Benjamin Jayne is releasing his third full-length solo album, Broken, on October 13th, and it’s a project that pushes the boundaries of his previous work in terms of genre elements, song structures, vocal ranges, and even themes. Essentially, the album takes inspiration from confronting oneself in the midst of the life that has built up around us, steeped in responsibilities and expectations. Are we still the same person that we set out to be, or have we veered off course? Taking stock and setting new goals is the result, if only we can face the difficulties of that initial confrontation.
While Benjamin Jayne has previously been associated with Folk and singer/songwriter approaches to music, with Broken, electronic elements, never totally absent from his music, have begun to creep in more fully and make their presence felt in terms of mood and expression. While there are still occasional Folk elements that emerge with contrasting impact, a real expansiveness develops from the artist’s continued exploration of hybrid genres. Benjamin Jayne is a moniker for Benjamin Wright, who also works in psychiatric care, and I spoke with him about how that work relates to his music, what kinds of confrontations we face in life as we mature, and how change became a big part of the album Broken.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I have heard your music described as being Folk Rock, but listening to this album, I don’t really think genre words easily apply. How do you feel about me saying that?
Benjamin Jayne: [Laughs] That makes me smile.
I saw that you studied at Berklee, and that you have been a professional musician on the West Coast, that you went back to school and you’re currently in psychiatric health care. What does that entail?
I actually went to school to become a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I do the same exact thing that a psychiatrist does.
I don’t know if it would surprise you or not that over the past few years, I’ve spoken to four or five people who were musicians but also psychiatrists or therapists.
That’s interesting. I can see the draw to both. When I was working in an inpatient psychiatric hospital, we had music therapists coming in. They are both definitely forms of healing.
My more fluffy sense is that these are empathetic people who do both these, people who are connected with their emotions. Maybe it makes sense that someone might be both.
Compassion and empathy, for sure. Feeling a lot and being around feelings a lot. It’s certainly an interesting field to practice in for material. I may switch specialties at some point because I don’t want to get burned out.
It’s very clear-sighted to be able to question how long we stay in what fields. I know a lot of teachers who get very burned out but don’t feel they can allow themselves to do something else.
Hopefully, if you’re still flexible in your thinking and are prepared to take on some risk, you can do that. You need to do things that are good for your body and health overall, for sure.
Some of this ties into the album well, because Broken seems like a very confrontational album, where some songs are about assessing one’s position in life and trying to make changes.
You can find yourself waking up from a fog and you could find yourself in a state like we were just talking about, too committed to a path that you’re stuck in. You’re blinded by trying to take care of all the responsibilities around you, and though time moves really fast, if you’re lucky, you can stop and take stock of what your needs are. For me, the album is that. I stopped and took stock of what my needs were and whether I was treated myself how I needed to be treated. If not, you have some pretty big challenges to unravel. So, yes, it’s definitely a confrontation album.
The first stage of that kind of situation sounds scary, though the outcome may not be. Because a lot of people acknowledge that there’s a problem or imbalance that is held back to preserve the peace. There’s the very typical American situation of having a family with kids and a relationship that’s not working, but it never gets acknowledged because it would destabilize the family.
In the context of my patients, I see so many people who are miserable under those circumstances. Often the kids are already grown and out of the house, but finances are so intertwined, and they are so dependent on past behaviors and patterns. They come in wanting me to fix that, but they need to look at how their life is built. They are terrified. People come up against that fear of change and there’s no way they can leap. Of course, a lot of society is set up around finances and we’re chasing the wrong goals.
Were you aware that you were feeling conflicts in yourself and that led directly to you creating this new music, or was it less of a conscious thing?
I’m generally pretty reflective, but I have the ability to do that but also compartmentalize and keep on moving. I finished my last record, my studio was set up, and my habit is to have it available in case something pops up, I can just run upstairs and throw the idea down. For this album, I wasn’t aware that I was writing about confrontation, or change, or confusion. I didn’t really realize what was going on until I’d write a full song and listen back to it. Then I’d discover what it was.
That makes a lot of sense. Rarely do people sit down and realize what’s making them feel strange, but they might realize just that the climate of their life feels off in some way.
Right, then you poke around a little bit and analyze it. A funny aside is that one of the songs is totally different, it’s about Batman! [Laughs]
I had thoughts about that song. That explains a lot! It’s very moody.
I do love Batman, he’s my favorite superhero. There are a couple of other outliers on the album. “Shoot Through The Wire” is about the Ukraine.
Am I right in thinking that you let yourself range further with your sound on these songs? Where did you think you were starting from?
You might notice this if you listen to my first album, second album, and now the third album, but there’s an evolution and I’m definitely trying to get a little heavier. There are more electric guitars and more electronic elements. I’ve been enjoying that. It’s fun to create textures in this way. For me, doing the singer/songwriter thing is becoming a little two-dimensional because I’ve done it for so long. I haven’t run out of ideas, but it’s just not as inspiring to me right now.
But I love getting lost in samples, effects, and textures right now. So that’s definitely intentional. I want to move further in that way, and also I want to challenge my vocals and actually sing heavier and louder. I’m in a slow transition into that style of music, but I think a lot of that is out of apprehension and fear.
I only found the ability to sing well enough to release music in 2018 and 2019. I just wasn’t using my voice right when I was younger. I have a lot friends around me who say, “I know you can sing with a lot more power.” But I’ve been apprehensive to do that, so I’m just leaning in a little bit at a time.
That’s really cool that you’re taking that on. I definitely see quite a few vocal approaches among the songs. Do you think your co-producer, Drew Skinner, who has worked a lot in Electronica and Rock, has influenced you to do more electronic stuff?
I do the whole record, including bass, drums, strings, and production, before I send it to him, but he is really big into electronics. He was my college roommate, so having that friendship, though, and seeing elements of that over the course of us working together, has inspired me. But that’s also along with other artists I’ve been following. I’ve seen other artists take some risks like this, like if you look at Sufjan Stevens’ body of work. He was writing super Indie Folk, singer/songwriter stuff, then he came out with The Ascension. That’s super-inspiring.
How did you typically work on these songs? Did you create bits and pieces and then assemble songs, or did you just work on one song at a time?
It was different for various songs. I think that I wrote “Broken” in about 20 minutes. That one was one of those moments where you sit down and it just comes out. The lyrics came out in the same sitting. The skeleton of the song was pretty clear. It’s a pretty minimal song, but then I just built some ethereal elements around it. Then, for a song like “Love”, I was thinking about Sufjan Stevens again, and how he has such great melodies, whether he sings them or plays them. I was doodling around on the piano making up melodies, and that one just popped out. I recorded it and then looped it and built a song around that loop. It wasn’t as organic as “Broken”.
Actually, the lyrics on that one were originally pretty dark, but I was getting sick of only writing dark stuff, so I felt like I owed the song some positivity. I re-did the song. Sometimes a song just doesn’t come together. There’s a song that Drew and I have been wrestling with for a couple of years that I’ll probably put out as a single. Sometimes it’s like putting together Ikea furniture without the directions.
So true. I have many shelves with elements on backwards that I won’t fix. Does the fact that you don’t really use traditional song structures give you more freedom when you’re thinking about adding unconventional layers or elements?
Well, “Shoot Through The Wire” was all done when I realized that it would be cool to have kids, and the sound of a kids’ musical toy, in the outro. In my mind, the song is so devastating that I thought it would be cool to have kids choral singing at the end. So there’s definitely a process of reduction, decomposition, and rebuilding that goes on with some of these tunes.
I grew up in an environment that lent itself to the way I write. I had all these artists around growing up. We hung out at this farm in Pennsylvania near my house that was an apple farm and nursery for plants. That was run by a really cool couple who had a son who was brilliant and acted as a hostel or a commune for traveling musicians and theater groups. There was always art happening there and you could go there and stay there for a week as long as you did dishes, and were respectful, and helped out.
There was a music room there that was always set up with instruments. There was always improvisation and zero rules. One weekend, we had a jam session that lasted for longer than 24 hours, with people swapping in and out. It was a really free-form environment, and I spent many years there. Very abstract artists were coming through there, and I think that meant that I was not as traditional in my approach to writing.
That’s such an unusual story to hear these days and a great one.
It was a magical place. It truly was. And it’s still very much in my life. I recently went down there for a memorial for one of the owners.
It’s clearly still impacting what you’re doing, which is excellent. It’s very hard to make music, release it, and handle public interaction, but with a foundation like that, you’ve seen the best side of music.
Yes, it’s about the music. It’s about expression. Everything else is just extra.
Some of the songs on this album are not exactly dark or don’t end in darkness, I’ll note. I even think that the song “Broken” has a little bit of it that’s not totally defeated.
I agree. It’s interesting that you say that because I see hope in that song. If you look at “A Million Miles”, at the very end, it opens up. The body of the song is restrictive and dark, but then the end opens up and brightens up.
That was the other song I was thinking of that suggests a sense of movement from one place to another, and movement is usually a hopeful thing. Change is scary, as we were talking about before, but if change is a constant, it will move out of darkness, also.
I think we all need to allow ourselves to continue evolving, and I think oftentimes we forget to do that or things distract us from doing that. I always find it really interesting to talk to people who have just retired or whose kids have just gone to college. They are sitting in my office and they don’t know who they are. It’s pretty profound. I think some of this album is fighting against that tide, making sure that I don’t lose a sense of self while being pushed through the decades with responsibilities and expectations.
