bengodwin.com

Urbanfolk #10

Down to Skin and Bone

Tom Drake

    New York greeted Ben Godwin as it does many artists: in the middle of a rainstorm, the polite Englishman arrived, umbrella-less and soaked to play his first show at the now defunct C-Note. No one was there. He soddenly played to a few neighborhood patrons and the other performers. Within months, Ben would migrate the few blocks to the Sidewalk Café, playing the AntiHoot, hoping for a show. He had no idea of how his life and art would change as he entered the AntiFolk world.

    After spending his late teens and early twenties playing in Glasgow's burgeoning alternative rock scene, Ben grew tired of the “rock band” world for many reasons, but mostly the consistency with which the songs got lost to the fashion, noise, and theatrics of rock shows. He finds solo performance to be the most honest way to present a song to people. “There's more available dynamically to the singer. It's easier to reach people with the 'no frills, putting the song first' approach.” He returned to his home of London and began focusing on life as a solo performer. He worked over the next several years, landing a day job as a studio engineer; improving the skills that would help him create the now bundled EPs, Shiny Shiny and Lighter than the Atom.

    In his four years in London, Ben only produced 12 songs he liked enough to record. After a year in New York, he's already come up with the same. When first arriving in the City, he would write only about his own experience. “I was doing one of those writing exercises where I'd wake up and write about 1,500 words or so every day. I found that I kept writing the same shit every day. I just got tired of what was in my own head and started more, recording the images around me.” New York is the most inspiring - yet menacing - landscape he's seen. “There's urgency here. It's like a sense of constantly escaping some impending doom,” he says, describing the daily life of the rush hour train ride, rats coming too close to the third rail, and how it pushes the imagination. If you're open to it, there are songs, he says, “landing on your face like a big fuckoff custard pie in the face.” Lach, the host and booker at the Sidewalk Café, has been an inspiration, too. “He has so many ideas on how songs work, how they happen. He lives for the music.”

    “In London, most of my musical interaction was with artists' recordings. Here most of it is at shows. You would hear the word AntiFolk or about the Sidewalk Café because of the Moldy Peaches success, but there was no community like this.” He continues, “In London, there were always some people waiting for a big break. Here everyone is out doing it for themselves. There was some of this, like playing squat parties, but for the most part it wasn't this sort of culture coming up through the cracks.”  Godwin credits this sense of community as the main catalyst of his transformation as an artist. Something as simple as sharing a cab back to Brooklyn after an AntiHoot with Dan Costello resulted in the 13-track Halloween Baby, which Ben produced. Soon the Dan and Godwin had recorded innumerable demos at a friend's loft, and filtered them down during the many long recording sessions at Seaside Studios in Brooklyn, where, only months later, Ben would record his own new record, produced by Dan. 

    “People here aren't waiting for the right inspiration, or the right gig. They're taking what's in their hands and making great art with it.” There are so many artists in the City that inspire him. He talks about them with the same smile a five year-old has looking at his birthday cake or a teenager has after getting laid, and he begins the AntiFolk name drop: Joie/Dead Blonde Girlfriend, Brook Pridemore, the Bowmans, Eric Wolfson, The Creaky Boards, Lach and, more intimately, Dan Costello. “Dan's a real inspiration to work with. In London, I did studio work with whomever I could, but making this (Halloween Baby) was something personal.” He's learned that when you work with people that really care about music, their contributions will go beyond whatever sound you had in your head. “You find out where your weaknesses are and you can open yourself up.” 

    The songs Ben Godwin writes seem to be as much a part of his life as they are a product of it, and this is the difference between the bundled Shiny/Atom releases and the forthcoming Skin and Bone.  All are apt examples of quality songwriting and musicianship, but Skin and Bone, as the title denotes, feels more open and settled in a way that's honest. It sounds less polished and more like one of those artists finding his/her voice clichés - soaked in the dirt, gasoline, and restaurant grease on the sidewalks and subway platforms of his new home. The album opens with the glorious “Drinking Gasoline” and continues with “New World City,” which moves with the same urgency and impending doom he sees in the City each day. The album continues with rich, buttery tones, captured at Seaside on highlights like “Skin and Bone”, “Paper Thin Walls”, and “Outsize Shoes.” The album, over all, has a dramatic, upbeat musical feel that is well versed in American post-war blues/early rock and roll, jazz-influenced harmonies, pop melodies with an eye for the theatrical. His voice comes across strong, soulful, and present in each and every verse.

    His presence in song continues in his day job, working for the non-profit Lifebeat, a music industry charitable organization dedicated to AIDS awareness. As in any non-profit profession, Ben performs varied tasks, but focuses on the Hearts and Voices program, arranging musical performances for patients bound to residential facilities. “I get to watch miracles every day. These patients become, not just a person living with this illness, but a member of the audience community,” he says with a glimmer of awe, “I've seen people get out of their wheelchairs to dance.” He sees the power of song to be a living and active part of people's lives, and health.

    Ben spent a few weeks this winter touring in the UK, and visiting friends and family. “The tour was such a blast. I saw people I hadn't seen in ten years, who had never seen me without big rock poodle hair! I'm going back in the summer to do a bigger tour.”  Looking forward, 2007 holds many exciting things for Ben. He's seen the official release of Skin and Bone on February 15th at the Winter AntiFolk Festival, with several guests joining him onstage.

    “I'm having too much fun. I'm just excited to see what happens next, not just with my own record, but with Dan's, Eric's, and Vin's new records coming out.” It is these themes of awe and excitement that are most intriguing about Ben Godwin. It's not that he's one of those happy cheerleader types you want to beat to death with a whiffle-bat, or his songs are unnecessarily joyous like some Bible camp sing-along of “Kumbaya” with everybody on ecstasy; in fact, most of them contrast this. His pure wonderment with the nature of what a song is, can be, and what it can mean to people; can easily make one feel like maybe there's something they're missing out on.     

SIDEBAR

Our regularly scheduled programming has been pre-empted by a commentarial interlude from Dan Costello:

When I met Ben, I had no idea we'd embark on such a close friendship and collaboration. Early on, he simply asked me, "Why don't you have a record?" and I said "I don't know" and he said, "Well, let's make you a record." Without Ben, I probably wouldn't have made an album, certainly wouldn't have made "Halloween Baby". I just didn't know enough to do that myself. Producing his album (Skin and Bone) was a joy and a challenge. We are different writers but both striving for the same things through our songs. I think New York is having a wonderful affect on his songwriting, the grit and gristle of the concrete jungle is all over this album, as is the air of revelation. I'm glad to know him (we are both quirky mother fuckers!), and proud of our work on both albums. Go Godwin Go!!!!