Ben Kweller in the CD101 Big Room - 10.12.06

LJ: Live in the Big Room with Ben Kweller.
BK: Thank you
LJ: That was great, thank you.
BK: Thank you
LJ: So last night you were in Detroit, how’s the tour going?
BK: The tour’s going great. It’s so much fun. I love playing in front of my fans. My fans are so cool everywhere I go and it’s just great. Oh, and the bands I’m on tour with too, Sam Roberts Band are totally great people and a great band and the Hymns- its a lot of fun
LJ: Okay. I heard something happened at ACL, something interesting, I’ve seen the pic-
BK: Oh yeah
LJ: What exactly happened?
BK: It was an hour before the show and I was on the back of my tour bus getting dressed and my nose started bleeding out of both nostrils and I’ve never had a duo-nostril nose bleed, I mean I’ve had nose bleeds where you pick your nose and it bleeds for like ten minutes and it goes away really quick. But this was a heinious duel-jet turbo nosebleed, man. So it was like an hour before the show, and so I just went to the bathroom to try to stop it and you always lean forwards, not backwards- it’s a Boy Scout trick I learned. So I’m in there leaning forward, pinching my nose and wait and thirty minutes go by and it’s coming in my mouth and it was just gnarly. Then two minutes before my set time we finally get the bleeding to stop a little bit and everybody’s like ‘We’ll just cancel the show, you have to go to the hospital because that’s just really weird, both nostrils for one hour’ and I was like, ‘ No I have to go on stage’. There were like 20,000 kids out front, like at the main stage, waiting. I wasn’t going to cancel the show like ‘Ben Kweller can’t play because he has a nosebleed’. What kind of a lame excuse is that, you know? I was like ‘ I got to go on stage’ and of course you know my adrenaline and my blood pressure start to rush and it begins to start to gush again. And I’m trying to get through the songs and I’m like choking on my blood and it was like really gross and so my guitar tech, Gremlin, kept bringing me cigarette filters but they were too small for this type of job, this is like an intense. So I’m thinking ‘what can I put in my nose?’ so I ask the audience if they have a tampon (laughter) and so I’m getting bombarded with tampons and so I saw one of the travel ones- really small ones that you keep in your purse. So I opened it up, put it in my nose and it worked really good, but then it kind of expanded too much (laughter) and that was a problem so I took it out along with this huge blood clot and it was really disgusting. So I went over to the piano and started playing “Falling” and my keys were becoming covered with blood and at this point my manager is in the pit and there’s an ambulance beside the stage and after that song he jumped up on stage and was like ‘Come on you got to go’ and the paramedics rushed me into the ambulance. I was in the hospital for three hours and they said it was a cracked capillary because of extreme dryness on my tour bus which is such a lame excuse, but that is what it really was. So now I have a humidifier and it’s really nice (laughter). Nice and cozy, no nosebleed.

LJ: On ATO Records
BK: on ATO Records, yeah
LJ: Okay, tell me this, how is it different from your two previous albums?
BK: Well, one big difference about this album is that I play every instrument on this album and actually, I wasn’t going to do that, I was going to play with another band but with my second meeting with the producer, Gill Norton, he said. ‘Man, these songs are so personal and so autobiographical if played every instrument it would be just crazy personal and really unique and 100% Ben Kweller’. He knew I could play every instrument because I had sent him some demos playing the drums and everything. So he said ‘I really think that you should just put your finger print on every track, it would be really cool’. So at first I was really weary about it and then I realized that he was right because the songs were different than my other material, a little more deeper, and even like, even the love songs have a different twist than before and I went for that you know. And even sonically its different. It’s more big sounding and layered the album before were just four guys in a room, no over-dubs no headphones just playing songs, you know. So that one’s really live and raw, and this one is really layered and lush- beautiful.
LJ: Did you think about just doing a tour with just you acoustically by yourself?
BK: Well because the songs- I went for real big sort of a Springstein-sound so I wanted a real ampidemic. I wanted a six- piece band I just want to hold the microphone and sing really a lot of the songs. I have a five- piece band with me and actually the drummer is from here and I met him while I was in Cleveland a few months ago. His name is Mark Stepbro and he’s a fantastic drummer and his family all live here and so I do have a band but I like playing by myself too. So it’s like choosing between the piano and the guitar- they are both just as cool as the other it’s just for different things. It’s the same with playing by yourself versus playing with a band- you get something different from each.
LJ: Excellent, another tune for us?
BK: Sure, I’ll play, actually my favorite song from the new album, which I never- I actually played it earlier today for the first time on the radio and this will be my second time to do it and it is actually a piano song but I’m going to do it on guitar and it is called “Thirteen”
LJ: Live in the CD101 Big Room with Ben Kweller
BK: (Plays “Thirteen”)
LJ: Live in the CD101 Big Room with Ben Kweller. I like that one
BK: Thanks. I forgot my harmonica for that one. It has a really nice harmonica solo but next time. Well, you got to get the album to hear the harmonica
LJ: Self-titled, Ben Kweller. All right, one-more quick question, I was thinking of this last night while watching Lost, you know that show
BK: I haven’t seen it because I don’t want to get into it late and my guitar player is obsessed with it and so I’m going to borrow it from him. Tell me about it.
LJ: That would take a couple of hours
BK: All right.
LJ: But if you were stranded on an island what is one album that you would bring with you and why?
BK: Well… oh goodness, now- at this moment I am feeling the first Violent Fems album right now actually. That’s what I’m feeling right now. Other days it’s “Another Side of Bob Dylan” because it is just him by himself with a guitar and there is a lot of words and that, you know, would be good because I can actually learn some Dylan lyrics… Yeah today it is the first Violent Fems album because it’s just one of my favorites ever.
LJ: All right, one more for us?
BK: Yeah, I’ll play one-more. This is off the new album this is track number one it’s the first- All right well, check this out- the last song I played was the last song I played, “Thirteen” was the last song I wrote for the album and this is the first song that I wrote the album so that’s kind of a nice little closer I guess and I just wanted to say, I am supposed to say that I’m going to be at Starbucks at about five o’clock today. Starbucks bought 10,000 of my new albums.
LJ: Wow!
BK: And they are selling them in their stores and in return I am giving my services to them.
LJ: Okay, now there are a lot of Starbucks’
BK: There are a lot of Starbucks’: they have 10,000 and there one copy for each Starbucks (Laughter)
LJ: No, you’re going to be at Starbucks, right?
BK: Oh, there are a lot in town you mean. (Laughter) Okay, what are you saying?
LJ: Are you going to be at Starbucks today?
BK: Today at five o’clock.
LJ: Which one?
BK: Okay, there you go. See- see how you cornered me? That was a good one there. I don’t know.
LJ: Okay
BK: But I’m sure if you call all ten of them- no, I don’t know
LJ: We’ll try to figure that out.
BK: Does any one know?
LJ: On campus
BK: On campus, is that a good one?
LJ: Yeah, that works
BK: There it is.
LJ: So on more
BK: One more and this is called “Run” and thanks for listening everybody.
LJ: Ben Kweller live in the CD101 Big Room
BK: (Plays “Run”) Thank you Columbus
LJ: Live from the CD101 Big Room Live with Ben Kweller
BK: Thank you, thank you!
LJ: Thank you so much for coming. Playing a show tonight at the Newport Music Hall, still a few tickets available and please pick up the new disc “Ben Kweller” now available from ATO Records. Let’s give it up one more time
BK: Thank you!
LJ: And we turn it back over to command central.

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