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Laura Benitez and the Heartache -
California Centuries |
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In conversation singer and songwriter Laura Benitez uses superlatives,
lyrically she utilizes metaphors and vocally she is emotive, all of
which are effective in communicating her message, often
autobiographical, either from personal experience or things she has
observed. In many ways she is a throwback to the 1960s and early 1970s
when protest songs and social commentary through music were in vogue and
yet one should not mistake her music as an attempt to mirror or clone
artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Sam Cooke, Pete Seeger, and later
Patti Smith, as she clearly blazes her own trail.
Laura Benitez sat down with Riveting Riffs Magazine recently to talk
about her new album California Centuries by Laura Benitez and the
Heartache. Depending on where you are on the ideology spectrum you may
find yourself cheering this album on or in various degrees of
disagreement with the lyrics and tone, but the one thing you should all
agree on is these are well crafted songs, played and sung superbly. Full
disclosure by this writer that he is firmly encamped in the section
cheering this album on.
“The first verse was inspired by my partner Brian’s family, his mom,
sister and stepdad all lived in Paradise California and they lost
everything in the wildfire. His sister was driving to escape the flames
and she got caught in a traffic jam and she had to just run. The first
verse is a true story about his sister running for her life. You don’t
think that is something that will happen in your family.
The second verse I wrote a week before lockdown (because of COVID) when
it just seemed like people were hoarding toilet paper and things were
getting crazy. I was thinking about that fear and what it is like to be
in a pandemic.
The third verse is about refugees. I didn’t think I would know people
who would lose everything in a wildfire. I didn’t think I would live in
a pandemic. I also didn’t think I would live under a regime when I would
consider leaving my country. We were living in that. The people in Syria
didn’t think they would have to leave their country and the people in
Guatemala didn’t think they would have to leave Guatemala.
Nobody thinks it is going to happen to them, but sometimes it does. The
last two verses are me saying what would it be like and what would it
take for that to happen to me? When I imagined it, it was almost
predictive of January 6. The last verse is about refugees, but it is
about me as a refugee imagined,” explains Laura Benitez.
Bob Spector serves up a delicious guitar solo on “Bad Things,” and Dave
Zirbel is equally splendid on steel guitar. The song moves along at a
brisk pace.
The second song on the album “I’m the One,” is more celebratory, and it
was the first song written that appears on the album. It is also
autobiographical, as it references being in attendance at the late
Justin Townes Earle’s concert, as well as the success she is enjoying in
her own career.
“I liked the story of me being at the concert and being ridiculous about
Justin Townes Earle’s tattoos (she chuckles) and laughing at myself. I
thought it was funny that I had that whole experience, then I got the
arm tattoo. It was really empowering to do it. I got my arm tattoo in
2015 and my album Heartless Woman had done really well. We were
doing festivals and I felt like I was a real musician. It was an amazing
feeling. I knew that I didn’t need to look for this feeling in anyone
else and that I was the one I was looking for. It is a powerful feeling.
I felt like it needed to be a song.
(The song) chronicles my relationship with a musician. I started out (in
the song) with a musician that was not a good relationship and I felt
disempowered in that relationship. It is about learning what it is like
to be a musician and learning the ins and outs of the (music) business.
It is understanding what that journey is and what it means. The guitar
that I wrote my first two songs on for the album was the guitar my
ex-husband gave to me toward the end of our relationship,”
she says.
Then Laura Benitez, quotes some lines from “I’m the One,” bringing the
listener ever closer to her personal story, “I
took the guitar that you gave me and named it / Used it to write this
song, so I claimed it / Closed the case and shut the door, took that
song and went to war / Cause I’m the one / I’ve been waiting for.”
Drifting back to the Justin Townes Earle concert in San Francisco and
how it relates to this song and the lyrical reference to tattoos she
recalls, “He had all of these fantastic arm tattoos. His arm tattoos
were great, and I thought I should be with somebody with arm tattoos.
Then I thought, Laura for god’s sake get an arm tattoo. I got an arm
tattoo and then I told my friend that story and we laughed. I wrote the
song and when I played it for her, she said oh my god you wrote about
that! It resonated with people.”
By now it is evident to the reader that “I’m with the Band,” is
autobiographical and Laura Benitez says, “I would say eighty-five to
ninety percent of what I write is autobiographical. Mostly I write from
what I know. I wrote this song during the pandemic when I was missing
playing shows. I just want someone to spill beer on my shoes. I missed
being in a crowd and hearing music. I missed the connection that you get
when you play music live for people. It is really a special thing.
Because I came to it late in life.
I didn’t really start a band until I was thirty-five. Because I came to
it late in life, I have a gratitude for how far I have been able to go
with it and for the fans that I have. Part of this song is about missing
going to the club, holding a guitar and introducing yourself to the
doorperson. It is also gratitude for my hard-won musical career, such as
it is. That’s my name on the poster. That’s me. Sometimes I roll up and
the doorperson says who are you? I point to the poster. It (the song) is
a bit of an anthem.”
She talks about the uphill struggle being a woman in Country music and
how, “People go we can’t have more than one female headed band on the
bill, are still things that you hear. You roll up and they think you are
the girlfriend of a member of the band. It is like who is your
boyfriend?”
Concertgoers should be ready to two-step when attending a Laura Benitez
and the Heartache, while they play “Are You Using Your Heart,” a
terrific song musically, lyrically and a song on which her vocals really
shine. This is also a song that most women will be able to identify with
at one time or other during their lives, a suggestion that prompts a bit
of laughter from Laura Benitez.
“The story of the song is a woman who has been in the dating world for a
while. I am writing from my own perspective. I have been out in the
world a bit (light laughter) and this is a moment when you can see
trouble coming from a mile away. You are in the tractor beam of the guy
across the bar from you. It is a path I have been down before and I
don’t want to go down again. It is about remembering when you are eager
to take yourself out of that and it was just funny for me to watch the
dance. Of course, you can’t tell anybody, because you have to live it,
but you think, yeah, that thing you are doing is not good,” she says.
Let’s take a step back, where did those incredible vocals come from?
“I have always loved to sing since I was a little kid and I knew it was
something I could do. I would sing along with the radio and I remember a
time when I was a little kid and I said I sound just like the radio,
which is not true. It was just that I could sing in tune. I studied
voice for a lot of years, but what was difficult about the time period
was, most of the instruction you could get was Classical and that is not
how I wanted to sing. It took a long time for me to have confidence to
sing how I wanted,” she remembers.
Those lessons did however contribute positively to her vocal technique,
“I learned how to sing without injuring myself. I learned breathing and
some things like that, but I made some decisions about how I wanted to
sound on my own. Most people love that throaty, belting, lower range and
I wish that I could sing that way (but I don’t). I sing in a higher
range.”
She tells a humorous story about her vocal lessons, well maybe not
humorous to at least one individual in the story.
“I had a voice teacher in college and back then I was studying acting,
while trying to get into musicals. I definitely don’t have the right
kind of voice, but I think I could have done okay singing musical
theater, but there are better musical voices out there. I was studying
with this wonderful teacher who had been in the cast of Les
Misérables. There was one time when she looked at me and she said
you have a guitarist’s voice. My husband has a guitar and I am going to
give it to you. Her poor husband was, what are you doing? Apparently, he
had no say in the matter, and she gave me his guitar. It was a basic
Yamaha and it sounded pretty good. I learned a few chords at that point.
Then I met the man I was in a relationship for about ten years and he
was a musician. We went and played in bands together and he taught me
how to approach the guitar from a Country Music and rhythm guitar point
of view. I don’t play it particularly well, but I play it well enough to
get by on stage. It is a beautiful instrument and I do love it. I wish I
played it better.
(Anyway), I showed up for the next lesson (with my teacher) and she said
I kind of got in trouble for giving away his guitar, but it’s okay. I
was like alright, that’s between you guys.”
As for the musicians on the album, Laura Benitez says, “I have worked
with Bob (Spector) for almost ten years now. He is one of my regular
band members. We exchanged sound files during the pandemic, as an
outlet. It was a real privilege and if it had been another time, I don’t
think he would have the time to spend on arranging (the music) and doing
demos with me. Steve Pearson on drums I have been playing with for five
or six years and he played on the last album. Russell Kiel is our
electric bass player and he is the newest member of the band. He has
been playing for probably three or four years. Ian (Sutton – steel
guitar) I have also played with for a long time, but he was on tour for
half of the record. The other half of the record (on steel guitar) was
Dave Zirbel, who I have known a bit in the scene, and I called him to
see if he was available to play on this record.
It was like a family reunion and I had a smile on my face for the first
three sessions. It was like dudes I haven’t seen any of you in three
years. My friend Sarah Schweppe is a fantastic vocalist and she sings a
lot with R & B groups from southern California. She and I have been
singing together since we were fourteen. We went to school together.
The songs that Sarah sang on “God Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise” and
“Invisible,” were pretty new. We didn’t have as much time to work on
them as some of the other songs on the album. The song “Invisible,” is
an emotionally vulnerable song for me. I was really having trouble
figuring out how to sing it and feeling comfortable with it. Part of
that was I hadn’t spent as much time with it and part of it was the
vulnerability of the song. When Sarah sang the harmony, I felt like my
voice was free and I could sing the way I wanted to sing. It was so
inspiring. She is a really fantastic singer and I love singing with her.
I wish I could all of the time. It was a cool experience. I said I need
to be with you in the studio singing with you live or it is not going to
sound as good. We ended up singing the harmony live rather than
overdubbing it.”
Gabriel Shepherd engineered and mixed California Centuries.
“Gabe worked with us on our last three records. I think some folks like
to work with different people on different records just to change up the
sound. For me it helps a lot to work with people that I know and who get
what I am trying to do.
Gabe did such a good job on the first record, I thought why would I want
to reinvent the wheel? He is an amazing person, super talented and he
has worked with some really big names. Working with Gabe was part of the
family reunion feeling. It is fantastic to have that kind of
relationship even with people who are working on the technical aspects.
It is the same thing with Piper (Payne) who mastered this record. I
think she really gets what I am trying to do. I didn’t think I needed to
look elsewhere. She has done a fantastic job on all three of the
records,” she says.
Laura Benitez agrees that her song “Gaslight (We Shouldn’t Talk About
It),” is “absolutely a protest song. It is one hundred percent in that
tradition.
I was nervous to put this song on the record, just because of what it
talks about. When you wade into the culture wars there is pushback. It
is not that I am very clearly on the progressive side of things. I have
been a very outspoken activist, but you never know how people are going
to react to a political song. It is not just how fans who are
conservative might react to it, but fans who are progressive and might
find the song preachy.
That being said, I was so angry, so the first two verses were extremely
easy to write, because they came out of that anger. I knew I wanted the
first verse to be about gun control and mass shootings. I knew I wanted
the second verse to be about Black Lives Matter and I knew I wanted the
third verse to be about Me Too. The third verse was the hardest one to
write. I really struggled with that one. It is personal to me. I have
experienced Me Too moments and I think 99% of women have. I wasn’t sure
what I wanted to say about it. It took about a year. I knew I needed to
write the song, but I didn’t quite know how to do it. I thought what I
have to do is do all of the stories (in the three verses). People told
me they like and appreciate that song.
The song was written three years ago and the verse (about gun control
and mass shootings) is still relevant.
I think for the most part my audience is not going to push back on this
song, but I think if enough people hear it, absolutely people will push
back against it. I originally titled it “We Shouldn’t Talk About It,”
but I wanted to make it incredibly clear what I am (saying). I am using
irony. You have to be really careful when you use irony that you are
really clear that is what you are doing. If enough people heard (my)
song it would piss them off. It would be the people who are doing the
gaslighting or who are helping to perpetuate the gaslighting. That has
been the case and those of us who are progressive have had to fight
global gaslighting for the past couple of decades. During the Trump era
we had to fight for what we knew to be true and it is exhausting and
infuriating. The mental strain of that over the last four or five years
is something that we are going to be dealing with for the rest of our
lives. To me it was important to point out what it is like to be gaslit
and how it feels to be gaslit.
Anytime you bring up something that is misogynist or sexual violence
what you get is you are smearing a good man’s name and he has a family.
Well, I have a family too. What does that mean? It is a really hard song
for me to get through, because it gets me so angry. I have had a really
positive response to it, which is really gratifying.”
The song “Plaid Shirt,” at its core is truly a Country song in the
old-time tradition, with Ian Sutton’s steel guitar and Bob Spector on
electric guitar setting a strong foundation for Laura Benitez’s vocals.
This is another song that she extends an invitation to listeners to
two-step to it.
She talks about the song, “There is a way that you only get to know a
person when you break up with them. There is a side of them that you
don’t see when you are with them. Part of it is your perspective and
part of it is you are moving on. I have seen that in relationships that
I have been in. I wanted to crystallize that in a visual metaphor with
the plaid shirt. I wrote that song when I moved in with my partner Brian
and I asked him is it cheesy that it is a plaid shirt, should it be a
certain color. He said yeah, I think plaid is good. I said alright
cool.”
You should visit your favorite online store and purchase Laura Benitez
and the Heartache’s newest album California Centuries or better yet go
to one of her concerts and lineup at the merch table to buy a hardcopy.
You can visit the Laura Benitez
website here or preview the song
“Bad Things,” here and follow Laura Benitez
and the Heartache on the official
Instagram account.
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The
opening song “Bad Things,” sets the tone for the album, each verse its
own story drawn from real life. 