness of the composition. We would play it at sound checks or just messing around while eating dinner. I particularly love the chord progression and I think Cohen's music in general is gorgeous."
"If you are hanging out with your friends and it is late, 'Heartbeats' is the song for the dance party," he says in reference to the Swedish electronic duo The Knife he covers on Me Not Me. "That was the song for me in 2008. [And] we did a My Morning Jacket tune off It Still Moves, which was a record Joe and I used to wear out while we were on the road. I am one of those people who consider that band extremely important right now."
For Me Not Me, Benevento brought in the engineering expertise of Bryce Goggin, who has logged reel time with Phish, Spacehog, Pavement, Sean Lennon, The Ramones and Akron/Family to name but a few. He owns Trout Recording, a studio space in Park Slope, Brooklyn.
"We tracked it in two days," says Marco. "Tucker Martine engineered our session in Seattle. He came highly recommended by Matt [Chamberlain]. He has worked with the Decemberists, Mudhoney, Sufjan Stevens, and a handful of others."
It was five months later that Benevento arrived on Goggin's doorstep with the session tapes.
"I love working with him," Benevento says about Goggin. "Those moments where it is just he and I sitting there, getting into it. He has these two assistants with him that are really cool dudes. I trust his opinion and his suggestions. He is sort of the fourth member of the Trio. If I had an idea to run the piano through the Leslie instead of an old projector amp, there would be no hesitation from him. There was no flinching with any requests, especially going in the tonal direction."
"He has got a cool layer. Bryce has Paul McCartney's old tape deck, as well as a bunch of amazing keyboards, organs and recording devices. It is just a cozy dialed in place. He's a pro. I like to call his studio the 'House of Closure,' because when we are done with a tune, it's literally done. He is not the kind of guy to over-think stuff. He likes to bring the raw elements out of the tune. Sometimes I get really precise while editing here at my place, and then you go over to Bryce's and he just cranks it," says Benevento in a quick, boisterous voice while animating the turning of knobs. "Yeah, that sounds good. Crank it. Yeah, turn it up! Fuck it, check this out! Roll tape!" If fans had it their way, tape would roll every time Marco sits at the keys. Lucky for us there's an ever-growing catalog of material from an always larger pool of projects and one senses Marco won't be slowing down anytime soon. The challenge is just trying to keep up with Marco Benevento.
Marco will be pitching tent at Yoshi's in Oakland for a February residency. His return to New York City is scheduled for March 7 at Brooklyn's Bell House.
Marco Benevento - "Live At Tonic"
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