Sad Dad Summer: An Interview with Ben Kweller
Ben Kweller is having a sad dad summer, but this isn’t stolen valor like the “sad dads” who listen to The National. It was earned. A little more than two years ago, Kweller lost his 16-year-old son, Dorian, when he swerved to miss an oncoming truck causing him to crash his car and die as a result of his injuries.
This is a sad fact of life that he and I share. Eight years ago my daughter Grace was crushed under the weight of a trailer pulling a demolition derby car while walking in a parade during the annual Ute Stampede in Nephi. Grace and Dorian were born in the same year and they were both taken way too soon.
When I found out we had a mutual friend (Adam Stewart from the Austin-based kings of trashwave, Me Nd Adam — check ’em out), I had him connect us so we could talk about OST (our shared trauma). It’s not very often you get to talk to someone who truly understands the weight of losing a child so young.
While Kweller was experiencing a spiritual awakening in the days and months after his son passed, I was going through whatever the opposite of Bob Dylan’s Christian period was. My faith was almost completely lost. All I had was hope that everything would work out in the end.
“I’m in this phase of feeling like things are really meant to be and it’s written in the stars,” Kweller says. “That’s part of my acceptance of it — just submitting to God.” Unlike me, he didn’t retreat from the pain. He tackled it head-on by writing songs to help him navigate his grief. Those songs turned into his latest album, Cover The Mirrors. Writing these songs was business as usual. For someone who’s been doing this for decades, the muscle memory kicked in.
“On a technical level, it was the same as always,” says Kweller. “I just sit with my instrument, whether it’s the guitar or the piano, and just tinker around and eventually stuff comes out. I feel really grateful that I’ve had music and songwriting as a tool to live with throughout my life. So, it definitely made things a little easier having that routine and being comfortable because it’s not like my child died and then all of a sudden I’m like, ‘I’m going to just be an artist and learn how to.’”
One subtle musical change from previous albums is the amount of strings featured, which give the songs grandeur and gravitas, subliminally letting the listener know to pay attention because something compelling is coming that could change your outlook on life.
Despite the difference in lyrical tone, the songs on the album sound like Ben Kweller songs, which for the uninitiated is like if you took Ben Folds and Weezer (if the reception to Pinkerton didn’t break Rivers Cuomo) and put them in a blender. In short, it’s indie-tinged power pop with a dash of country and Americana thrown in for good measure that isn’t afraid to show its emotions. The music is straightforward and gets to the point. Like the Dr. Seuss character, “He says what he means and he means what he says.” No need to read between the lines.
“The album is very much a reflection of my grieving,” says Kweller. “The process has been very bizarre.” Kweller explains that through his loss he’s gained a new super power — empathy — which causes his emotions to swing wildly from the highest highs to the lowest lows and the album reflects those wide emotional swings.
“If you know my music before this album, you know that it can be pretty eclectic, but it’s generally optimistic and there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel,” says Kweller. “I’ll go dark at times, but this album is like complete despair and then complete and utter joy.”
Take the really dark song “Depression,” which elicits a feeling of deep despair and has an aura of hopelessness few songs can achieve. But despite all of that heaviness, the song ends on an upbeat note as Kweller exclaims, “Oh, a new day is coming.” Then contrast that with the final track on the album, “Oh, Dorian,” which had the potential to mine the deepest recesses of pain because Kweller wanted to include one song that was explicitly about his son. In the end, it is one of the happiest, most hopeful songs on the record.
No one would have faulted him if he holed up in a dark room with just an acoustic guitar and a four-track TASCAM recorder and gave us the second coming of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska or Bon Iver’s debut album, For Emma, Forever Ago, but that’s just not who Ben Kweller is.
Kweller doesn’t make music in a vacuum. He relies on his community both in Dripping Springs, Texas, where he currently resides, and his musician friends. One thing you might not realize as a parent is that our children don’t just belong to us, they belong to our communities, our friends and our children’s friends, so when they pass it’s not just the parents that are mourning. It’s so much more, and grieving parents need to give them space to mourn as well.
Dorian’s death hit Kweller’s vast network of musicians hard, and they showed up for him in a big way in the making of this album. Cover The Mirrors features a murderer’s row of some of the top indie musicians working right now, including Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchee, MJ Lenderman and The Flaming Lips. But he didn’t set out to have that many features when he started recording the album. It just happened organically.
“When I started putting these songs together, I would just hear things in my mind. Like when I wrote the song ‘Dollar Store,’ I just kept hearing this female vocal singing a high octave,” says Kweller. “It reminded me of the Pixies or something from the ’90s. And so I thought of Katie from Waxahatchee and texted her a demo of the song.”
Crutchfield immediately said yes and the result of their partnership is one of the best indie rock songs to come out this year (in my opinion). It begins with a gentle strumming of the guitar and Kweller softly whisper singing the verses, leading to Crutchfield’s sincere harmonies adding depth to the chorus. All of this is a slow build to the song’s climax when the drums kick in, the distorted, fuzzed out guitars start growling, and Kweller’s voice reaches a fever pitch as he belts out the final chorus. The end result is a cosmic gumbo of grunge nostalgia that I’ve returned to often since its release.
MJ Lenderman, the current crown prince of indie rock, added guitars and vocals to “Oh, Dorian,” the album’s closer, which also acts as the heart and soul of the record. The song is an apt tribute to a young man who loved life and lived it to the fullest even to the very end, but Kweller wasn’t feeling the finality of it all in this song. Instead of saying goodbye to his son, “Oh, Dorian” is a “see you soon.”
“When I started the lyrics on ‘Oh, Dorian,’ everything was in the past tense,” says Kweller. “Like he had this, he was this, his hair color was this. Then at some point I flipped it. I was like, ‘No! Fuck That!’ Let’s go present tense like he’s still here.”
The most poignant track on the album is “Trapped,” a song Dorian was working on before his passing. On the surface, the song is about the end of a first love and what the protagonist would do differently the next chance he gets, but if you dig a little deeper, the song can be interpreted as Dorian sending a message to his family from beyond the grave. Kweller notes that in the weeks leading up to his death, deep down in Dorian’s soul he knew that his time was short and he started preparing to leave. He was trying to fit everything in before he passed. It was little things like wanting to release new music every week and wanting to spend time with his friends, but feeling guilty because he was neglecting his family. Things most 16-year-olds wouldn’t give a second thought to.
The most prescient line is in the chorus where Dorian wrote, “Now I’m gone, yeah, I’m free / But I wish you were with me / That’s just how it has to be.” Even if death is inevitable, those of us who are left behind cling tightly to the hope of that time when we’ll see our loved ones again. The idea of our lost loved ones living free in some other quantum realm gives us needed comfort.
As we talk, Kweller is in the midst of preparing to head west to tour in support of Cover the Mirrors, which is currently available on all streaming platforms. The tour hits the Urban Lounge on July 14 (which coincidentally is the eighth anniversary of my daughter’s death, so if you’re at the show, I’ll be the one sobbing uncontrollably). The set list will mirror the arc of the album, easing into the show with a few mellow songs before the band starts really rocking.
“I don’t feel like it’s totally appropriate to just come on stage right now and be like, ‘Let’s go,’” says Kweller. “I need a minute, you know, to acknowledge what I’ve been through and sort of pay respect to Dorian.”
Kweller has been coming to Salt Lake City for upwards of 20 years now and has many fond memories of his performances. His first show was opening for Dashboard Confessional in his emo days. He also introduced a then-unknown, unsigned group who had the honor of opening for him after winning a battle of the bands at In the Venue (RIP). That band: Neon Trees or as real heads call them, The Trees. But the craziest lineup he shared was when he was playing a headlining show at Kilby Court with My Morning Jacket opening (can you even imagine MMJ on that small stage?). The lesson, according to Kweller, is if you want to make it big, just open for him.
As our conversation comes to a close, Kweller reiterates how much he loves playing shows in Salt Lake.
“When people ask me what my favorite place to play is, I always list Salt Lake as one of my favorites,” says Kweller. “I’ve had great shows there from the beginning. It’s something about the fans that they really understand me as an artist, so I always look forward to playing shows in your neck of the woods.”
