Home
sign up| features / interview |
 content by: editor |
 benjy ferree session
 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.The Quiet American. Benjy Ferree is a man forever on the periphery of fame. As a budding actor, dwelling for several years in the belly of the Hollywood beast, he joined queues with Monica Lewinsky, was backed by one of Spinal Tap’s doomed drummers and appeared in a film with Kato Kaelin (a figure of fun in the OJ Simpson case) and Todd McCormick (celebrated cultivator of medicinal marijuana). “It was very poor,” he says of his first and last movie, a smile flickering beneath his bushy ‘tache. “It was about a fraternity in Indiana but filmed at UCLA, so you kept seeing posters with UCLA on.”But it was a close encounter with George Bush that inspired the opening track on his brilliant Leaving The Nest LP. “It’s about being in a traffic jam when the presidential motorcade goes by and you’re praying an atomic bomb might drop,” he says. “I was in a cab on my way to work and it cost me an extra $10. We’re a little bitter about politics in DC,” he continues, warming to his theme. “It used to be called Chocolate City, now it’s called White Chocolate City. All the cool culture has gone, everyone’s uptight yuppies.” The 32-year-old moved back East (he’s originally from Maryland) after abandoning acting and California, taking up a bar job and throwing himself into his songwriting, though it was only when Domino US got in touch that he thought seriously about making an album. “They’re record nerds, they’re crazy about music, they have mental problems,” he says. “I’d never met a business person who was passionate about music before, they’d always talked to artists like they’re idiots.” The label behind Franz Ferdinand and Arctic Monkeys were sold on Ferree’s ability to write songs with both serious subtext (Private Honeymoon is a flight of fancy based on the sexual relationship between another US president, Thomas Jefferson, and his slave, Sally Hemings) and impossibly chirpy, almost childlike melodies (some were written while he was nannying in the Hollywood Hills), reminiscent of Macca’s Beatley best. “Chirpy? What, like a bird?” he asks. “I wish all my songs could sound like a pissed off owl.” More of a hoot than an angry young(ish) man, Ferree’s one of the discoveries of the year, and if Leaving The Nest finds the audience it deserves his next brush with fame will be more than fleeting.
Steve Yates
Benjy Ferree – Leaving The Nest, out now on Domino.
 comments
Read members' comments related to this interview.
|
 |
related info
 useful links
note: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
books  books and comics archive Author interviews and reviews from 2002 to 2008. |
send to a friend
benjy ferree
access 1000s of articles
