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  • Thank you, Stephen Bennett…

    Stephen Bennett helped me make it through many a dinner shift…

    Did you ever have a job that made you feel like throwing up every time you went to work? I did. Back in 1998, I took a job waiting tables at a well-established restaurant in Williamsburg, Virginia. When I was hired, I didn’t know the first thing about waiting tables. I was also suffering from pretty significant depression and anxiety. For the first few months of my employment, I was constantly stressed out and on the verge of hyperventilation and/or projectile vomiting. Fortunately, I eventually learned how to wait tables and the job became easier. I was finally promoted to dinner, meaning that I could be scheduled to work at night. On many Friday and Saturday nights in the late 1990s, a then local musician named Steve Bennett would play music.

    Stephen Bennett plays guitar. Actually, he often plays a harp guitar, which he inherited from his great grandmother’s second husband, Edgar Pierce. Steve writes on his official Web site that his great grandmother was married to Pierce for over fifty years, so he thinks of him as his great grandfather, even though the man was not a blood relation. The harp guitar Steve Bennett inherited is a Dyer Brothers symphony harp guitar, which was manufactured in 1909.

    Although Steve was born in Oregon, which is where his great grandparents lived, he grew up in New York. Consequently, he didn’t really know the man whose magnificent harp guitar he inherited and now enchants audiences with. When I knew Steve, he was living in my hometown, Gloucester, Virginia. He has since moved north to Milford, Connecticut with his wife, Nancy. He has released many albums, several of which I own, and has traveled the world playing his guitar and teaching others. When I check to see what he’s up to these days, I feel very fortunate that I got to hear him play every weekend as we worked stressful night shifts at the restaurant. His soothing music got me through many tough evenings.


    A great video showing Stephen Bennett playing “The Water Is Wide” with many, many harp guitar players…

    As I get older, I find myself seeking music that is… shall we say… a little more soothing to the soul. When I listen to Stephen Bennett’s recordings play, I remember watching him live as I worked at the restaurant and how lovingly he held his instruments as he finger picked and flat picked beautiful music. I was always amazed by how he was able to coax such intricate melodies from his guitars. Sometimes he would play popular songs that everyone knew. Sometimes he’d play original compositions. Sometimes he’d sing. I remember a couple of times, he’d have guest musicians play with him. He was pretty well-known in Williamsburg and the surrounding areas. I’m sure his presence is missed by those who used to love to listen to him play as they enjoyed fine cuisine on date night as well as those who were privileged to work in his presence. Virginia’s loss is Connecticut’s gain!


    Here he plays “What Child Is This”/”Greensleeves”…

    While I can’t say I always appreciated living in Gloucester, Virginia when I was growing up, I do love to look at Steve’s CDs and see Gloucester referenced in the credits. Like I said, I’m getting older and starting to appreciate more soothing things. I can now understand why my parents decided to settle in Gloucester back in 1980, having moved us from the Washington, DC area. Back in 1980, Gloucester was a quiet, rural, peaceful place surrounded by rivers. Thirty plus years later, it’s become a lot more populated. But compared to the sprawling metropolis of Newport News, Gloucester is still pretty tranquil. And though Stephen Bennett doesn’t live there anymore, his music often takes me back to the place where I grew up. It calms me down… and frankly, kind of inspires me to want to learn how to play guitar. I’ve tried to before, but it’s not as easy as he makes it look!

    I didn’t enjoy a lot of the shifts I worked when I was waiting tables in Williamsburg, Virginia. But I can say that many good things came from that job. I made a lot of great friends, learned a lot about good food, lost a lot of weight, got driven into graduate school, and was introduced to Stephen Bennett, a stellar musician with a gift for producing wonderful music. If you like acoustic guitar music and have ever wondered about the harp guitar, I highly recommend checking out Stephen Bennett. And if he’s playing anywhere near where you are, you should definitely stop in for a show.


    Stephen Bennett and Tommy Emmanual play a scorching rendition of “Puttin’ On The Ritz”. You have to see this to believe it!

  • For gingers only…

    A post especially for gingers!

    Hair color is a weird thing. I was born with blonde hair. As I got older, my hair got darker. My mom, being a vain type, started taking me to get my hair “Luminized” when I was still a young kid, which artificially lightened my hair. I hated those treatments. The color smelled bad and made my scalp itch. I’m sure the hairdresser dreaded my appointments, too. I wasn’t the most patient client.

    As I got older, I wasn’t used to seeing myself with darker hair, so I kept coloring it. Then in 1995, I went off to Armenia for two years. While hair color existed in the former Soviet country, I didn’t trust it. I saw a lot of “interesting” hair coloring attempts on Armenian women and I didn’t want to have weird hair. My weird personality already sets me apart enough! So I let my original color grow in and by the time I went home, my hair was sort of a dishwater blonde with lots of natural red/coppery highlights in it. It seems that I actually have a “tinge of the ging’”, as singer-songwriter Tim Minchin puts it.

    I resisted coloring my hair for a long time after I came home in 1997, but I hated seeing the inevitable silver streaks in my locks. But now, every time I use hair color, even if I use light brown, it turns red. So I guess I am now sort of a “ginger”, even though my hair never caused me the childhood trauma it apparently did others. Gingers were, after all, famously spoofed on South Park, where Eric Cartman famously claimed “Gingers have no souls!”

    I will admit it was odd for me when people started referring to me as a redhead. I have, in my mind, always been a blonde. I remember when I updated my military ID and in the block for hair color, I had to ask my husband whether I should put blonde or red. Both he and the lady making the ID said I appeared to be a ginger to them. It was weird being a redhead; even though I think they have as much fun as blondes do.

    Last week, an interesting article about redheads was circulating around the Internet, with lots of factoids about why some people have red hair as well as some of the myths perpetuated about redheads. I’m not sure if they apply to a pseudo redhead like me, though. I’m not quite sure in my case the carpet matches the drapes.

    Anyway, Tim Minchin is a guy who understands the plight of natural redheads, which he addresses in his hilarious song, “Prejudice”…

    I discovered Tim Minchin through a posting on one of my favorite Internet message boards and ended up downloading his great album, Ready For This (Live). “Prejudice” is just one of the great songs on that album. Whether you’re a ginger or not, it’s worth checking out!

  • #13 album of 2012 – Trouble with Machines by District 97

    Artist: District 97

    Album: Trouble with Machines

    District 97 are a Chicago band of four varyingly dorky-looking male rock musicians, all quite skilled; a not-at-all-dorky-looking woman named Leslie Hunt who joined the band after being a top-10 finalist on American Idol; and a cellist, Katinka Kleijn, talented enough to do solos for the district_97_troubleChicago Symphony Orchestra. That lineup concept is why I tried them out in the first place. Say what you like about American Idol (in my case, “I’ve never watched it”), Kelly Clarkson made it clear early on that it’s a fine machine for the discovery of singing talent, stretchable beyond any musics that the show itself — from what I’m told — would demonstrate. For example! While I’ve ranked District 97’s Trouble with Machines slightly above Rush’s Clockwork Angels, what I’d emphasize is that they’re comparable. If you’re a fan of one, I think there’s a good 75% chance you could end up a fan of the other.

    On a broad level, both albums are full of ambitious, multi-segmented, quasi-metal songs that rock out. District 97 even attempted an album-long story on their excellent 2010 debut Hybrid Child, although this time they restrict that impulse to the individual 10-minute story-songs the Perfect Young Man and the Thief. Micro-level similarities include near-identical drumming styles (drummer Jonathan Schang is even District 97‘s primary composer); bass to some extent (Patrick Mulcahy often matches Geddy Lee’s more aggressive tones, though at other times he’ll essay a Metallica chug, spacious and staccato math-rock, or punk-pop simplicity, instead of Lee’s funk or melodic leads); and some tuneful heavy-metal guitar solos (Jim Tashijian’s being shinier and more ’80s rapid-fire than Alex Lifeson’s). Both albums also are full of angular vocal melodies, although where Lee’s tunes on Clockwork Angels often felt unfinished and wandering to me, Hunt’s on Trouble with Machines are clearly odd on purpose, making precision leaps over chasms. She’s got more than enough charisma to sell them, at least to me.

    Rob Clearfield’s keyboards have a flashiness, and a hookiness, that fits far better with the Rush (or Yes) of thirty years ago. So, too, do the frequent time-signature switches here. Back and Forth and the Perfect Young Man feel especially like hybrids of Rush old and new. The lean, slippery Who Cares? is its own beast: Tashijian’s limber, non-distorted guitar reminds me of his acoustic-based side band Treehouse, and Hunt’s singing is at points more yearning, more bitter, and more taunting than progressive rock in general is known for. Open Your Eyes, the single in 4/4 time, has a catchy Pat Benatar-like directness (although still a fairly unusual melody). The Actual Color — melodically and rhythmically the bizarrest song on Trouble with Machines — has nonetheless a dramatic and emotional heft that reminds me of Queen’s later records. Read Your Mind opens with a nifty, elegant minute-long demonstration of various tricks cellist Kleijn learned in conservatory; the song as a whole is at once the most Clockwork Angels-like track here, and the one most influenced, in its slower, more drawn-out moments, by chamber music and by the synth-jazz-pop early-80s works of Joe Jackson (Steppin’ Out) and Donald Fagen (New Frontier). Final track the Thief makes me admit I’m being silly not having brought up Dream Theater before. It’s song-like enough and often gentle enough to be on Images and Words, but with group-playing segments fiery and jaw-dropping enough for … how did Dream Theater let Rush beat them to the song title an Exercise in Self-Indulgence anyway? Don’t give me that “They weren’t born in time” excuse; temporal immobility is for losers. Anyway, there’s enough song on the Thief that the instrumental parts enhance it rather than upstage it.

    Like those other bands, District 97 try to sing about lives well or poorly led. Unlike those other bands, District 97 do so by centering on personal relationships: flirtations, cliques, seductions, breakups, encouragements, marriages, children, illnesses. In the broader context of pop music that’s conservative; in progressive rock, it’s almost radical. Right now the lyrics need work, I’d say: they sustain a narrative *or* scatter a few good lines, but not both. This album is high on my list for how great it sounds. There’s potential for something deeper next time. I’ll be listening.

    – Brian Block

    To see the rest of our favorites, visit our Favorite Albums of 2012 page!