12/14/2022
One of my dearest friends Ben Burroughs just put out his new album Any Day Now. Listen if you like magic; or if you wish Brian Wilson had gone on to have a shoegaze-country phase. Link in bio. ************************************My story with Ben Burroughs goes all the way back to the halcyon days of Myspace around 2004. I was searching other Cincinnati area artists and found his page and was immediately drawn to the songs he posted there. A few years later I joined a band called Pomegranates and one of the members Joey gave each of us burned copies of one of Ben's albums, "Into the Lake", as gifts that first Christmas we were a band. I learned that he and Joey were friends and it was one of those "small world" moments and I expressed how much I'd love to meet Ben the next time he was around town.
Fast forward to a year later and Joey invites Ben over to hang out and we quickly became good friends. Ben had a series of albums he recorded while he was in high school on an old desktop PC and a spartan assortment of recording gear, but he made magic on those albums and throughout the time Pomegranates was touring we listened to those albums religiously. We would reference songs and guitar parts while we were writing our own music and there was not a tour that went by where at least one of his albums was not played in the van. When we went to record Healing Power at a cabin in Tennessee, Jake surprised us with Ben being there for the entirety of the 10 day session to hang out and record with us. It was like working with one of our heroes.
It's a rare thing to say that one of your musical heroes is one of your dearest friends, but that's true for me with Ben's and his art. He had been workin on a follow up to his last album "This is the End" from around the time that we first became friends and this new album is the culmination of 15 years of creative gestation and friendship. I've looked forward to this album more than almost any album I can think of in my life and I'm so thankful and proud that Ben has seen it through and that I've had the opportunity to share in a small part of that process. Thanks for giving your gift, Ben.
