This question comes to us from D.W. of Arlington, MA.

Good question. I’m an album note junkie. So… much to my wife’s amusement, whenever I get a new CD, I pore over the details of the tiny text. It was the same with albums. I’ve always been that way. Needless to say, our CDs all have tiny text. If you’re at all like me, or have the slightest interest in who has done what on our discs, you might have noticed the Arnie Ashford Singers. I’d have to check when we actually starting listing the Arnie Ashford Singers but probably the best example of this fine group is our song Grace’s Bell; the title track from our Grace’s Bell CD.

Grace’s Bell CD Cover

So who comprises the Arnie Ashford singers you ask? None other than our bass player Arnie. From our first disc, Emily Songs, through Love is A Superpower, Arnie has taken it upon himself to sing, sing and sing some more. Harmonies are his thing. In high school Arnie sang in a barbershop quartet, honing his ear and sense of harmony.

In the recording studio world that pretty much amounts to the words “give me another track.” Thanks to Les Paul who invented multi-track recording, that means we can stack notes upon notes and voice upon voice to make a big vocal sound from just Arnie alone. John and I add our voices as well but Arnie provides the wall of vocals. It’s one of the coolest parts of making our records and it is a wonderful skill. I’m glad Arnie is on our side.

Les Paul Demonstrates Multi-track Recording

On Grace’s Bell, if my memory serves me correctly, there are nineteen vocal tracks. I sang three of them and the rest is all Arnie. To put it into context, the Beatles had four tracks when they made Sgt. Pepper. FOUR.

The FOUR Tracks of Sgt. Pepper - This is very cool.

The Beach Boys, being in America, had eight. EIGHT. For those Beatles or Beach Boy albums, that means a lot of takes with multiple parts recorded all at once (until they’re PERFECT!) and a lot of juggling of those tracks. With digital/computer recording, tracks abound. “Give me another track” is no problem.

Click to listen to Grace’s Bell

Lastly… all that said…. Grace’s Bell is a fun tune to play live and I think we do a good job of it with just the three voices!

This question comes to us from A.B. of Amherst, NH.

For those who’ve seen us play before 2008 or have any of the recordings from Fun and Games through It’s Santa Claus, you’ll know Mark Yacovone was a regular BR&F band member from 2002 until 2008.

Mark Yacovone with BR&F at Boston’s Hatch Shell.

A good friend… Mark and I were in a rock band in the early 1990’s called “The Eds.” 

In early 2002, I asked Mark if he could play some organ on the song Spin, which we were recording for the Fun and Games CD. The organ didn’t really work out but Mark had thrown his accordion in the car just in case. The accordion worked just fine! Needless to say, from that point on Mark really never left the band until… he left the band. Mark’s last show as a BR&F regular was July 11, 2008. The day we recorded Live in Lexington . The next day Mark moved to Mississippi. I really believe knowing Mark was leaving spurred us on to greater heights that evening making the Live in Lexington disc the gem that it is.
Mark Yacovone and his Tiger accordion on July 11, 2008.Mark still resides in Mississippi and is playing regularly with all kinds of great talent in all kinds of great situations. Additionally, Mark plays piano and keyboards in the house band for the Thacker Mountain Radio show. You can view some of Mark’s fine photography here.

Check out Mark at our 2005 visit to the Long Island Children’s Museum in Garden City, NY.
Ben Rudnick and Friends: I Like Silver, I Like Gold

ASK BR&F


Today’s question comes from SD in Arlington, MA. SD asks… 

» BR&F plays such an eclectic mix of music and your songs take listeners on the adventures of everything from amphibians to cowgirls to aliens.  I’d like to know what inspires you, in terms of songwriting.

Well… thank you for your question! As your question sort of intimates… the mix of music, topics from amphibians to aliens… saying “just about everything” would be a bit pithy but really not off the mark. One of the very cool things about being in this “family music” space, even on the left most fringe as we seem to be, is that it really allows us the ability to express ourselves in just about any style we want and discourse on just about anything we see fit. It’s unbelievably freeing. 

That said… for me, being open to the possibility of writing new songs is important. Once I’m open to the process, it’s amazing how many songs just seem to present themselves. Ideas come in from 360 degrees of possibility….

• Something like “I got a new friend, he’s an alien” might have come from Emily mentioning she found a new friend at school and me extrapolating on that just a little.  
  
  
• Cowgirl Song and it’s “yippie-yi-yo-kayee” comes from me loving that phrase as a kid and watching the Die Hard movies as an adult.   
  
  
• A Frog Named Sam comes from me wanting to sing a song like Mark Knopfler’s Punish The Monkey.  If you listen to his song, there is really nothing similar about the songs at all. They do both have a neat drum beat thing going but for content, point of view, etc, etc, etc there are no similarities. I just happen to land on “frog,” gave said frog a name and thought how cool a chorus of frog’s singing “boom, boom, boom etc” would be. Knofpler’s song was a trigger and you can see how far I went off the rails.   
  
  
• One of my favorites of the new song crop is Where Are the Dragons. In this case I had been reading Keith Richards book, Life, was in the flavor of how quickly and irreverently Keith and Mick wrote songs (see “When the Whip Comes Down”) and with a postcard freshly received in the mail went from “WhereThereBeDragons.com” to “Where Are The Dragons?” It was a fun song to write.     

THIS…

WhereThereBeDragons.com

BECAME….

Where Are The Dragons?

This comes to us from H.D. in Arlington, MA.

Well… a LONG time ago, like 25 years and five months ago… I was jaunting through Europe and ran into Sue Smith and her mom on the the late night train tracks of Geneva, Switzerland. Sue’s mom was having a minor freakout as her job was to find the train car we would all overnight in on our journey to Nice, France. The thing was the train car didn’t exist and Sue’s mother’s freakout was escalating. Somehow I made her laugh, we got squared away and the rest is history. Sue’s significant other, then and now, is Jeff Bird the fifth Cowboy Junkie. After returning to the states, and catching up with my new friend Sue, she told me the Junkies had just released their new album, Trinity Sessions which was soon to be a big deal. I went down to the old Boston club Nightstage, knocked on the back door and ultimately met Jeff and the rest of the couldn’t-be-nicer Canadian band, Cowboy Junkies.

When we started recording Emily Songs in 2000, at some point I hit upon the idea to go up to Canada and visit Jeff to add harmonica, percussion and Jeff “bits” to the recording.

Jeff Bird, Sue Smith and Ben circa 2000 in Guelph, Ontario

Jeff has been on just about every BR&F disc since, played at our tenth Anniversary show and most recently produced the video for the song Scribbling from our Love is a Superpower album.

 Jeff Bird (harmonica) & BR&F - 10th Anniv. Show
~ I Got A New Friend ~ 


 Scribbling by BR&F - Produced by Jeff Bird 

Jeff is one of those guys that just makes every situation better. He’s a lovely guy and I’m glad to call him my friend. Jeff has a website. 

About Margo Timmins, singer of the Cowboy Junkies -

 

Margo Timmins

 
Cover - Fun and Games

When we got to the Fun and Games recording, I hit upon the idea of having Margo sing a song or two. She ended up singing Everything is Alright ( In. One. Take. ) which really is worth the price of the album all by itself. The thought was to also have her sing Sally Salamander but as she said, it just wasn’t in her to do. Me… I thought it would have been really fun to have Margo and her incredible voice, known for mostly dark songs, sing about Sally’s travails with the food chain.

Listen to Margo Timmins sing “Everything is Alright”

This is the first installment of a new series we’re doing… “Ask BR&F.”

This question comes to us from A. Susser of Medford, MA and it is a question that we get on a fairly regular basis. John is playing a Mandolin. The mandolin, or more affectionately “mando,” is a member of the lute family and is strung like a violin So… if you can play a violin, the mandolin would be a good instrument to try! The mandolin was popularized by Bill Monroe, pioneer of the bluegrass genre of music.

John’s mandolin was made by Max Girouard in Contoocook, NH. It’s based on the shape of Jerry Garcia’s guitar named Tiger. We all love John’s mandolin.

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Love is a Superpower is available with free shipping on our website, benrudnick.com, via download on iTunes and on Amazon.
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One of the goals when I set out to record this new album, Love is a Superpower, was to have videos to go with some of the songs. The video for A Frog Named Sam has been popular and I firmly believe it has found fans for the band, although that’s sort of hard to quantify. That said, it’s a video-on-demand society and the world is looking for content, content, and more content. As entertainers, we’re here to entertain AND to provide content!

We will have videos to go with three of the new tunes. The videos for Chicken Soup Ballad and Scribbling are already done. A video for the title track should be done within a couple of weeks. This week I’m writing about Chicken Soup Ballad.

Chicken Soup Ballad

This video was conceived and created by Ben Albarelli. I found Ben through the intern office of Boston University’s Center For Digital Imaging Arts. Simon Werdmuller von Elgg, who did the SAM video, also went through this program.

Initially I sent Ben all the tracks and let him choose which song he felt would be the best for his particular brand of animation. Chicken Soup Ballad was his first choice.

About the Song

Uhh… it’s about chicken soup! Its point of view is from inside the refrigerator! I guess if I was asked (instead of just blogging as we do in the 2010’s), there would be two main influences here and I can guarantee you, GUARANTEE, that these two influences have never (never, ever, never) been used in the same sentence. Ready… drumroll… Bob Dylan and Veggietales.  Of course Dylan and Veggietales are both sort of religious at times so they have that in common. But that’s a point for another day.

The Dylan influence is those great songs where he catalogues about a Gone-with-the-Wind-sized novel’s worth of characters in six minutes, and you ultimately don’t really know what happened in the song—although it usually feels sinister with a shot of redemption at best. The songs often feel like run-on sentences. Examples would be Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts or Black Diamond Bay. I love those songs!

Chicken Soup Ballad has way fewer characters than the Dylan songs and they’re really all accounted for by the end of the song. They sort of all end up in the soup. Which begs the immediate question of “Ben… the chicken and veggies all wind up D*E*A*D.” Well… okay. Yes. But you don’t see that in the video. And ultimately, my logic is, everything has a purpose and our fowl and veggies have embraced that. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. And if the kids want to know, we haven’t named  the chicken.

The second influence is of course the cartoon characters of Veggietales. Emily and I used to watch these cartoons when she was young. More often than not they were quite entertaining.

A third influence is the song Cumberland Blues from the Grateful Dead. Jam in G!

One of the highlights for me in the tune is the playing of Boston-based guitarist Tony Savarino. Tony plays a b-bender guitar, which provides a real pedal-steel guitar sound. Basically you pull on a spring retrofitted into your guitar (usually a Telecaster) via the guitar strap, which bends the guitar’s b string. You can hear this mostly in the background along with some other “hot” licks between the lyrics. I did play the guitar solos but Tony makes it all sound a cut above!

My favorite part of the video is—hands down—the guitar solo. John says he likes this, too, since the mustard actually uses a pick and one of his mustard fingers just like I did when I played the solo originally. I actually sent Ben a video of my hand while playing the solo!

And speaking of the mustard, we thought long and hard about what, or more specifically, who, the mustard should look like! John Lennon (Mean Mr. Mustard)!?! Jerry Garcia!??! Ultimately we settled on Joe Walsh! Check it out.

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Love is a Superpower is available with free shipping on our website, benrudnick.com, via download on iTunes and on Amazon.
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Hello Blog Readers,

Again, it’s been awhile since my last blog post but friends are urging me to write about the band’s new recording, Love is a Superpower. Where the songs come from. Who the influences are and the cool insider stuff that only I would know. In this hyper-linked, content driven era, it feels like the thing to do. The idea is that this is post number one of a series of posts explaining how Love is a Superpower came to be.

First a couple of facts:

• The CD is to be officially released on Tuesday, September 25,2012.
  
  
• The disc is 44 minutes and 11 seconds long.
  
  
• There are 13 songs. I wrote nine of them, John wrote two, George Harrison wrote one and one song is traditional.
  
  
• Twenty-five musicians took part in making this recording.
  
  
• Several of the players have been in bands supporting very high profile entertainers including Aretha Franklin, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Jerry Garcia, Willie Nelson, Lou Rawls, James Taylor, The Temptations and Stevie Wonder.
  
  
• We started recording on January 9, 2011. We shipped the disc to manufacturing on July 12, 2012.

Where’d the Love Is A Superpower idea come from?

Well… I get A LOT of my ideas for songs while I’m cycling. Once I get in the zone, my mind gets clear and as often happens, songs or ideas for songs come to the forefront. This is sort of a classic case. I was thinking what superpower I wish I had - you know, like you do - and thought “wouldn’t it be cool if spreading love was a superpower,” briefly thought “wait a minute, that’s been done” (see “Son of God”), rapidly envisioned a caped figure, “LOVE MAN,”  and the rest sort of took care of itself.

The lyrics came fairly quickly although as usual tweaks happened almost to the end as I was trying to cram words in amongst all the music tracks. Also getting just the right lilt to a line changes a word here or there.

Why does the song sound like a soul tune from the 70’s?

Because soul tunes, more specifically blaxploitation tunes from the 70’s, are really just about as cool as you could get. Killer guitar parts, tight bass lines, horns that mean what they say and lots of no nonsense vibe. It’s what I heard in my head as soon as the song started coming together. At this point I actually started buying up 70’s discs by the amazon.com box full. Research! Tax write-off! Great work if you can get it! The tune that really stuck with me was the theme from Superfly. I now have a Curtis Mayfield addiction. Check it out!

Horns and what else?

So yea… we’ve got BR&F friend Rob Lee on tenor sax and a couple of his friends, Jon Garniss on trombone and Rick Hammett on trumpet. Jon has played with the likes of The O’Jays, Tony Bennett and Lou Rawls. Rick has played with Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles and The Temptations. Serious entertainers.

Besides the horns there is the WAH-WAH pedal. Eric Clapton (demonstrating wah-wah pedal ie: CLASSIC) used it to great effect on White Room and Jimi Hendrix had a go on Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).  It’s tough to have a 70’s soul tune without some killer wacka-wacka wah guitar action.

Sitar?

Well. Yes. The middle section of the song turned into John Lennon love, love, love territory. There’s probably six or more strumming acoustic guitars but what the song really needed there to capture the Summer of Love in all its glory was a sitar! One email to Boston based guitar slinger Tony Savarino later, who actually has a sitar guitar, and voila! I think Tony has the sitar guitar because he used to play in the Ultrasonic Rock Orchestra.

Sitar Guitar

Chick Singers!

I cannot be more proud of the harmonies found on the BR&F records. Chiefly, the Arnie Ashford Singers are why the harmonies on our records and this song are so good. The Arnie Ashford Singers are comprised of Arnie and the power of multi-tracking given to us by Les Paul himself. For this particular tune however, I kept hearing the need for female voices. We got that with Maureen Murphy and Sharon Shenkar.

Les Paul and his multi-track recorder.

Maureen sings harmonies throughout and is featured on the baroquian figure in the middle “give love” section. From the rough recording we gave her before she came to the studio to sing, Maureen had that section all ready to go. Very cool!

Sharon is the first, wonderfully warm, voice you hear on the song and sings along with me throughout providing vocal counter point. Sharon’s vocal was the last recorded part on the song. It turns out Sharon and I grew up within the same realm of time in NYC and have quite a similar frame of reference regarding major events of the day. Hello… Son of Sam. The Bronx is Burning. Etc. Having Sharon in the studio was like spending time with a long lost friend. Sharon knew EXACTLY the vibe I was going for.

The Artwork

Lastly, it’s become quite hard to talk about the song without mentioning the album’s artwork. I’ve met with people in the know about making albums in this very crowded family music space. The message was always “brand, brand, brand.” As far as album artwork goes, that means all the covers of all the discs we make should be sort of similar. Branded. Seeing as it’s too late for that, and seeing as it’s not my way, the cover is quite a bit distant from the A Frog Named Sam album cover.

Three words: Bob von Elgg. Bob was introduced to me by a mutual friend as someone who could do the Emily Songs artwork. Bob has done EVERYTHING ever since. From the website to the t-shirts. I think the cover is remarkable for all kinds of reasons. One is that the heart is not overtly feminine. Face it… we’re a bunch of guys playing music. Having an overtly feminine heart wouldn’t have worked. Also, the heart itself seems like it’s pulsating with energy. One great feature of the cover is that you like it and you don’t really care what the music sounds like! The cover is of course the final version of the artwork. Check out the initial take on this cover and the alternate version.

First rough draft of the heart cover.

An alternate path not taken.

QUESTIONS?

Questions about the song? Send them in.

WIN A COPY OF THE CD

You can win a copy of the disc. All you have to do is respond to the Facebook entry for this blog post and tell me which incredibly well known guitar player I borrowed a key lick from in the solo. I’ll put the answer in the next installment of the blog.

Originally recorded on July 11, 2008, Live in Lexington, Under the Copper Beech, was officially released on August 30, 2011. This is the band’s second live disc and gives a big nod to the fact that first and foremost, the myriad awards we have won for our studio recordings not withstanding, we truly consider ourselves a live band.

Live music, over time, tends to have an ebb and flow quality to it. Some days are just killer live shows, other days, while good, might not be great. As a concert attendee myself, the hope is always that the show at hand is going to be special. As a musician, it feels like we go for it every time, and some days just have more going for them. July 11, 2008 had quite a bit going for it:

• Lexington. We started playing Friday night shows in Lexington back in 2001. The first show featured John Zevos on mandolin, Arnie Ashford on bass and myself and our artist Bob von Elgg on acoustic guitars. 2008 marked the eighth Friday night show in Lexington. The familiarity between audience and band was pretty high by then.
  
  
  Set up at 1875 Mass Ave., Lexington, MA. L to R: Ben Rudnick, E. Rudnick, G. Hakim and K. Gronlund singing Cowgirl Song.

•  2000 people – Our first show had quite a good crowd featuring all ages. Young, old, walking, crawling - an eye-opening generational cross section. We realized this was the audience for us. By 2008 our shows had become an event. Given good weather, we’re pretty much guaranteed a crowd on a Friday night in Lexington. In 2008 the estimate was 2000 people on the town green, site of the start of the Revolutionary War. That’s a lot of people who are familiar with us. That many people could make any band feel like the Rolling Stones for an evening.
  
  
  The scene on July 11, 2008 at the Town Green in Lexington, MA
  
  
• Deep Into Summer – Since 2002, the band has been playing around 30+ shows every summer. What this means to us is that the summer brings out the best of BR&F. Playing music independently or as a band, is like anything else, if you do it regularly you get better.

•  Mark Yacovone Farewell – Mark and I had played in a previous band together called The Eds. One of the highlights of The Eds was that we almost got to play with President Clinton on Martha’s Vinyard back in the 90’s. When BR&F needed keyboards for the Fun & Games disc circa 2002, Mark was first call and he never left, until July 12, 2008. The day after Live in Lexington was recorded Mark moved to Mississippi. With Mark leaving we knew we had one more show to enjoy together and we were all intent on making it good.
  
  
  From left to right, Rob Lee, Mark Yacovone, John Zevos and Arnie Ashford
  
  
• Robert M. Lee – Augmenting the BR&F quintet was our good friend Rob Lee on saxophones. Rob had been playing with us off and on at big shows and was well versed in the music and how we go about making it, i.e. no set lists, get your two cents in where you can and, above all, pay attention!
  
  
• Multi-tracked Show – There’s always a bit of a charge knowing that you’re trying to get a good recording. We set up to multi-track the show which means that each instrument and voice ends up on its own recorded track. Later, when you go to put it all together, each track can be adjusted for optimal sound quality afterward.
  
  
  Multi-tracking means a lot of wires.

With all those points going for it, the recording worked out! We’re pretty tough critics and we feel that Live in Lexington is an excellent snapshot of the band at that time. A lasting aural memory of a night the band and audience were all flying high!

Recording Notes and Track List

As mentioned, the Live at Lexington disc was taken from a single show on July 11, 2008. We played two 55-minute sets for a 110-minute performance. The disc is 78:02. Seventy-eight minutes and two seconds is the maximum amount of time you can put on a single CD. 78:03 and you have a problem.

The engine: Jared Steer on drums and percussion.

A word about the songs… One of the things we do in BR&F from our very first show to the one we played the other day, is to pepper our sets with songs which might not commonly be considered “kids music.” Truth be told, we don’t consider any of this to be “kid’s music.” We look at it all as people music. We love the original songs. We love the traditional songs and the cover songs too. It’s all one long song after awhile with variations. We’ve had too much experience with young and old, black, white, open, closed and everything in between to target a minority of the population. It’s “all good” as they say.

Some notable highlights… the Sally Salamander>Juicy Black Fly sequence is how the songs were intended to be played; once Juicy Black Fly (JBF) was written in response to Sally Salamander. If you go to the Blast Off (2004) disc and listen to the beginning of JBF you’ll hear that it begins where Sally Salamander ends on Fun and Games (2002.) This is a real fun sequence to play and I almost got all the words just exactly perfect.

The Mama Don’t ‘Low>Big River sequence was actually Mama Don’t ‘Low>M.T.A. That is more of what we usually do but having recorded M.T.A. on our Blast Off disc and our Live at the Playground disc, and having limited minutes for the CD, Big River (right key, right tempo) fit in really well so we just glued it together in the studio. None of the performance was altered, just where it came in the sequence.

2008 was the first summer that we played Walk of Life by Dire Straits. It’s just a great tune that I started working on, managed to get it down and showed the guys the chords before a show. No, not this show! Mark picked up the organ licks on the accordion and we’ve been playing it ever since.

At the point this was recorded we had already started recording the A Frog Named Sam disc but it was still eight months away from completion. Sam seems significant enough for things to be Before Sam or After Sam. For me, it’s really fun to hear some of the original songs from the first four studio discs embellished with that jolt of live, in the moment energy.

Young fan with guitar.

Lastly… I know I had a few songs I wanted to play on July 11, 2008, to try and get a good version for the recording, I imagine John did too,  but generally speaking, we had no set list.

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ITUNES

CDBABY

AMAZON

1. I Like Silver, I Like Gold
2. Skip to My Lou
3. Twisting Low
4. Hava Nagila
5. My Name is Burt
6. Sally Salamander>
7.  Juicy Black Fly
8. Mama Don’t ‘Low>
9. Big River
10. Rainy Day
11. Cowgirl Song
12. Jambalaya>
13. Hey Good Lookin’
14. Walk of Life
15. Monkey and the Engineer
16. Countdown>
17. Rocket Ship Man>
18. I Got A New Friend
19. Spin
20. Band Introductions
21. Macaroni & Cheese
22. Oh Boy!
23. I Need A Hand
24. Thanks!
25. When the Saints Go Marching In

A Few Reviews

These are some mega-musically-talented dudes, and their style is really their own. It’s a fabulous addition to your kiddie music collection for sure.
~ theopinionatedparent.com  

This live performance album made us feel like we were actually at the concert while eating our dinner in our own backyard!  It made me sway my hips and tap my toes while singing along to the familiar cover songs.  The original songs are sure to become family favorites as well.  Ben & Friends have a very unique and versatile sound covering many genres of music, which is a perfect way to expose children to various styles of music.  This is a very awesome and fun album!
~ Simple-MomReviews.com

Songs from their first six recordings, popular favorite cover tunes, and an amazing undercurrent of energy and vigor, Live in Lexington is a guitar-and-vocals performance to remember, further enhanced with additional instruments ranging from the mandolin and drums to the accordion and even the saxophone. An enthusiastic and energetic performance, especially recommended for playing during long family car trips or children’s parties.
~ Midwest Book Review  

I often get asked how the band started or more specifically, “how’d you guys meet.” Well….. (cue dreamy time sequence. Imagine me wearing cloths very similar to the cloths I wear now though I’m probably not wearing a tie-dye.)

Before graduating college, circa 1984, I was offered a job by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in Nashua, NH. I was definitely in the wave of computer science majors of that time, although getting a job in 1984 wasn’t quite the slam-dunk it had been just the year before.

Once I settled into the work thing (okay – I never really settled into the office thing) I started looking around for music stores. The one I landed in was Belisle Music in Manchester, NH. I asked if they gave guitar lessons and promptly had a lesson scheduled with “John.” The lesson came and I showed up at a small room in the basement of the store. On the wall was an odd, reverse image poster of Jerry Garcia. I had the same poster on my college dorm wall. I said I was looking for John. John said “I’m John.”

You might be able to fill in the blanks from there. The quick of it is we hit it off, figured out that we both attended Potsdam College in Potsdam, NY (read… ridiculously out of the way place) and both had an affinity for the same kind of music. The lessons progressed, a friendship ensued and at some point I asked if he and his rock band, Lichen, would record some songs with me, as my Band, that I had written. John agreed wholeheartedly and at some point we piled into my VW GTI Rabbit (R*E*D – hello troopers… another post) and looked around for a recording studio to record in. After visiting several studios, one of which featured the recording machine Michael Jackson used on Thriller, we decided to go with Soundlab in Milford, NH, one of whose engineers was, now BR&F bassist, Arnie Ashford. The studio was in an old barn and had a nice warm feel to it.

Not MY GTI but that’s what it looked like!

I practiced two songs with John and Lichen. John said “just play like you normally would” and they would work off of that.

I always thought these recordings came out great. Unfortunately with the master tapes gone, the analog cassette to digital is all that remains. I still think it sounds pretty darn good!

An artifact.

I’ll post both songs though I figure posting one at a time is probably a good idea. The first song is called Smiling Moon. I wrote it probably around 1982 while working for IBM as a college co-op in Kingston, NY. I lived on an old pig-farm. The pigs were gone but there were quite a few rabbits hopping around. I’d take walks on the windy road leaving from the end of the driveway. The highlight of the walk was to be very, very quiet near a certain bend where a very loud and unstable German Shepard lived. The other highlight was a great view of the moon at certain times of the month. Smiling Moon is a time capsule of how I was feeling at that time and of the great work John and Lichen did with the song. John just shreds the solo on a borrowed Strat.

I’m thinking we did this around 1987/1988 but I could be off by a few years.

Note: John and Lichen are still playing regularly and sounding better than ever. Check them out!

Playing on the tune:

Bill McLaughlin - drums
Charlie Windhausen - bass guitar
Ben Rudnick - acoustic guitar, vocal
Diane Zevos - keyboard
John Zevos - electric guitar, backup vocal

Recording and mastering was done by Arnie Ashford.

Smiling Moon by Ben Rudnick and Friends

Download Smiling Moon

Why’d It Take So Long To Write This?

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The Ben Rudnick and Friends’ Tenth Anniversary Show is long over you say? Umm… yea, I know. Why am I writing about it now you ask? What took you so long you say? Well…

I know it’s been over four months since we played the show. There are a lot of reasons why this has taken so long. The main reason being, it was a big effort event. Once it was over, it just took awhile to process the ten year line we had drawn, the show itself and what, if anything it meant, beyond the “how cool and what a great time we had” aspect. Also, immediately after the show, there were more major shows and activities demanding my time. It was easy to let it slip.

So why mention it now? Well… the processing has been processed. Photos have been edited. Some recordings have been mixed and it’s just plain been nagging at me. I need to look back and then move on. One Dylan quote, for good or ill, underlies a lot of what I think about: “He who’s not busy being born is busy dying.” I like being born. But, there is also this great Dylan quote: “Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.” So - here I am. I’m taking care of my memories before starting in earnest on some really cool new stuff.

The Players!

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The show was just a hoot. In hindsight, the best thing to come out of it, as it usually is in these situations, is the people you run with. It’s hard to say enough about the BR&F core of John Zevos, Arnie Ashford and Jared Steer. All have a passion for music and all of them have a lot of things they need to do and can choose to do. It’s just a tremendous compliment to me that they choose to put their effort into BR&F. Real effort. With the amount of shows we play it would be easy to fall into a rut but we all take pains to cheerfully not let that happen.

Ben, John, Arnie and Jared

And then we added some amazing players.

First to sign on was Mark Yacovone. Mark spent years with the band playing the piano-to-go (accordion). Story time… We were on a trip back from New York after playing shows at the Long Island Children’s Museum. It was our first real band trip. In the van, in January 2003 and it was snowing. We were generally happy but tired. Ready to be home. Mark starts mimicking Ozzy Osborne. Dead on. “SHAAAAARRRRROOOOONNNNN.” We were in tears laughing so hard. So besides being a great player who’s turned into a phenomenal player, Mark is just a great guy to have around.

Mark Yacovone @ WERS 88.9 FM Studios

Some years back, talking 1987 back, traipsing through Europe I met Sue Smith. Sue was traveling with her mom and somehow I made her (very unhappy at the moment) mom laugh. Sue and I have been great friends ever since. Sue is a renowned singer and writer who is creative is so many ways. Sue also prodded me to go meet her boyfriend, Jeff Bird, who came to Boston with the Cowboy Junkies. The Junkies were on their first US tour behind their Trinity Sessions album. At some point they asked me “How long does it take to get to New York City?” These fine people have been around the world more times than I could ever imagine but at that point they didn’t know how long it took to get to NYC!

Sue Smith

Anyway… Jeff is just a great friend who has kindly been on every BR&F studio recording and agreed to come play the show. The surprise was that Sue wanted to come too. This is family coming to a big event. This was great!

Jeff Bird

One of the first asked, but last to sign on was pedal steel guitar player, Buddy Cage. I’ve mentioned Buddy in various emails and posts. Buddy took Jerry Garcia’s seat in the New Riders of the Purple Sage back in late 1971. When we were recording our Grace’s Bell album, a couple of songs just screamed PEDAL STEEL so naturally we sought out our favorite pedal steel player. Buddy Cage! When the Tenth Anniversary show was thought up it seemed only natural to try and get Buddy to come. So we asked! Buddy said he’d try. With about three weeks to go he realized he could make it. It was great, great, great to have Buddy around. Even though he recorded on our disc and I spoke to him on the phone, it really isn’t the same as meeting someone and spending time with them. Buddy fit right in with all the good friends around me. A sweeter guy we couldn’t have met.

Buddy Cage

We also had four horn players who couldn’t have been better sports about augmenting what we do. John wrote up the horn charts, oversaw the rehearsals and made the whole Tuba Tune Horn section happen. Kudos to them all. The horn players included Rob Lee on saxophone. Rob plays with BR&F semi-irregularly and is all over our “It’s Santa Claus” and “A Frog Named Sam” discs. On tuba was our good friend Joe Wright. Trombone was Michael Woodworth and Jenn Allen on trumpet.

Joe Wright, Jenn Allen, Michael Woodworth and Rob Lee

The last musician to mention but one of the first people to help me on my way into the music world is Diane Zevos. Diane and John and their band Lichen were kind enough to record some early songs with me around the 1989 time frame. Diane put up with my early guitar ramblings with good cheer, was on the early BR&F albums and we play together to this day.

John and Diane Zevos

Lastly, some friends came from fairly far and wide to share the day with us. Jim Packard, impresario from the Long Island Children’s Museum, made the trip and we even got him to introduce us. Old friends from grade school through college also showed up to help make this a really unforgettable day.

So How’d It All Go?

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Well it went great! The band locked in fast, which is really no surprise. We’re talking decades of some big time live musical experience here. It was just plain fun. At some point we could sense that the collective was really something special and unique. From the live on the WERS radio warm-up on Saturday afternoon through the show on Sunday, this was exciting and I find group connections such as these really don’t happen once you get a little older. The opportunities just don’t exist as often. Afterward it was also a touch sad. This was a wonderful collection of people and getting them all together was not easy. It really is hard to say if it will ever happen again.

Ben Rudnick and Friends: Tenth Anniversary Edition

Honestly, the highlight was just getting to present songs near and dear to my heart with this set of people. It’s pretty simple.

So, Did It Mean Anything?

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Well… four months gone and it’s really come to mean that I have some really fine people in my world. Besides the folks mentioned above, there is my family, Diane and Emily, who just couldn’t be more supportive. Big-time supportive. Also people you don’t see such as Andy Pinkham at Mortal Music, Bob von Elgg at BigFish SmallPond Design and publicists Beth Blenz-Clucas and Elizabeth Waldman. I’m glad to have these people in my life and I’m glad they share their energy with me.

It also means that a lot of effort has been put into making music and recordings over the last ten years. When we released Emily Songs around November of 2000, the term Kindie Music didn’t even exist. Now making music for kids and families is a fairly competitive business. A lot of people take it incredibly seriously. It is, without a doubt a business. What I’ve learned since the show and during the BR&F hiatus in January/February of this year is that I’m glad I make this music. I really like playing music with my friends. I’m really excited to start recording the new songs sitting on my desk. I’m looking forward to playing the really cool shows we have lined up. The business can be a drag but the music, the people I play it with and all the wonderful fans that continually come to hear us play and get as excited as I do, have made me a lucky guy.

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Title track from It’s Santa Claus! - Ben Rudnick and Friends new holiday disc.

Greetings Earthlings!

It’s been awhile since I wrote an entry. There has been so much going on in the BR&F world that I just couldn’t quite get to this blog. I’m back for the moment.

I’ll get straight to the heart of the matter, or the blog entry. We’ve got a new disc. It’s a Christmas/Holiday disc called It’s Santa Claus and it came out great. We put a lot more effort into making the disc than I expected we would though I guess there is no surprise there. We have a history of effort! If you like anything BR&F has ever done and you are open to the idea of Christmas/Holiday music, it’s really safe to say you will love this CD.

The reviews for It’s Santa Claus have all been wonderful. There is also a short, short window to really get a hold of one of the discs and enjoy it during the season so I hope you make the effort. It’s available from the usual locations, Amazon.com, cdBaby.com and iTunes as well as some stores in the Boston area I’ll list below. The best place to purchase the disc however, is right on our website. It’s the cheapest place to get the discs and if you purchase more than one, (3 or 10 specifically) we’ll give you a discount. We always pick up the shipping on purchases made on our website, so you save some money there too. We want you to have this CD!

Reviews
There have been quite a few very positive reviews for It’s Santa Claus. Some of my favorite are:

“The original song, “It’s Santa Claus” is in a class with Christmas favorites like “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Frosty the Snowman.” ~ Bob Etier, Technorati.com

“It is very hard NOT to sing along with this album and I found that it could easily provoke the holiday mood. “~ Take It From Me

“Love it! Love it! Love it! The end.” ~ MommyPerks.com

“While never sacrificing intelligence for the sake of entertainment, singer-guitarist Ben Rudnick and his friends live up to their “fun for all” promise for It’s Santa Claus. The New Englanders demonstrate how “Jingle Bell,” “Let It Snow” and six others take on freshness when treated with touches of jazz, rock, rockabilly, folk, Western swing, Tex-Mex and r&b.” ~ Downbeat Magazine

A Little Back Story

The disc is new but BR&F have been playing Christmas music for years. This coming December 11^th, we’ll be playing our Ninth Annual Holiday Extravaganza at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA. Ninth! Back before the first Extravaganza, the Regent Theatre folks were just getting their Family Fun series going and may have asked about a holiday show. Or we might of come up with a date for a December show and I may have thought holiday music would be appropriate. Either way, I’m sure there was a phone call to “and Friend” John Zevos that went something like this…

Ben: “Hey John, do we do holiday music?”

John: “Yes.”

The fact of the matter is the answer is always yes. John and I play in an Irish Music band, Celtic Knot. Most of the gigs of course revolve around St. Patrick’s Day but there have been shows at other times of the year. One summer we loaded Celtic Knot onto a boat steaming around Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. It was a beautiful afternoon, we played maybe two really long sets of music and our legs hurt for days form balancing ourselves while the boat rocked back and forth. It was a memorable and sparkling afternoon.

Whether it’s rock, bluegrass, Irish music, Chanukah music, Christmas music or a bit of everything the answer is YES. After eight years of people asking if we had a Christmas CD, the answer is now YES. Not only YES but YES and it’s GREAT.

Making It’s Santa Claus
We had just come back from the great BR&F Colorado excursion, played an absolutely memorable show in Medford on July 8^th and then loaded into our studio of choice, Mortal Music in Charlestown, MA on the hot morning of Saturday morning July 10^th. The idea was to record the basic tracks for six tunes and then do the vocals and any overdubs. We burned through the six tunes and even had time for one more tune. John did his vocals on the spot.

Over the next six weeks I added my vocals and instrumental overdubs were also added. I added LOTS of guitars. We had Rob Lee do LOTS of saxophones and newest “and Friend” Phil Aiken played some killer organ. We got vintage “and Friend” Jeff Bird (Cowboy Junkies) to drop a harmonica track on Auld Lang Syne. Arnie also came in and did his usual menagerie of vocal harmonies. In the album notes I always make a point of calling out Arnie vocal harmony efforts but you have to understand what a talent he has for this. Using the main vocal as a starting point, Arnie, often with Andy Pinkham’s (BR&F disc co-producer) input, will weave harmonies above, below and around making a lush addition to the song. Back on Grace’s Bell, the title track has three vocal tracks from me and seventeen (or nineteen – I’m sure Arnie remembers) from Arnie. It’s very impressive. Arnie felt that “Let It Snow” on this new disc was his best effort. Maybe!? I’m partial to Grace’s Bell but it’s a good argument to have.

BR&F artist extraordinaire, Bob von Elgg, pitched in some very appropriate artwork.

The Title Track
I wrote the title track, It’s Santa Claus!, earlier in the year. I got inspired from the whole “Who Dat?” thing that came out of the New Orleans Saints being in the Super Bowl. I extended that to be:

“Who’s that flying way up in the sky
He’s wearing red, that’s no regular guy
He’s flying all night and he never gets tired
He’s waiting all year for just this night

He’s got a sled full of toys
For all the little girls and boys”

And it went on from there. The track sounds instantly new and classic at the same time. I can’t tell you what a rush it is to think of something like that and then have it come to fruition. It’s a musical vision that takes the effort of many people to come to be. I appreciate every note.

Samples of the tracks on the disc can be heard on our website. The title track can be heard in full here.

Tracks on the disc are:

It’s Santa Claus! - 2:16 - play the song
(Ben Rudnick - Bartlett Ave. Publishing)

Jingle Bells - 3:16
(James Pierpont - Traditional)

Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree - 2:47
(J. Marks - St.Nicholas Music Inc.)

Let It Snow - 2:01
(Jule Styne, Sammy Cahn - WB Music Corp,
Chappell & Co.)

Frosty The Snowman - 2:54
(S. Nelson, J. Rollins - Chappell & Co.)

Here Comes Santa Claus - 1:58
(Gene Autry, Oakley Haldeman - Gene Autry’s Western Swing Music Publishing Company)

Auld Lang Syne - 2:46
(Traditional)

Greensleeves - 3:40
(Traditional)

End Stuff

So there you go – the It’s Santa Claus story and a commercial all rolled into one. If you know us at all, you know we’re something of a soft sell. If you want our music we think that’s great. If you don’t want it right now, we hope you’ll want it in the future. With It’s Santa Claus!, we hope you want it right now! Tis the season.

Get It’s Santa Claus Online

• BenRudnick.com
• Amazon.com
• cdBaby.com
• iTunes

Get physical copies in the Boston area:

• Art Beat, Arlington, MA
• Henry Bear’s Park Toy Stores
• Wild Child, Arlington, MA

Mostly, we wish you a wonderful holiday season.

Sincerely,

Ben and the friends.

As I say so often “the beat goes on.” August is winding down, the summer has shown its hand and reluctantly thoughts now bend toward September and what is coming in the near future.  Here’s a brief look at the summer from the BR&F point of view.  I’ll write about the exciting things coming up in the next blog.

Great Weather, Great Shows

            We had great weather! We had great shows! Okay, for a while it felt like a reality show entitled BR&F vs. The Weather.  The “outside temp” on my car seemed absolutely fixed on 91°. The sun was always out, we were always in it and it was HOT. Truth be told, when the band was playing, the heat nor the sun bothered me at all. Not one bit. I still find that amazing.

A couple of shows just stood out as highlights. If you were there, thank you for your good energy directed at us. We may be the engine, but you, dear audience, are certainly what fuels us. The highlight shows for me were:

•  Winchester, MA – Fire Station - Friday, June 4^th – We showed up for a Friday evening show and set up in front of the main fire station in town to celebrate Winchester’s Town Day. What we got was a large, energetic audience literally dancing in the street. The audience seemed to get more out of us, we got more out of them and we kept on going together. Great fun!

•  Medford, MA – City Hall – Thursday, July 8^th – Just back from Colorado, we got to play in front of the grand City Hall in Medford. We’d been scheduled to play this spot for the two years previous and were convincingly rained out both times. With the sun arching down off to our left, the stately building embracing us, and the flag, high on its pole gently waving, we were ensconced in a beautiful spot in a vintage Massachusetts town. The promoter requested “America The Beautiful” as the last song so the kids could parade waving their flags. Instead John sang “This Land is Your Land” and it was perfect!
  
  
  Medford, MA

• Lexington, MA – Visitor’s Center – Friday, July 16^th – Probably the first summer show we ever played, back in 2001, was the Friday night summer series in Lexington. We had an impressive crowd that first night and it’s only gotten bigger. The good energy generated by all the people filling the green is just unbelievable. We always feel loved there and are more than happy to give it back in music. With the addition of Rob Lee on saxophones and wayward BR&F accordion player Mark Yacovone on accordion, this was a rollicking evening of music despite the second set shortened by a storm.
  
  
  Lexington, MA

• Portsmouth, NH – Prescott Park – Saturday, July 17^th – Prescott Park is another beautiful location we get to play at regularly. This year was extra sweet as Mark Yacovone was visiting the area and was there to play accordion with us. Here is a FLIP video Mark took of the band playing the old Dire Straits song “Walk of Life” from the Portsmouth show.
  
  

• Lowell, MA – Boarding House Park – Wednesday, August 4^th – It’s a pleasure to play Boarding House Park. The surrounding mills and metal work of the stage are something to see. The audience seemed to be bursting with excitement. This was the first, and to date, only show we’ve ever opened with our song “A Frog Named Sam.” Usually we get to it later in the set, but we’d been playing so much at this stretch of summer we were still warmed up from the night before. And once you start with SAM, taking the energy higher is the only option!

• Natick, MA – Town Common – Wednesday, August 11^th – This is another “rained-out-for years” show. Really… something like four years we’ve been trying to play on the Natick Town Common. We’ve always had the wonderful fall back of playing at TCAN down the street but finally this year we set up on a beautiful evening, outside in front of the gazebo. We think of Natick as our metro-west home and this was only reinforced by the warm reception we received.

• Arlington, MA – Robbins Library – Thursday, August 12^th – The hometown summer show. It could be this was the quintessential show of the year. The surrounding buildings and trees give the feeling of being in a private garden. We’ve played this lovely spot many times now and the familiarity of Arlington, the old friends who have supported us for awhile and the new friends who bring their excitement just make this a fabulous experience.
  
  
  Arlington, MA

Under the Radar Highlight Show

            So we pull into Camp Miracles and Magic with no real clue as to what we’re getting ourselves into. It turns out “Eliot” of Jordan’s Furniture fame, and his family, have run this camp for the past fourteen years. The campers are children 8-13 years of age who are born with HIV. For one week these kids are bombarded with the coolest activities you can imagine. Trapeze instruction, dance crews, Frisbee demonstrations, concerts, movie making – I can’t even list them convincingly. We were hired to entertain the kids while the ice cream truck dispensed free ice cream to everyone.

The camp takes place at the Ron Burton Training Village whose facilities resemble classic Greek structures. We played on the Parthenon! Retired New England Patriot, Ron Burton, Sr., is an interesting story in his own right. The coolest thing though, for me, is that Eliot, his wife June and their family literally run the camp with volunteers. Let’s face it, Eliot could write a check and have the whole thing be a great tax write-off. Not the case at all. Eliot is in residence, running the show and has been doing this among other philanthropic work. I’ll tell you – Eliot is an inspiration to me. I’m proud to be a part of the same species.

Colorado Redux

            I wrote all about this in a previous blog. Now a solid 6-7 weeks since we’ve been back the trip sort of has a dream like quality to it. We did go and it was amazing! It’s hard to fathom that this summer we’ve played all the local New England shows, have recorded a holiday CD and went to Colorado. We’re definitely the hardest working band on my street although Mike Duke might argue that point.

Wrap It Up

            That’s the summer to date. I’ll write more about the holiday CD we’ve been working on in an upcoming blog. I’ll also let you know about the excitement building for the Tenth Anniversary Show at the Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA on October 24^th. Good stuff ahead!

            Lastly, a disclaimer… the shows I listed up above are really just some of the highlights. Other shows stand out for various reasons like the Holliston, MA show, finally getting to play in Burlington, MA and all the great people we met there and the Plymouth, NH show. Hot tunes on a hot night in NH and a very kind state trooper who let me “just get home.”

New Ben Rudnick & Friends Video for “Santa Fe” from A Frog Named Sam