MAXIM LANGSTAFF

Dancing in the Chaos – Liner Notes

“The only responsible advice you can give a 23 year old who wants to be a recording artist is go do anything else. You have a better chance of being struck by lightening on a cloudless day than making a living as a pop artist.

My first introduction to Benza was a phone call from a friend asking me if I would be interested in working with an unsigned kid who wanted to make a record. My response was a firm no. There was nothing I wanted to do less than take on a young musician with delusions of grandeur in a music industry in free fall. If his music was like the stuff at the top of the charts today, I definitely wasn’t interested. And, if it wasn’t, he didn’t stand a chance, so why bother.

After some persistence, I did agree to meet Benza for a quick hello. What struck me at our first meeting was his genuineness. He had a kind of natural humility you don’t often see in young people.  The song he played for me was adequate at best – just enough for me to politely bow out with a few stories and comments. He handed me a CD and asked me to have a listen. I liked Benza. I knew nothing about him, but I liked him so, sure, I’d have a quick listen in my car on the way home and that would be that.

Driving down the Pacific Coast highway as the ocean waves slowly folded onto the endless beaches, I was reminded of the story Sir George Martin had told me years earlier:

Brian Epstein brought along a tape of a group called the Beatles – and it was not very good. In fact, it was awful. I said if you want me to judge them on this, I would have to say no… They were just young hopefuls desperate for someone to recognize their talent.  What they had, was a sort of blind faith that belongs to the young…  When we started working together there was no obvious indication there was anything special about them. But I liked them. They were charming. So I gave them some time. Very quickly It became clear the seeds of their talent were always there. I just needed to give them a little water. And with that, I was astonished by how quickly their genius flowered.”  

My early experience with Benza bears a remarkable similarity to the story George told me, and it was his perspective that served as a guide for me.

Long Time Comin’ was the first song up. It conjured echoes of both Michael Jackson and, yes, the Beatles. The recording was professional, the arrangements solid, and the musical parts and lead vocal quite good. I kept wondering who produced the song… Who were the musicians … Who wrote it? It could be released as it was. Anyone who could do this certainly didn’t need my help.

What I heard that day is pretty much what you hear on the record. Benza wrote it, sang it, played all the instruments, arranged, recorded, engineered and mixed it on his laptop. Really? I kept asking myself, Could Paul McCartney or Stevie Wonder have done this by themselves at 20?

Whatever Benza was doing, he was defying the trend of todays’ top selling artists. Many of the songs at the top of the charts are made with a virtual army of producers, arrangers, and outside songwriters – often without the participation of any real musicians. Benza was the exception, not the rule. For all the digital toys at his disposal, his approach was old school. His natural talent and unusual command of music craft made that possible.

But I still wasn’t sure what his niche was. The demos Benza gave me were all over the place. I couldn’t easily pigeon hole him. It worried me. Was he going to be R&B Pop or give me the Max Martin sampling stuff? Did he have any Blues or Rock in his veins… Was I looking at a piano player or guitarist.. Was that EDM I heard or Elton John? I wasn’t sure if I was looking at an introspective singer-songwriter or a dance groove master. Where did Benza see himself – because it all showed up in his demos.

George told me when he first listened to the Beatles early tapes, he kept trying to figure out who would be the lead guy. He was looking to fit the Beatles into an established mold.  Who would be the “Elvis” or “Cliff Richard”. Then it struck him, why not take them as they were; just let them be them. This was the model I would apply to Benza’s songs. If they were good songs why did they have to be anything; just take them as they were – Risky perhaps if you want to succeed in today’s hyper conservative music industry, but necessary given his unusual originality and range.

It became clear early on in our sessions together that Benza’s musical sensibilities harkened back to the much less conservative times of the mid 60’s and ‘70’s. As trendy as he might be, he did not fit today’s pop music model. Standing on the shoulders of the music giants before him defined his music.

A Formally trained pianist, he is also a skilled guitarist. His roots are Jazz & Classical, and he knows his way around a piece of written music with the same ease as he is with Pro-Tools. The boundaries of Country, R&B, Rock, Blues, EDM, Pop, Jazz, Hip-Hop, Folk – even Classical, matter less to him. Traditional formats and genres are not so important to this young songwriter. Benza’s songwriting calculations don’t extend beyond the integrity of the song itself. What he might be is the future.

Benza’s a storyteller; a keen observer of life with lyrics that very much reflect his personality. “I want to live before I die…” and “I’m a lucky soul dancing in chaos…” come from the track, Before I Die. “You live forever in the moments you love…” anchor the song Ruby. The blistering social satire of Cool Kids repeats the line; “Your likes are equal to your value…”, while Zuma offers classic Benza perspective; “Paradise is a state of mind…”

The recipe for good music is quite simple. The three ingredients are melody, harmony, and rhythm. Every song you have ever heard, or will ever hear, comes from just that. If you are a songwriter you have to come up with a wholly original song that has never been heard before using the 12 notes we have. That’s all there is!

Sir George Martin always said a great song is about the melody. If you can hum it, or the tune keeps rattling around in your head, you might have a hit. Musically, it’s that simple. Unless you can write a good melody, you haven’t got much. What Benza has is a remarkable knack for tuneful melodies.

The difference between good music and bad music is not just a matter of opinion. There is a recipe. Good music can be marketed and promoted, but successful marketing and promotion doesn’t mean the music is good. Adding to that, the music business today is not so much in the business of making music anymore.

Format, genre, and era aside, what Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Caruso, George Gershwin, Leadbelly, Frank Sinatra, Bessie Smith, Elton John, Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, and Johnny Cash have in common is their musicianship. They were all gifted musicians. You can’t say that about most of the biggest pop stars today. They are, as likely as not, mostly entertainers and merchandisers.

Political correctness suggests times have changed and therefore what music is has changed and, if your not on board, your out of touch. But great music is always about more than entertainment. It is, after all, the only common thread and universal language that binds us together regardless of race, nationality, age or income. It is a craft. Sometimes it can be art.

Sure, a culture of hype and money has always been there, but today it is a business as much about hedge funds, clothing lines, magazine covers, vodka, twitter, TV talent shows, dancing cardboard sharks at the Superbowl, as anything else. Measured almost exclusively by what’s hip, what we’re too often left with is little more than banal posturing posing as music talent. It’s worrisome because there has never been so much music talent out there. Much of today’s pop music is formulaic and programmed. Musicians have been replaced by computer generated digital “samples” and effects. Lacking much humanity, it becomes dispensable – even the music we like. Ironically, we may be right.

Are we really to believe there are no iconic music artists with the potential for cross generational appeal to be found anymore, just today’s entertainers and media stars ?  Or, perhaps, have we just forgotten how to find and support them? In the litter of such a landscape where does that leave a new artist like Benza? Where does that leave us?

These are the thoughts I had to weigh before I could commit to working with Benza. While Long Time Comin’ hinted at great possibilities, I still didn’t know what Benza could do.

Most kids can’t read or write music. Some are great on computers but don’t know anything about the world of musicians. Some can’t sing. Some can only sing. How would he respond to the studio experience? Can he play his computer concoctions on an acoustic guitar or piano?

I decided to follow the approach George had used with the Beatles by having Benza play his songs for me with just an acoustic guitar or keyboard. Sometimes he would show up with ideas fleshed out on his laptop.  He had a few good songs. One or two were very good. All of them needed work. What was most encouraging to me was that he was a skilled musician. He could jump between the guitar and keyboards fluidly. He had mastered the technology and had a good musical grasp of song structure and harmony. Grounded in both Jazz and classical music, he also spoke the language of EDM. What I didn’t know was if he was teachable. Was this it, or was I looking at a seed that just needed some water.

Your first studio experience can be quite intimidating. It is certainly an alien world fraught with creative tension, exhilaration and boredom. Artists with little experience in the studio, more often than not, are passive; leaving it to the session players and producer to direct them. You can get the job done, but at the end of the day the artist often has little to do with the creative or production process.

Hidden in the back of an old building on a Nashville side street we set to work at Direct Image Studios with Kenny Royster our co-producer & engineer. I imagined we might come away with a few demos. I wanted to throw Benza into the deep end of the pool to see if he would sink or swim.

Benza’s hopes and dreams exploded in those dark rooms. He took the lead and built his songs with complex harmonic sensibilities reminiscent of Brian Wilson.Under the tutelage of Kenny, one of Nashville’s best vocal coaches, his vocal performances were top notch. We fiddled a little with arrangements and words.

Whatever parts Benza himself didn’t play were picked up by Nick Buda on drums, Pat Buchanan, John Conley, Bobby Terry, and James Mitchell on guitars, Mike Rojas and Chris Nole on keyboards, Steve Mackey, Dave Coleman, and Tim Marks on bass. These Players we know from the recordings of Don Henley, Lionel Ritchie, Taylor Swift, Vince Gill, John Denver, Sheryl Crow, Hall & Oates, Bobby Brown, John Prine, Willie Nelson, John Fogerty, Stevie Nicks, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Hank Williams, Dolly Parton and more – artists who have collectively sold more than half a billion records!

What the studio experienced revealed about Benza was his willingness to trust the process. He gave himself over to something that was bigger than himself, and a collaborative space where things he might not have imagined could show up. That’s the way he is.

Given the state of affairs in the music industry today, I don’t know how successful Dancing in Chaos will be. I do know it is good. The musical references in the songs affirm for me Benza will be a link in the chain.

It is harder today than it was for the Beatles. George once commented to me that he didn’t think the Beatles would make it today. In the end, what Benza has most in common with the Beatles is his uncompromising commitment to his craft. You can’t find that with much assurance in the pop music landscape today.

If luck is where opportunity and perseverance collide, Benza has been very lucky. For him, it shows up as inspiration and gratitude. What George taught me, I’ve tried to pass on to him. It’s amazing what can happen if you take the time to plant the seed and sprinkle it with a little water. Nature does the rest.

I know there will be more to come from Benza and, as long as it does, there is hope today’s popular music can still be worth making.

Let’s see if anyone is listening….

Maxim Langstaff

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