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Great Lakes: Ben Crum
Article written by
Ged M - May 13, 2007
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Great Lakes were founded by Dan Donohue and Ben Crum in Athens, Georgia in 1996. Now Brooklyn-based, they’re still the core of the band, although Dan has retired from performance to concentrate on songwriting and artwork. The original Great Lakes line up was completed by Jamie Huggins, releasing an eponymous debut record in 2000 and ‘The Distance Between’ in 2002, full of romantic 60s-flavoured pop music. The live version of the band has included up to nine additional members (including members of Of Montreal, The Circulatory System, Neutral Milk Hotel and The Late B.P. Helium) but is currently fixed on a three piece: Ben (guitar, vocals), Kyle Forrester (bass) and Kevin Shea, Mikem Fadem or Chris Deaner (drums). Their third album Diamond Times was released in September 2006 in the US and February 2007 in the UK to the best reviews yet. We spoke to Ben Crum after the Water Rats show at the end of January 2007.
SXP: There’s a lot of “Americana” on Diamond Times – in the best way, you tap into the wellspring of American music: things like Creedence swamp pop, folk, rockabilly and soul. How much of that is intentional?
Ben: I want to be able to make music that I want to listen to. Mostly what I listen to is older stuff. I’ve been obsessed with this Bobby Charles record, New Orleans kind of country-funk. There are a couple of new groups that I like. I like Herman Dune, I like Dr Dog. I prefer to listen to stuff that’s more subtle: folky, soulful, slightly country, slightly blues, somewhere in the middle. I guess it’s Americana. I chafe at that word but it’s all in the subtlety of feeling. I don’t want to step onto a distortion pedal. This is the reason why a three piece makes sense to me. It’s kind of an old-fashioned idea: listening to each other and responding to what you’re playing. The Band are a great example of how to do that. It’s a jazz kind of thing; I’m not like “Mr Jazz” but you know what I mean. When we did things as a six or seven piece band, we were just up there, doing what we recorded. None of us could really hear each other but if you have a three piece, no matter what the sound is in the place, you can always hear the bass and drums and guitar. And you can listen to each other and actually play that way.
SXP: Do you like to be in the spotlight so much?
Ben: I don’t know. In terms of the three piece, I like to do as little as necessary. I want the song to get across. Dan and I don’t write a lot of songs. It takes a long time to get them out there and every time we’re touring I really want the essence of what we intended to get through. And a lot of times it’s in spite of whatever 10 hour drive we did or lack of sleep or whatever state of mind I’m in. When I’m singing ‘Precious and Reckless’ I want it to be about what we intended when we sat down and wrote that thing.
SXP: Does it annoy you that everyone seems to mention Elephant 6 and group you with that sound?
Ben: It doesn’t straight up annoy me but it bothers me when it’s inaccurate. We played in Newcastle and they used a big flyer for our show: “Pepperland Pet Sounds meets whimsical vaudeville”. You heard our show tonight and it doesn’t sound anything like that description! I’d rather it’s something more accurate.
SXP: I was reading an article in which you choose your favourite records: lots of singer-songwriters and outlaw country. And you finish with Johnny Cash.
Ben: Which one did I pick?
SXP: ‘Where did we go right?’
Ben: Good God, that makes me cry! Did you listen to that song? It’s incredible! I grew up listening to him, my mom was a huge fan. I saw him when I was a little kid; my parents took me to see him at the Frederick County Fair in Maryland. It’s in my blood to listen to Johnny Cash but I’d never listened to that song. I was in San Francisco on a recent tour and my friend said: listen to this! Now I’ve been listening to it all the time.
SXP: The performing band is a three-piece but is the songwriting still just you and Dan?
Ben: Yeah. He’s in Brooklyn now. He lives a few blocks from me.
SXP: Does that mean you’re going to write more music together?
Ben: Yeah, it’s been great. We have probably three-quarters of the new record written. We played 4 songs from it tonight. I’m playing finger-style guitar, Leonard Cohen-y or something, but when we play it with the band it becomes…I don’t know what you’d describe that as but to me [it’s as] bluesy or heavy as Cream or Led Zeppelin. It’s possible we could recapture the spirit of the drummer just going for it! It could also be a really mellow thing. We have these songs that are all minor key: dark, brooding, kind of emotional.
SXP: That covers the writing and playing sides but you’ve gathered a crowd of Ladybugs, Of Montrealers and Essex Greens to record the album. How did you manage that?
Ben: I went to Georgia and brought Jeff with me. I recorded in a studio in Athens because it was monumentally cheaper than going to a studio in New York. I’d been playing with Essex Green for about a year at that point and Jeff was just blowing me away, night after night. There’s no one in terms of modern guitar players: Jeff plays Memphis and Nashville 1968-1972. Only. And that’s my favourite kind of shit, you know. That’s what I like and Jeff is so good at it. He didn’t know the songs; that was the idea behind making Diamond Times: you can’t know the songs. I wanted it to be like a Dylan record in the sense that I come in and say: “this is how it goes. Start playing. Roll tape.” My favourites on it are the early takes. [The musicians] allowed me that situation of being kind of like session musicians for me. They didn’t know the songs but they just came in, I went “this is how it goes” and they tried their best to do it. I think it’s a cool way to get some spontaneity. You never know what’s going to happen.
SXP: You must be quite pleased about the reviews for Diamond Times?
Ben: Yeah, the reviews have been nice but the sales haven’t!
SXP: What’s happening with Ladybug Transistor? There’s an EP from Ladybug Transistor coming out and you and Kyle are both on it.
Ben: It’s not really important to me to define what it is, but we made an EP and we have a new record that’s supposed to come out in May. Ladybug was kind of like one of my favourite bands long before I had anything to do with it. I got to know Gary when I moved to Brooklyn; first I started playing bass with him, then he needed a keyboard player and I was like: “OK, I’ll play keys”. And then Jeff…it’s not that he’s not going to do it but he’s not going to alter his life to make himself available to Ladybug, and Gary was asking me to [play guitar]. So the new Ladybug record has got 11 or 12 songs on it and I play on all but three, and the only three I don’t play the guitar on are the ones that Jeff Baron wrote the music for. Jeff has kind of made it plain that he’s dedicated to Essex Green these days.
SXP: Is there anyone you want to play with? Who’d be your ideal bill?
Ben: Oh man, I don’t need to think about it, it would definitely be a tour opening for Teenage Fanclub! My favourite band when I was about 16-17. I saw them with Ladybug at the end of a Spanish tour; we played a festival in Barcelona and a part of it was billed as ‘Teenage Fanclub play Bandwagonesque’. The played the whole of the album, did ‘God Knows It’s True’, ‘Everything Flows’ and they had Brendan on drums. It was unbelievable! At the end of it I realised “OK, I’m 33 years old but I feel 12 or 14!” Ladybug is on the same label as Teenage Fanclub now and I’m begging Gary: “get us on a tour with Teenage Fanclub, that’s all you have to do!” They can tour the US and do medium size venues and sell them out the whole time. But for some reason they don’t seem particularly interested in doing it that much. Which is kind of admirable in a way. In terms of modern groups there’s no-one else I give a shit about!
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