In this episode of Seeing Them Live, Benny, a Brooklyn-based musician who performs under the name Muted Circus, shares his inspiring musical journey and reflective stories. Benny discusses his upbringing in Orange County, California, his time at Berklee College of Music, and his seven years in Tokyo, Japan. He also delves into his project Muted Circus, a 10 EP, 50 song venture, which he created to navigate and express his grief following his father's death, who was also a visual artist. Benny recounts attending his first concert, watching The Get Up Kids, and reflects on memorable concerts, including a mixed experience meeting Dave Mustaine of Megadeth. He details how music helped him through difficult times and previews one of his songs, "Disconnection." Join this heartfelt conversation exploring the intersections of life, loss, and music.
This episode features Benny, a musician and producer who performs under the name Muted Circus. Benny, originally from Orange County, California, is currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He spent seven years in Tokyo, Japan, and attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston. The discussion starts with Benny sharing the story of his first rock concert at the age of 13, where he saw The Get Up Kids in a small, intimate venue in his hometown. This concert sparked his lifelong passion for live music, leading him to attend concerts frequently, including during his college years and time in Japan. Benny reminisces about the DIY music scene of Orange County in the '90s and shares anecdotes about attending shows with his older brother and friends. He also recalls a memorable yet disappointing encounter with Dave Mustaine from Megadeth during a concert in Tokyo, juxtaposing it with a positive experience meeting Marty Friedman, a former Megadeth guitarist.
The conversation then shifts towards Benny's musical project, Muted Circus, a deeply personal undertaking inspired by the death of his father. The project comprises 10 EPs with 50 songs, each featuring his father's visual artwork on the covers. Benny explains how creating this music helped him process his grief and reflect on his relationship with his father. He delves into the themes explored in his music, often revolving around the impact of his parents on his life. Benny shares the challenges and emotional journey of writing and recording these songs over several years. He also introspects on the nuances of live vs. recorded music and the emotional resonance that well-produced music can often deliver.
During the interview, Benny performs 'Disconnection,' a song from his final EP in the Muted Circus series. The song captures the sentiment of final phone calls with a loved one and reflects Benny's extensive relationship with his father through daily check-ins on the phone. The episode concludes with Benny discussing his future plans for more music releases under different projects and emphasizing the therapeutic power of music in processing complex emotions. Listeners can explore Benny's work on platforms like Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube.
BANDS: No Doubt, The Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World, Real Big Fish, Gwen and Eric Stefani, Megadeth, NSYNC, Metallica, Slayer, Marty Friedman, Dave Mustaine.
VENUES: Makuhari Messe (Japan), Koos Cafe, The Chain Reaction, Madison Square Garden.
[00:00:46] Charles: Today's guest is Benny, who makes music under the name Muted Circus. Benny is a musician, producer, and songwriter based in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in Orange County, California, and then [00:01:00] went to Boston and attended the Berklee College of Music and eventually moved to Tokyo, Japan, where he lived for seven years.
[00:01:07] Muted Circus is a 10 EP 50 song project about the death of Benny's Father. Benny's father was a visual artist, and his artwork appears on each of the album covers. Benny is also a live music fan. Benny, welcome to Seeing Them Live.
[00:01:23] Benny: Happy to be here.
[00:01:25] Charles: Thanks for coming on. You got, you've got some cool stories and some cool music that you make. And, I just wanna let listeners know that you will be playing a paired down version of one of your songs.
[00:01:36] Benny: That's right. I'm excited.
[00:01:38] Charles: Yeah, I saw one of your tags describing some of your music as, psychedelic folk music.
[00:01:44] Benny: Yeah, there's a bit of that in there for sure.
[00:01:47] Charles: I've listened to it and there is definitely a lot of interesting things going on there. But, Benny, I thought we'd just start with your first concert.
[00:01:55] Benny: Sure.
[00:01:55] Charles: Going back to when you were 13 years old, and this is when you were living in [00:02:00] California.
[00:02:00] Benny: That's right. Yeah. So, Orange County had a really vibrant music scene and it had major venues and also those sort of indie venues that you could imagine. It makes sense in a certain way because it's kind of halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles, and it has a lot of population density. So, it sort of made sense that a lot would be going on there.
[00:02:22] Plus you have a certain amount of like, uh, you know, garage space. And so you have all these bands, like No Doubt comes from that sort of general area and just dozens and dozens of other bands, including entire, entire music scenes like the Ska scene and the Emo scene really took off there.
[00:02:38] So when I was a young dude, I was seeing my brother and his friends all going to concerts and I was like, I wanna go to concerts too. And so the first real rock concert I went to, well I consider it my first concert, is a band called The Get Up Kids. And I saw 'em at this little tiny venue that didn't have a stage. It was a house in the middle of a neighborhood. And why it was sort of significant, I think this [00:03:00] sort of probably resonates with some of your listeners, was that, my brother had just gotten his driver's license.
[00:03:05] And so being the younger brother, I was three years younger. I was invited to go to a concert of a band that I liked with my older brother and his friends, which, as you know, you we're not talking about SUVs here, we're talking about, you know, regular five-seater cars.
[00:03:23] You're always one friend not picking up the phone away from being not invited. Right? I mean, we're talking about a venue, you walk up to the back gate, you pay maybe $6 or something. You go in, we're not talking, it's not ticketed. There's no internet, there's no, oh, I bought the ticket and it's a reserve seat.
[00:03:42] You know, the coveted thing really. Is that seat in the car. That's how you get there. I don't know exactly how it all came together, but I was able to go and I remember being super excited and walking in and I was quite little at the time. Now I'm like six feet tall. But at the time I was still small. I hadn't had like, my growth [00:04:00] spurt, I must have been 13 or 14, probably 13. And I sort of squeezed my way up to the front.
[00:04:06] And my brother recalls that we actually ended up holding up a mic stand that had broken at some point, which was kind of a funny, funny little fact. That is my first concert that I think really speaks to, resonating in my heart in that way, because before that I've been to other shows, but not in the same way. You know, you like go with your parents or something or that kind of thing.
[00:04:25] Charles: Yeah. 'cause The Get Up Kids, they're a punk band. Right?
[00:04:29] Benny: Yeah, I think Emo sort of punk. I don't know what genre people. Now you talk to young people, they probably say it's a classic rock band or something. Who knows?
[00:04:38] Charles: But yeah. You describe it as like, you're right up there and you were kind of in danger of getting hit with some of the instruments as they were playing and kind of trying to hold your own, it wasn't even a stage, right? You were on the same level as the band.
[00:04:52] Benny: Yeah, exactly. You know, it's funny I think it's, everything is just sort of less common now, but all the, all the older folks, [00:05:00] I'm not old per se. I'm 40, but like all the older folks, we sort of forget that even just 20 years ago or 30 years ago, the world was a lot less litigious. The world was a lot less buttoned up. There was a lot more sort of randomized danger or lurking, and you know, there would be probably no recourse if a guitar hit you in the face.
[00:05:22] Charles: Yes.
[00:05:23] Benny: There wouldn't be, you would just have a hurt face for the night. But that, that kind of fun still exists somewhere in the world that's just not readily accessible to us anymore, I guess.
[00:05:33] Charles: Yeah. That sounds like a really cool experience. I'd mentioned to you previously, we're going back and forth to the emails I just read Jesse Rifkin's book, This Must Be the Place.
[00:05:44] Benny: Yeah.
[00:05:44] Charles: You know, it's all throughout New York City, and all these DIY venues, I mean, any place literally could be a venue for bands to play in, as short lived as some of them were. But it made me think of this place is like a, basically [00:06:00] a house and you walk in and boom, there's the band. I was reading about some history on that and they had some notable bands like Jimmy Eat World, Real Big Fish, Gwen and Eric Stefani, who you'd mentioned, that also played there at times. So, sounds like a really cool spot to see a band if you could get in.
[00:06:20] Benny: Yeah, I don't actually remember it ever selling out. I don't know if that was a thing. I think you would just sort of spill outta the house and into the, into the, uh, yard. But you could always kind of like catch a glimpse somehow.
[00:06:33] Charles: Yeah. Okay.
[00:06:34] Benny: But also, there was, there was something really nice about bands coming through town. Bands are always coming through town. They'd play Koos Cafe. They'd play this other place called The Chain Reaction. And then, there are like many, many more venues and then the hardcore people played sort of different venues out in different spots. But there was also a real sense of these people weren't making very much money. They really wanted to be on tour. Most of 'em were really young, like, you know, 18 to 22, 23 years old. They always spend time with you before the gig, after the gig, so you could talk with them and interact with them. And then if you bought a T-shirt or a CD or even like whatever they had, it was just paying for gas for them to get to the next spot.
[00:07:18] Charles: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:07:19] Benny: You know, and a lot of the folks coming through were not from wealthy places. So, this was really something that they were doing and they really wanted to do. And, I think music in general, punk, punk style music, whatever, it got much more popular from there. I mean, obviously this was already like the second wave of whatever you'd call punk, or maybe it was the third wave. Who knows?
[00:07:40] The whole machine got a little bit more buttoned up, a little bit more. This is like start of sort of like Vans Warped Tour and those things where it sort of got a little more buttoned up and then, soon after this, the extreme sports exploded. The X Games became a thing and all the pop punk bands sort of rode this wave that came with that. So it was, it was a kind of [00:08:00] a nascent time where there was a lot of energy that was sort of bottled up and it hadn't really reached too wide of an audience. Pretty exciting.
[00:08:08] Charles: Yeah, it sounds like a really neat experience and time to be 13 years old, checking out these bands and stuff.
[00:08:15] Benny: Yeah. After that we used to go to almost two or three shows a week. We went to a lot and that continued into college. 'cause I went to music school. So in music school I would sometimes see two or three concerts a day. So it was like pretty wild.
[00:08:28] You kind of almost overdose in music. And then I eventually made my way to Japan where I would also go to lots and lots of concerts, 'cause I was working music industry, music industry adjacent. So, I was given passes or asked, hey, you want to come? And sure. So, you end up seeing lots and lots of shows and you end up seeing lots and lots of music that you don't like at all, which is also interesting.
[00:08:47] Charles: Yeah. And, that's a good segue, Benny into your, most disappointing. I guess part of it was disappointing, but, cool. when you were in Japan, you checked out Megadeth.
[00:08:57] Benny: Yes.
[00:08:58] Charles: I don't know, I wrote down the name of this [00:09:00] place, but I'm, you know, I'm gonna butcher it here 'cause it's Japanese. Uh, the first name is actually Ma, Makuhari.
[00:09:07] Benny: Makuhari Messe. Yeah.
[00:09:09] Charles: And this was at What, in '09, right?
[00:09:12] Benny: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:14] Charles: October 17th, and your friend or somebody...
[00:09:17] Benny: My friend Sebastian.
[00:09:18] Charles: Got you, a backstage pass or something, right, or access to the backstage, which I would imagine was pretty cool. And you really enjoyed the show too. You said the show was fantastic. But then it spiraled down a little bit, I guess, but it makes for a good story. So go ahead.
[00:09:35] Benny: So, I moved to Japan after I finished college, and I spent a year in New York City working for a company that made music for TV commercials. And I went to Japan initially to study, and I spent a year studying Japanese, and really enjoying, just studying and sort of hanging out. And then the year after that, I came back to the US and I played bass on tour with a Sony artist for a very brief amount of time.
[00:10:00] But the artist was lovely. The band mates were lovely, but I just really didn't like touring. I don't know, maybe I was a little anxious at that age, 22, 23. It seemed like I was sort of a backing band member because I was, but I didn't sort of like that, that like support feeling. I kind of was like, I want to do something on my own.
[00:10:18] So I made my way back to Japan and I started a company that did social media content for bands. And anyone who's listening is probably like, well, that seems like the most common kind of company in the world, but it wasn't in 2009, 2010. That's for sure. Instagram didn't exist. YouTube had only launched a few years before. Twitter had launched a little bit before Facebook was a thing.
[00:10:41] So you're making content for international artists. So, I kind of used that little spark of an idea and that sort of nascent company I was building to network really heavily in the music industry in Japan. So, I made lots of friends that were running record labels or working in promotion and things like that, even though at the time I wasn't [00:11:00] making music at all and that wasn't something that I was interested in doing.
[00:11:03] So being a foreigner in Japan at that time, relatively rare, I put the time into learning Japanese and so I made lots of friends very quickly. I was also a pretty gregarious 22, 23, 24-year-old. So, that particular show I remember very vividly because I have always been a big Megadeth fan probably since I was 14.
[00:11:22] So right around the time I'm going to like punk venues and seeing indie artists, I discovered metal. A lot of kids that age get into metal. At least my generation, they got into metal. It's heavy. It's silly. It's kind of fun, especially Megadeth. I don't know if you've ever gone deep on Megadeth. Megadeth, it's very sort of like snarly and kind of silly in a way, especially the first three, four Megadeth albums. It has sort of a swing to it. It's like, do, do, do. Which unlike Metallica was a little bit more straightforward. And Metallica was almost like biblical in the way that their songs would come together. Very [00:12:00] like authoritative.
[00:12:01] And Dave Mustang, the lead singer, Megadeath, had a lot more kind of silliness and personality and the humor and the music and that really appealed to me as like a young person. I love Marty Friedman's guitar playing as well, and that was something I loved. So I managed to keep interest in Megadeth, especially the old stuff all the way through. Even to this day, I still will listen to Megadeth and be like, aha, yes, of course. Megadeth. This is amazing. Even though politically and all sorts of other stuff, the lead singer, Dave Mustaine has been all over the place. There's some crazy stat he's been to rehab like 50 times or something.
[00:12:34] Charles: Yeah, he's uh, definitely a character for sure.
[00:12:37] Benny: Definitely a character. Definitely problematic in all sorts of ways. Also, pretty rad in a, in a lot of other ways. So, I had the chance to go see Slayer and Megadeth play. I think I had probably begged I. My friend Sebastian, who's who was older than me and had a lot more connections than me and he got me, I think it was like AAA, backstage passes and he and I went together. I think I had sent a note to my friend who was a huge Slayer fan, and he is like, hey, whatever you do, man, stay out of the pit.
[00:13:09] He's like, I went and saw Slayer and play in Long Beach, and I swear there were people that were coming out like covered in blood. Like it was insane. And I was like, oh, okay. Wow. Yeah, be careful. Of course, I'm seeing them in Tokyo. People are so calm, they're so gentle. They're dancing, but they're like very, so the pit was quite tame for Slayer and for Megadeath.
[00:13:29] So the show was great. They performed super well. I watched part of it from the side of the stage, and I don't know if they still do this, and I'm sure someone listened to this was like the, the biggest Megadeth fan ever. And they can just send me an email being like, you got these three things wrong.
[00:13:43] But they had a gentleman who would control the pedals for the, for maybe just for Dave, I don't know. But he had racks of pedals up on a shelf and he would hit the pedals with his hands. He was having the best time. He was obviously the biggest Megadeth [00:14:00] fan, and he's like the pedal guy. And so, when the, when the mood changes in the song or the different effects come in, he was like dancing and then he would like get his hands ready and like hit the pedals.
[00:14:09] And we're talking lots of pedals, I mean. It's a, it's a metal band after all, who's put out, I don't know, 20 albums or something. So, there's a lot of different effects. I'm sure they're using a lot of different things. So, I watched part from the side of the stage and it was super exciting and I watched from the front of the stage.
[00:14:23] So after the show, we went backstage. And Sebastian was like, do you wanna meet Dave? And I think that Sebastian had probably had met Dave before. Sebastian had been in the music industry a lot longer, so he knew a lot more people and I was like, oh my gosh, yes. By the way, this is one of the last times that I ever said, oh my gosh, yes to meet someone that I actually was interested in meeting.
[00:14:44] Charles: Right, right.
[00:14:46] Benny: Dave was standing at the bar in the backstage area. And he had like, long stringy blonde hair, he'd just come off stage, and he turns around and the drink in his hand just like sloshes all over the place. And it was [00:15:00] clearly, it was like he was not, not inebriated.
[00:15:02] Charles: Okay.
[00:15:02] Benny: Was not, not inebriated. And, Sebastian, I guess was also probably taking a little bit aback, was sort of like, uh, Dave, this is Benny. He's a really big fan of yours, which I don't know if that's what you're supposed to say when you get introduced to rock stars. I don't know. But he was like, all right. And he mumbled something and I was just like, oh man, this is not. This is not a good moment. And then he reached into his breast pocket, and he took out two pics and he didn't even hand them to me. He like flung them in my face, like, here's some pics, and I was just like, that was so cool and awful. Wow.
[00:15:37] You know what? It changed Megadeth a little bit for me. But I'm a lifelong non-drinker myself personally, I've never drank, even when I was, I just never was interested in it. I'm not exactly sure why, and it didn't make me think, oh, there's something wrong with that guy.
[00:15:53] I thought, oh, he's the real deal. Look at that. He really is the rock star. He really is [00:16:00] like, there he is. So that was my sort of takeaway from that. But at the time, I remember going home and just being like, I will covet these pics. But man, I wish, I hadn't met him.
[00:16:09] Charles: Yeah. 'cause you this like a cautionary tale. You say never meet your idol, you know, that falls into that department.
[00:16:15] Benny: But years later. Years later, I met Marty Friedman.
[00:16:19] Charles: Okay.
[00:16:20] Benny: Absolute gentleman. Absolute gentleman, really sweet, calm, kind, didn't mind me asking, I don't know why I asked him a bunch of like nerdy questions about metal guitar or something that I was like rallying around in my brain and he was very sweet and calm. So maybe Dave, if you meet him in a different context, he's sweeter and calmer. I don't know.
[00:16:38] Charles: Yeah, maybe before the show, right?
[00:16:41] Benny: Who knows?
[00:16:42] Charles: 'Cause You also said Benny that when you go see live music, and, I was thinking about this too, sometimes you could be really disappointed and especially with the way ticket prices are...
[00:16:52] Benny: Yes.
[00:16:53] Charles: Days plunking down a bunch of money, and then the show's like, eh, you know, it's okay. And you kinda mentioned that as [00:17:00] sometimes, that, the show doesn't live up to your expectations.
[00:17:04] Benny: Yeah, that can happen. I think that, I mean the, so keep in mind that I make a lot of music. I record a lot of music, but I don't play live very much. I think I've played two shows in the last five years or something. And maybe I, every year I go, oh, next year maybe I'll play more shows. And I like, don't, but maybe next year I will.
[00:17:22] So it's not so much being judgmental of what the person, what the artist is bringing, but occasionally you just have this feeling that, okay, I watched the artist perform the songs for me, and sometimes that's enough and you're like, wow.
[00:17:37] Charles: Yeah.
[00:17:38] Benny: That was great. And sometimes you're like, but they're just playing the songs for me. You know what I mean? And I can't figure out if it's, if it's like really on the listener, like the, your mood isn't really into it or something is preventing you from really getting into it. Or if there is a sort of real charismatic kind of performer that even if they are [00:18:00] quote, just performing the songs for you, that really, really draws you in in a way, you know? And then the other side is you, you see music that you don't like at all, but you're totally engrossed by this and you're just like, wow, I don't even like this music, but this is amazing.
[00:18:14] Charles: Yeah, because, and you also said recorded music can be amazing too. I thought that was a good point.
[00:18:19] Benny: I think that music in music school, at the Berkleee College of Music when I went there, I'm not sure how it is now. That was when I really fully understood just how carefully and deeply producers and engineers work and how all the engineering students and the people who working on music production primarily. The level of sort of nerdiness, but also the interest was something that I did not understand when I was in high school.
[00:18:46] For example, you might find someone listening to something really earnestly and you're like, what are you listening to? And they're like, oh, I'm listening to this, you know, NSYNC track. And you're like, you don't like pop music. You're like a jazz person. You know what's going on. And it's like, oh, but listen to that gated snare sound. That snare sounds amazing, and you're just like, wow, that's a, a layer, you know? Like that's a layer that you sort of don't...
[00:19:10] So whenever I listen to music, I try to hear the harmony and the, the lyrics and the, all the things you listen to. But then, if it's attractive and you don't, aren't, you know, if you're gonna listen to it again, like, listen to the baseline, you know, listen to the way that the reverb is, listen to the stereo profile. How does that sit? Is it sit kind of crunched in the center? Does it have an expansive feel? How are the different kinds of reverb working with each other to make this sound? What, what's surprising about it? Because oftentimes music is very repetitive and it doesn't surprise you. Then there's layers to it that are surprising. And all these sort of like subtleties, I find that sometimes live, the subtleties aren't there. Does that make sense?
[00:19:54] You're hearing one sort of sound profile for the songs and maybe there's some variation with like [00:20:00] play acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, but you don't have this very well put together package that was very carefully thought over. It's a little bit more like, well, this is how it sounds now, which makes sense.
[00:20:11] I mean, I have some friends who after music school went on to become musical directors for pop artists and for big artists, and they tour the world and play Madison Square Garden and stadiums and all these things. And those people specialize in making live shows really intriguing.
[00:20:27] Have a flow of the show that makes sense. Have enough space in it that makes sense. Have enough variety and instrumentation. And if you understand what they're doing, they might do something like, on the record, this is one guitar, but I'm gonna split into two guitar parts and I'm gonna have it split in this way and this guitar player's gonna be on a Strat, and this one's gonna be on a Tele, because I want that texture. And they're like really working hard to make it a really intriguing show. So oftentimes it's not even the band's fault. It's sort of like the music direction wasn't on point, or there was too much resistance in the music [00:21:00] direction or something that sort of didn't make it come together in a way.
[00:21:03] Charles: Yeah, it's always impressive when a band can pull off those intricate details, you know, like, wow, I didn't think they'd be able to do that. And somehow, they accomplish it. Makes the show even more amazing
[00:21:15] Benny: Yeah, I totally agree.
[00:21:17] Charles: You're ready to cut them some slack and they delivered.
[00:21:20] Benny: Yeah, yeah, you are. You're like, wow, that was surprising. For me, I think surprise is probably the number one element that I am attracted to in music that I listen to. I want to be surprised and I want to be surprised on the 10th time I listen to a hundredth time I listened to it. If you listen to a record like Pet Sounds or something, Beach Boys. I'm always surprised. Every time I hear it, I'm always like, wow. The Beatles albums too. A lot of those albums are just like, that's not what I expected and I've heard this a hundred times.
[00:21:49] Charles: Yeah, yeah. You pick up on something that, that you didn't hear before.
[00:21:53] Benny: Yeah. Or, you know, the change is coming but, the change happens sooner than you sort of imagined it would. The Beatles do a lot of things where they drop beats. To sort of condense things. So, it feels like it should have another beep, but it doesn't, and you're like, aha. Every time, you know, it's like really, like you're really surprised that like, Ooh, that string arrangement's so nice. Oh, that cello line is so great. It's like, how many times have I heard this? But that surprise element becomes critical, I think.
[00:22:39] Ray and Mike: Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie and this is Hollywood Mike with the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast coming to you from the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66 in Joliet, Illinois, where once a week we are interviewing local musicians and singer songwriters and the podcast itself covers a wide range of topics.
[00:22:54] Including, but not limited to the history of rock and roll in Chicago, the current state of the scene and the challenges and opportunities facing musicians today. So, join us every Tuesday for a new exciting episode of the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast.
[00:23:09] Jessica Cantina: Hi, I'm Jessica Ann Catina. I've always loved music and surround myself with it every day. I've sung in choirs, took digital musical classes in college, and used to work in radio to further share my knowledge and. Experience with others. I created this podcast music Notes with Jess in 2019. I'm so fortunate of the listener growth and hearing back from some of the celebs I discussed in past episodes.
[00:23:41] That's why now I'm ready to expand, so let's have fun taking weekly music notes of throwbacks, modern hits and media. Thank you. Talk to you soon on music Notes with Jess.
[00:23:58] Rick: What was the last really great rock and roll book you read? How about a good rock and roll documentary? Well, that's why I started the Rock Talk Studio Podcast, the place to go for recommendations of new rock and roll books and documentaries. Give me 20 minutes and the Rock Talk Studio podcast will get you caught up on the world of rock and roll books and docs from every possible angle and leave you with a no doubt decision on where to spend your time and money.
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[00:24:46] Jamie: Hi, this is Jamie James on Seeing Them Live. We all have our first concert stories, so please share them. We'd love to hear yours.
[00:25:06] Charles: And speaking of surprising, and we did not rehearse this right Benny, it just, you naturally gave a segue here to your most surprising concert, which involved some of your music, Muted Circus, right? Your buddy was coming into town, he's a musician and wanted you to open for him, but you said it was gonna be too hectic and nerve wracking, so you took a pass.
[00:25:26] Benny: That's right. So, my buddy was coming to town. The night before he was supposed to play a show, I went to hang out with him and his bandmates. And I was like, hey, guys, let me play you a song I wrote. And I took a guitar and I performed a song for them that I had been working on. It's an unreleased song. I, I've never, released it or recorded it. But I was, it was sort of feeling it at the time. And usually I forget lyrics, but this song had very few lyrics, so it was sort of like, good moment.
[00:25:52] And they're like, oh, that was really nice Ben, that was really nice. Why don't you open for us tomorrow? We could just like, put you on the bill. And I was like, nah man, I [00:26:00] wanna enjoy your show. I don't wanna be nervous all day. And like, then I'm, I'm not gonna be really enjoying the, you know what, we hang out before. And he is like, no thanks. And he was like, all right. All right. Sure. That's cool.
[00:26:11] The show comes around. I'm watching the opening band, hanging out. They go on, watching them, enjoying it thoroughly. I'm staying like kind of close to the back. And then there's stage banter and all of a sudden, I realize that the stage banter includes me. And what he said was, hey, uh, we got a special guest who's gonna perform a song for you all.
[00:26:31] Uh, his name's Benny. Benny, come on up. Sheer terror. Sheer terror. I mean, we're not talking about Madison Square Garden here. We're not talking like a huge venue, but still just that like sheer terror for a brief moment. I walk up on stage; he hands me a guitar. I performed; I did not choke. I remembered all the lyrics. It went okay. But afterwards I was like, hey, man, like, what, what was that about? Like, why would you do that? And he said, oh, I mean, you didn't say you, you weren't ready to perform, and I heard you play the song. You told me the reason why you weren't gonna perform. So, I thought, if I just surprise you.
[00:27:05] Charles: Yeah.
[00:27:07] Benny: And that's true, you know.
[00:27:09] Charles: Yeah. that's awesome.
[00:27:11] Benny: That's sort of like, if someone said, hey, come eat dinner with me, and you'd be like, actually man, I, I just ate lunch. Then they'll say, ah, it's okay. We'll just sit at the restaurant for an hour until you get hungry. You're kind of like, oh, damn, I lost my excuse, so you took my excuse very literally, the excuse was, I don't want to be nervous. So, if you're only nervous for 35 seconds as you walk onto the stage.
[00:27:32] Charles: Yeah. That's so cool. That's a great story. So, was that then, like prior to, 2019? Because I, I mentioned 2019. 'cause that's the release of your first...
[00:27:43] Benny: No, this was only a couple years ago.
[00:27:45] Charles: Oh, okay.
[00:27:46] Benny: So, if you want to transition, talking about Muted Circus stuff, the way Muted Circus happened, for me personally, probably mirrors a lot of other listeners and the other experiences. My father suddenly was terminally ill with [00:28:00] cancer and I hadn't really done very much music stuff for a while, for a long time, like over 10 years.
[00:28:05] And suddenly you have to deal with all these emotions. And it really reverts you back to a sort of childhood state. 'cause it's your father who's sick and dying. And so you think about parents and their value to you. And I had all these years of my life where I didn't take 'em for granted, but I didn't think about their imminent demise or something. And so, with all that flood of emotions, as I mentioned earlier, I don't drink alcohol and I don't really do anything self-destructive. I do like chocolate, but that's sort of the only thing self-destructive. So, it was like, I need to, play music again.
[00:28:37] That's what I need to do. And you sort of remember why do parents who can afford it or whatever, have their kids play music lessons and stuff. You could say, oh, it's sort of like a social climbing thing. But that wasn't how it was in my family. It's just they love music and they wanted us to love music. And so what do you do with all this emotion? You make stuff, some people draw, some people journal, some people write some stories, some people, whatever. And for me, I just started writing songs.
[00:29:02] And. what I found was that I liked writing the songs and I rented a small rehearsal space down the street from my apartment, and I would go there every Thursday morning and every Sunday morning for three, four hours. And it was time to be alone, and it was time to be sad, and it was time to sing to myself. And it was time to just sort of, be alone with music and be alone with my thoughts. And of course, the whole time I was like, oh, I need to go to therapy. I should go to therapy. But I never did. I just sort of worked through it all.
[00:29:32] And what I found was that there was a lot of layers of emotion and there was a lot of thoughts and feelings. And I couldn't fit that into like a song or like two songs. And so it kept growing and growing and. Growing and growing and growing and ended up being this being 50 songs, which is quite a lot. Half the songs are instrumental 'cause I play strings, violin, and viola, and half the songs are acoustic, or electric instruments with voice.
[00:29:56] And so that was sort of the path that I took in order to work through [00:30:00] this. And it's just taken years to record mix, have them mastered, and then release them slowly. And I'm coming up to the final one, the 10th one, believe it or not. Now, so many years on from my dad passing. But, gotta get them all out. I also have more music that I'll probably release under a different project that I also made in the meantime.
[00:30:18] Charles: Okay. Yeah. 'cause, it says you're working through your grief and such. Each one of these EPs kind of came about, but I noticed like some, you released a couple, two or three months between releases and then there's span of two years between one of 'em and now it looks like maybe you've increased the release times. It just kind of came about in that progression, or did you have a bunch of songs initially and then you kind of divided them up into the story you wanted to tell?
[00:30:48] Benny: Yeah, that's, that's a really good question. So, the release schedule doesn't really correspond with the writing or the recording so much, although I did record them sequentially and release them in that order. What happened was, I really fell in love with this five song EP format where you do three vocal songs and two interludes.
[00:31:08] For some reason, that format really, I liked it. I think it was more ambitious than a single song, but not quite like a full album. And I also really liked writing those instrumental pieces that sat in between the other pieces. And a lot of those are really small. They're very, very small pieces of music. A couple of chords, a string line, a sort of resolution and like that's it. So, I really thought of them as interludes.
[00:31:34] So, most of these EPs came together where I had one or two of these songs that I'd already written and they sort of fit together in a way. And then I had to stretch to understand what the third song was gonna be.
[00:31:44] Charles: I see.
[00:31:45] Benny: And so I would stir up the same pot of emotions and sort of be like, what is this trying to tell me? And then I would sort of bring it together for that final song. And some of them are kind of silly and like diverge from the sort of core of it, and some of them are a little bit more earnest and kind of like, yeah, this is exactly what I'm feeling. And then around the fifth or sixth EP, I actually introduced my father's voice into it.
[00:32:06] And so instead of string interludes specifically, I have two interludes one of my father talking about his own death. I know it's so morbid, everyone listening, being like, oh, this guy, but it involved my father talking about his own death, my brother recorded him talking about his own death in the car while he was in the process of dying.
[00:32:22] He wasn't dying that day in the car, by the way. And so, that was really interesting and it's really fascinating to hear a 67-year-old man, who has just a very rare, very deadly brain tumor. The sort of relaxed, almost joyous moment that my brother caught of him being like living really fully in his brain, but also dying.
[00:32:43] It's a very beautiful moment. And so that EP is called Wait for What? And Wait for What is pretty straightforward. What are we waiting for? Because I don't know if you've ever been involved in this kind of situation, but everyone is sort of waiting for the person to die, even though you don't want them to die.
[00:32:56] And there's, there's sort of a, a very unsettled feeling that everybody has, but everyone is waiting. It's really human, really human thing. And I, I think one of the benefits of modern science is you sort of know when people are gonna die more often than in the past. I think probably death was almost always pretty sudden. So, you know, a terminal diagnosis is like a blessing in a way. Anyway, that's real downer. I don't really know exactly how to talk about this, this level of...
[00:33:20] Charles: When I listen to the EPs, I like the cadence of the singing vocal and then the instrumental and singing, instrumental singing. I know I'm simplifying big time.
[00:33:31] Benny: Well that is exactly what it is.
[00:33:33] Charles: And the recording of your father, reading the background of these EPs, I figured, obviously this has to be your father speaking and it really fit in and I thought it was really illuminating. Yeah. Just his whole take on it was kind of interesting.
[00:33:47] Benny: Yeah, I was really a child in a certain way and I really relied on the father figure for a lot of, it was almost like outsourced maturity, if that makes sense. And through the process of him dying, you start to understand what all the things that you were relying on this person for are, and that they're gonna go away. And it sort of forces a kind of maturity that I think is very human. It's been happening for thousands of years. And I have many friends who actually lost their fathers very young, when they were 14, 15, 16, 17. And, of course I never made the connection to them to that fact until my own father was dying and I started to develop this maturity in myself that I didn't know I had before.
[00:34:27] And then looking at those friends, I think, you know, they had a certain kind of maturity that I was attracted to as a friend. And it probably is somewhat, somewhat similar and I, I don't know. I mean, I don't wanna make some sort of like gendered statement like, oh, you know, a man needs to whatever, whatever. But I was lucky in a way. I didn't have to face this kind of thing until I was in my thirties.
[00:34:46] But, that sort of maturity, all these songs are me actually trying to put this maturity into, put the, the sort of elements of these into the music. And I think, you know, it's hard when musicians and songwriters talk about their own work. One of the things that I don't, that I didn't really hear a lot in all the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of artists that I have listened to, or probably thousands, it's sort of very rare that people and the characters in songs have parents, you know? Like you can think of like a handful of songs like Paul Simon has songs where people have parents. But not too many, you know, like Bob Dylan has songs where it references people's parents. But like, it's actually, seems like it's kind of like a rare thing.
[00:35:30] Charles: Yeah.
[00:35:31] Benny: And almost all the EPs, almost all the songs have references to parents and sort of how parents are influencing children and how children are thinking about parents and, and like, I don't know. I don't know if that's, it's not cool in any way. It's kind of lame in a way. It'd be like, you know, what does like mom and dad think. But that really just shows you how in many ways, unedited my feelings were when I was writing these. That I would write, oh, this is a song. This is an EP about a girl named Lee whose mother disappears.
[00:36:00] Okay, well that's what it's about, you know? This is a song about a girl who feels a lot of pressure from her parents. Okay. This is a song about two children dying and their parents are mourning their loss. Okay? That's like really, it is really embarrassing. Almost like how obvious, how obvious it is. Like I wonder if this guy was having some issues dealing with, his parents, you know?
[00:36:23] Charles: Yeah, but I think the lyrics are such that it's not obvious. Makes you think, you know, like, oh wait, oh man, yeah, these two kids are dying. Did they drown or, an accident or did they do it on purpose and, yeah, like, wow, okay, that would be an interesting question to have to deal with as a parent, you know? But yeah, I, didn't find it overly obvious at all, actually.
[00:36:48] Benny: Well, you, you overdosed on the music. But also, you know, it's funny, it's like as a song, as a songwriter, especially in Indie one that doesn't have like millions and millions of listeners that are all parsing every word, like, you know, a lot of famous artists have, I think we do overemphasize the lyrics, which makes sense in a way.
[00:37:05] Charles: Yeah.
[00:37:06] Benny: You know, you sort of place a lot of emphasis on like the words that are being conveyed. But I think listeners oftentimes don't weight so heavily on the lyrical content. But that is what it is. And the song that I'm gonna play for you today is the final song of the final EP.
[00:37:21] Charles: Wow, cool.
[00:37:22] Benny: You know, I lived in Japan for seven years and I lived in New York before that, and I lived in New York after that, and the whole time, up until my dad was dying, he was living in Southern California where I grew up. And so, for more than a decade or whatever, the majority of our relationship was, on the telephone. And I really liked to talk to my dad and I would call him almost every day. And when I lived in Tokyo, I'd call him in the morning. When I lived in New York, another place I call him at night.
[00:37:46] And it was just sort of like a check-in call in a way. He was sort of like, I dunno, a database of like what was going on. And you're like, oh, how you doing? You know, that kind of chitchat you hear. But we're not talking like the kinds of conversations that you hear sometimes mothers have with their daughters that go on a really long time and have lots of details. It's not really that kind of conversation. It's more like a brief check-in.
[00:38:08] And so I wrote a song called Disconnection that's just trying to capture that feeling of no more phone calls with that person, no more pick up the phone and you do that check-in and you sort of all the things that get lost in there.
[00:38:21] And I used it as sort of device in the song that I use in other songs as well, where starts with a personal verse and then the second one is a little bit historical. It's a, it's a different perspec, it's a different take on it. So, in this particular song, the second verse is about the very first phone call that was ever made. So, it's the final phone call with someone and then the first phone call ever made. And they sort of the parallel between those. So that's a little context for what I'm gonna play.
[00:38:57] Charles: Okay. Let's, give it a listen.
[00:38:58] Benny: [00:39:00] After disconnection. A sudden stillness sweeps an empty vacuum filling with sadness with defeat. The voice once filled the need, the nightly check in. Cold two wound with warmness. Now cold thinned out.
[00:40:04] Don't you go, please stop that. God, I screamed it. Don't hang for, but yell all along my voice flat a.
[00:40:49] Before disconnection. And the world's first long distance call be. [00:41:00] Had one intention confirm he'd been heard at all? Oh, how I felt the same. How are you? So long as you can hear me so long as this gets through.
[00:41:35] Please don't you go. Please don't let,
[00:41:46] don't hang the.
[00:41:51] All alone, my voice flat along a [00:42:00] human.
[00:42:28] That's disconnection with Pat Carr on the piano.
[00:42:30] Charles: All right, Benny, that was great.
[00:42:33] Charles: Looking forward to hearing, the whole completed EP. Do you have a title for it yet?
[00:42:38] Benny: Do I have a; you say a title for it yet?
[00:42:40] Charles: Title for the EP.
[00:42:42] Benny: I haven't decided the title and I haven't decided the release date.
[00:42:46] Charles: Okay. All right. Fair enough.
[00:42:47] Benny: It always takes a little bit of an emotional push to get to release things.
[00:42:52] Charles: And of course, this one will have your father's artwork on the cover.
[00:42:56] Benny: Yes.
[00:42:57] Charles: All of the images, I guess I would characterize them as kind of abstract and I didn't know if they were paintings or drawings or both.
[00:43:06] Benny: They are oil pastels. So, they're crayons?
[00:43:09] Charles: Okay.
[00:43:10] Benny: Yeah, for the most part. Not all of them, but yeah.
[00:43:13] Charles: Was he always doing art when you were growing up or was that something he picked up later?
[00:43:18] Benny: So my father immigrated to the US when he was in his early twenties, and he studied art at, uh, Pratt Institute and at Cranbrook. And eventually he went to the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. And art was really everything he cared about and interested in until sometime in the seventies when he started having children and he became a city planner.
[00:43:42] So it's a really interesting thing to grow up. Our House was like a art museum in a way. Lots of his art, lots of art supplies, but he never made art. It wasn't until years later when he was getting close to retirement that he decided to start making art again. So it was a really interesting gap where it was like your father's the former artist. So, most of these are later works of his. His earlier works are less colorful, more black and white, more prints that he made.
[00:44:11] Charles: Okay. Yeah, they're very interesting to look at and such. I thought it was a nice touch, considering the subject matter and such. yeah. Anything else, Benny, that you'd like to talk about or where people can find you or find your music.
[00:44:25] Benny: You can just search for Muted Circus. Very odd name. I don't think anyone else has that name out there.
[00:44:31] Charles: No, I don't think so. Yeah. 'cause when I searched it, it like, boom, you popped right up. There's nothing close to it.
[00:44:37] Benny: Yeah. Maybe one day I'll tell you the story of that name.
[00:44:40] Charles: Okay.
[00:44:41] Benny: Little bit of intrigue.
[00:44:43] Charles: Okay. Okay. Well, we'll look forward to that. And, I listen to all of your, music on Band Camp. It's all there.
[00:44:49] Benny: Yeah. It's on Spotify, it's on Bandcamp, it's on Apple Music. I even put em on YouTube as well.
[00:44:54] Charles: I kinda like starting with the first one and then working my way up to the present.
[00:44:58] Benny: You are a [00:45:00] purist Charles. That is a tall ask for someone, those the nine EPs.
[00:45:04] Charles: Because they've served up, maybe 'cause of their popularity or they're played more, and I'm like, I just can't do it, man. I gotta go in order and I take it all in.
[00:45:13] Benny: I like albums myself. I think it might be a generation thing.
[00:45:17] Charles: Yeah, I think it is.
[00:45:20] Benny: Just this morning I was listening to Peter Gabriel and I was like, I listen to Peter Gabriel, 1970, what is it? Six or something, cars album. And I was like, I'm gonna listen to this. And I was like so tempted to be like, I wanna listen to Salisbury Hills. Like, no, no, no. Let's start at the beginning.
[00:45:35] Charles: Yeah.
[00:45:35] Benny: Track two. But, you want to hear the whole statement, you know?
[00:45:38] Charles: Right.
[00:45:39] Benny: So, I appreciate it.
[00:45:40] Charles: Exactly.
[00:45:41] Benny: For those listening, it is not required for you to go through all 40 songs.
[00:45:46] Charles: Yeah.
[00:45:47] Benny: You can skip around.
[00:45:48] Charles: I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the lyrics and the transitions into the interludes and such. And, I encourage people to check it out. Anything else, Benny, that you wanted to mention before we sign off?
[00:46:00] Benny: Nope. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. This was really fun.
[00:46:03] Charles: Yeah, thanks for coming on and telling your stories and sharing your unreleased music with us, and we look forward to checking out the 10th EP.