I met Ben in 2009. Ugh,God was my favorite band and Dust was theirs. I went to see him and Jimmy play in this 3rd floor college rec room in Boston and afterward I introduced myself, bought all their cds, and told them to come stay at my place. They already had like 5 albums even back then. I think Natives was the new one on that tour.
I got really deep into the self-titled first Dust album and became a megafan. I sat at the foot of my bed at night, learning “Drifting Into the Void”. I knew it was a beautiful masterpiece from the first time I heard it. Me and Mark went and recorded a cover with Dave Go at The New Hawaii, which was Florida=Death’s spot in Southington CT. The title of that sort-of-first Fat History album is “I finally understand what people mean when they say ‘drifting’” but it came from me, being 22, feeling lost, thinking “I finally understand what Ben means when he says ‘drifting’”.
I covered a bunch more Dust songs over the years. Any time I ran out of songs to write, I’d learn a Ben song and have something new to play. We became friends. They’d come play in Boston and we’d go through Bloomington just to see Dust every time we were in the midwest. In 2016 he moved to Boston and we hung for a bit but then my life got hard and I bailed on everything for a while, didn’t see anyone much and felt like kind of a shitty friend. But in mid-2021 he took over for Johnnie in the “bh1” boston band and we hung the fuck out and ended up moving to Philly together and it’s been very very good for me to live with such an inspiring dude.
His songs have always influenced me. There was often the feeling of innocence broken into bitterness by a dumb brutal world, but also so much gentleness and joy and hope and freedom and love and fun. Joy is a good title for this album. I picture happy Kid Ben, laying in the square of sunlight on his parents living room floor in Golden Era, and happy Now Ben in his room across the hall, on his way up through the through the smoke in the sunlight, writing song after song after song in a spurt.
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