For his entire career, Marco Benevento has been a bit of an enigma. He lives in his own musical world where jazz is fused with rock elements, resulting in a sound that completely transcends both genres. With the recent release of his new record Swift, Benevento makes it even more difficult to categorize his work. Though previously a purely instrumental artist on albums such as 2009’s Me Not Me or 2010’s Between the Needles and Nightfall, Swift finds Benevento embracing his own voice by singing for the first time on a record.
We were lucky enough to have Marco shed some light into his approach of this new sound, his creative process, and what these changes mean for his live shows.
StageBuddy: I saw you at SubCulture this summer when you did two sets by yourself. You had all of these electronics hooked up to the piano and a drum machine, playing a largely improvised set. Is this how you approached writing Swift, or did the basic music comes first and then the electronics?
Marco Benevento: A little bit of both. I like to find inspiration from things in my studio when I start recording. For example, I have this drum machine that I absolutely love, it’s a Casio RC1. I’ll flip that thing on and play it through a tape delay, or maybe some reverb, and come with a quick progression or just mess around. That could end up being the start of a new song idea. In that way I’m using electronics here, such as synthesizers, drum machines, etc. All of the effects that are on the piano I developed five years ago when I said to myself, “okay, so I’m just going to go out and tour around and only play pianos in venues that have them.” Then I realized though that that is just a piano sound and I don’t get any delay or tremolo or aggressive distortion. So that whole system of pedals and amplification developed a long time ago. In my studio I’ll set up some pedals and have piano going through distortion on an old tube amp just to get that sound in here, but I’m constantly using other keyboards for sounds and songwriting ideas.
In something like “Now They’re Writing Music” off of Me Not Me, there are multiple different drum grooves throughout the piece, but with the drum machine you naturally have a more consistent beat. How does that change how you approach composing?
I think you immediately get turned on, meaning sometimes you could sit down at the piano as your blank canvas. It’s your hands and your fingers triggering the keys to compose. Sometimes when I’m doing that though I can get distracted or not get too inspired or write only a certain way. The piano itself as an instrument paints this color, and in a strange way it can dictate how you write music. It’s a piano, so as in writing a song on an upright bass or guitar, it’s going to have its own sound and influences. The cool thing about using a drum machine is that you literally hit a button. Once you hit ‘start’, it just goes and you’re not doing anything but listening. You are more absorbing than trying. You get to sit there and just listen to see what ear candy comes out, and then you come across something and say, “Oh wow, that’s a cool chord progression.” Then I go to the piano after the fact to find a harmony and maybe try to write a melody. It’s just instant songwriting food.
Obviously a lot has changed with you singing on this record. You’ve said you considered having Kalmia Traver (of Rubblebucket) sing again as she did on Tigerface, but once you decided to sing them yourself, how did that affect what you wrote?
I didn’t change much honestly, and I almost wish I did because some of the ranges of melodies are really low or maybe too high. I’m working on new music right now and taking that into consideration more. With Swift, it was more like, “Oh this sounds good in this key and in this groove,” but when the melody came in, it maybe sat a littler lower. I just added harmonies to thicken it up as well as some effects to make it sound like the purpose of the vocal is to have another melodic thing float over it. It is supposed to be there more as a texture as opposed to telling a story. Some songs have more of a story in there, but others are more about the effect of the vocal above the groove. I’m learning how to write lyrics myself, so I feel like a bit of an amateur with words right now.
It does seem a very natural step for you to include that though, as your melodies all throughout your previous work have always been extremely sing-able. Did you ever worry though that fans of your earlier, purely instrumental work might be turned off by a new direction?
It wasn’t really a concern. We had actually been testing some of the tunes out prior to the record. When we played them live and tunes with vocals would come up, you could sense the audience was a little more engaged while looking at the new thing I was doing. After the shows, a lot of people would comment that my singing was a really nice part of the night. And it makes sense because we’ll have a heavy night of jamming with improvising along with some songs that are just melodic without lyrics. It’s nice in a night of instrumental music to just have some songs that I sing. Realistically, there are only seven or eight songs that I sing on in a typical show of 20 songs. In my ear, the songs are connected with all of my work. I wonder if people think all my records are different though.
To me, Tigerface was a great transition between Swift and your previous work. You’ve said of Tigerface that it took two years in post production to finish. What was the experience like with Swift having gone through that?
Swift was extremely different. It seemed like the most natural course the typical band takes to make their record. We road tested a bunch of tunes, and then made a demo of us jamming on about five of them in a studio in Oakland, CA. Then I cut them up, added vocals, and turned them into real demos. We then played them on the road for about six months, during which time they grew and changed a little bit. We were at a point where we had played seven of them live, so when we went to the studio we were just playing the songs we knew. There were only two or three where we had to figure out how they would go. We recorded six songs in one day, three the next, and then vocal overdubs. We did the entire record in three days, followed by producer Richard Swift mixing it in one more day. It was too easy, but I feel like ideally any studio or engineer would want a band to come in at least knowing the songs they’re going to record. A lot of times though, bands come in and have some ideas but no finished tunes. This is how I did my other records. I would know what I wanted to do with half, so we would just go into the studio and improvise. That’s how “Limbs of a Pine” (off of Tigerface) was born, straight out of an improv. Sometimes if you leave yourself room, it’s very cool.
Now that you do have this new sound, how does that affect your approach to the live shows?
Well we just tried to approach it in the smoothest of ways incorporating these vocals tunes into the night. It’s all about being a good DJ and figuring out what the song order should be. It can be a bit of a puzzle, but you learn something new every night. Some songs just naturally work well back to back together, whether that be two new songs or ones from different records. You can almost sense from the crowd when we play an older song that they are excited to hear something they are more familiar with. What I do like about the new music is feeling the audience become more captivated and attentive. Certain songs really draw them in and you can feel the vibe of the room change a bit because a lot of people are just getting to know these new songs. We’re almost at the point of even adding newer songs on the road.
Be sure to catch Marco Benevento at The Brooklyn Bowl on Friday, December 19th. Show starts at 8pm, and tickets are only $15!
