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Benjy Ferree is not a rock star, he’s a bartender.  As a bartender, he has heard things and seen things while dead sober that people do when they’re too wasted to remember, things that any sane person would try to forget. His music is necessarily informed by a sense of apartness…seeing him play live I’ve often wondered if he’s measuring up the crowd as customers—this one looks like a good tipper, that one should be 86’d, this couple is going to make out and spill their damn drinks all over me—and despite their catchy folk-blues based hooks his songs have always seemed on the edge of sarcasm, like Paul Westerberg’s or Kurt Cobain’s.

His new album Come Back to the Five and Dime Bobby Dee Bobby Dee is explicitly centered on an outsider: Bobby Driscoll, the child star who fell off, did a bunch of drugs and died young in New York before Warhol could even make him into a Superstar. It’s not a fancy rock opera or anything, but the songs have a unity—harder, more glam than his last one, with elements of Black Key blues and lots of doubled-lead vocals that repeat and mock the main lyrical lines as the music swings from 50s ballads to Spaghetti Western surf-rock.

But Benjy is more than a unique and creative musician, just like every bartender is more than a drink craftsman. By necessity, looking into this dark motive in the human heart that gapes open when folks are flying high late at night, you start to develop theories about how it all works and what it all means, and you lose a lot of patience for the gossip and small talk that take up most day-to-day interactions. The following interview is full of nuggets of wild and audacious wisdom, and I feel lucky to have had the conversation—but it’s not too concerned with like “What’s your favorite place to eat tour bagels?” or “What kind of guitar do you play?” I’ve bolded some of my favorite lines, so if you’re compiling a wiki-quote page for the man you can just skip to those.

On this side of the bar, Benjy doesn’t pull punches either–in  words or music. Maybe he sees a little worse in us than we deserve, but unlike most people we know he’s not lying to himself. And unlike most musicians you can count on him playing exactly what the fuck he feels like playing and no more. Fortunately for both sides it’s resulted in a lot of moving and melodically innovative rock and roll.

BYT: So you’re playing Sol (ed–SOM! oops! sorry!) record store tomorrow for Record Store Day, just you?

BF: Yeah just me.

BYT: Doing anything special planned or just whatever you feel like playing?

BF: Just playing whatever I feel like playing, yeah.

BYT: Have you played record store shows like that before? Is it something you enjoy?

BF: I like playing record store shows. My first show in DC was at DCCD… well it was either that or the Velvet Lounge. I played there a bunch of times because I didn’t know any clubs in DC and my friend used to own Velvet Lounge. So at least in DC I started out playing record stores.

BYT: It’s weird that there’s a record store day right? Like they’re national treasures or something. Are you into saving vinyl or record stores as a cause?

BF: When he asked me to play the gig, I didn’t even think about that I just wanted to play my friend’s record store. But records actually aren’t disappearing; they’re making more of them than they have in a long time. Record stores have been, but at least the ones that are left over maybe that will keep them alive and in enough business and maybe in the future people can bring back record stores.

BYT: I think the last DC DJ record store closed recently, DJ Hut…

BF: Yeah that’s horrible

BYT: We’ve both observed the decline of record stores in DC over the years. Anyway I was going to ask you about where you see yourself as a DC native…your Wikipedia page says “a musician from Prince George’s county.”

BF: Yeah I’m not from D.C.

BYT: Most musicians don’t make that distinction, but you always make that clear in interviews and stuff…

BF: Nobody’s really from D.C…. well, except a few people. Most people if they’re from the area they’re from Northern Virginia, or Montgomery County or P.G. county or whatever. At least the people I know. I wasn’t raised here. It’s like someone with a British accent. You ask where they’re from and they say: “I’m from London!” Then if they move to another country that speaks another language, you can still tell they’re from London. Everybody’s like that about their roots.

BYT: Except that when some band moves to Brooklyn they instantly start telling people they’re from Brooklyn rather than Iowa or whatever…

BF: Well sure. I’ve moved around, the last two years I was living in Silver Spring and I traveled. Now I live in Adams Morgan, indefinitely. On my Myspace it says DC because that’s where I’m based out of. I’m only in here because I want to be with my lady and I’ve got a lot of friends in dc and that’s the only reason why I’m here. I grew up taking the metro here, and I love it.

BYT: Did growing up around DC but outside of it give you a different perspective than some band that moved here and thinks of themselves as “DC band”?

BF: Well I only know my experience I don’t know other people’s experiences. I know what I know. I’m glad I got to grow up in P.G. country—I was spoiled by culture and experience. I had an amazing childhood and good or bad it made me who I am. It’s like, I wish I could speak Spanish: whenever I see people speaking Spanish I get really jealous, like “Wow they can talk to another world.” There are all these different dimensions in the world, all these different languages and if you know these languages you can get this different perspective. I always felt like the way I was raised and the area I was raised in and the stuff I got to see made the music precious to me. You get on the metro and you go see Fugazi for free and the Washington Monument or a show where they’re talking about the Latin Bank and I didn’t know shit about the Latin Bank so I learned a lot. I mean we had Fugazi and we had Chuck Brown and Eva Cassidy and, I mean Bad Brains? Bad Brains was the first band where I actually asked my brother: What is wrong with these guys? I didn’t even know they were Rastafarians. Because to me it was all one thing, Go-Go and Punk Rock, and those were indigenous to DC. Well I mean punk didn’t come from DC but the punk that came out of DC at the time was just amazing. And I got to see it and I got spoiled by that…

BYT: What do you mean by spoiled?

BF: I just got to see the shows. I saw Bad Brains, I met Chuck Brown. You meet people when you’re young and impressionable who something extraordinary and you realize they’re just like you. And it inspires me to do my own thing, and do what I gotta do to make me happy and not go around killing people or whatever, giving you inner peace. The only reason people do music is because they have to. It doesn’t matter if people like your music or not, if you’re a musician, it’ll make you crazy if you don’t play.

BYT: I feel spoiled too, like music isn’t as good around here since then. Growing up in Montgomery County I went to a lot of the same shows, and I feel like sometime in the early part of this century the shows stopped having the same vibe, the same excitement…

BF: That’s because everyone’s caught up in aesthetics: how they’re supposed to act and respond. It’s like… some guy was talking about Say Anything, and he said that Lloyd Dobler represents a fake way that you’re supposed to act when you get heartbroken. That’s not really how people act. Or it’s like someone who watched the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live back when I was a kid, and then all the jocks (or anybody!) would come in and say these joke like they invented the joke themselves and everyone would laugh: Hahahaha! It’s the same thing with style in DC. Everybody dresses a certain way, because they do, they do all over the world, they do want to fit in. They want to be cool because music is cool, and style is cool, so people want to vibe out and have a good time.

BYT: Doesn’t sound that bad…

BF: I’m all about it. You’ve got great examples of style in music: soul music, Stax Records, Studio One, like rockabilly or sharkskin suits, people look good. Mods: kids who were working class but they dressed to the nines. There’s a pride you have dressing a certain way: wearing the clothes that you like and being proud of the music that you listen to and representing the music you like. Thing is, sometimes that can go backwards too. People don’t know what to think so they want to be told what to think. They’ll buy a record because Pitchfork said that it’s good. Now I don’t necessarily think they recommend good records, but that’s just me. I don’t want to be told what to buy because what the fuck, I’m going to listen to someone who’s not a musician? Not that I’m an elitist but if you’re not a musician how can you get paid to rag on bands? Why don’t you get paid to celebrate bands? Why don’t you get paid to talk about records you do like, because what’s the point of living if you’re going to talk about bad music? That’s horrible! Socially, people act based on how they’re supposed to act. Everyone’s afraid to speak out and say what they really think. It’s that way with politics; it’s definitely that way with art. Everybody wants to be safe. But I don’t want to go see a musician that’s safe.

BYT: Right…

BF: To me, originality is when you get on a stage and you don’t care about how you come off, you don’t care how you look, and you don’t care about who’s in the room. I don’t play music to be cool. I’ve never been cool—I’m never going to be cool. And I definitely don’t play music to hang out with cool kids or cool people. Because cool kids are usually the most fucking boring people you’ll ever meet in your life, because cool people just talk about themselves. They don’t want to talk about what’s going on in the news, they don’t want to talk about stuff that makes you think. They just want to talk about who’s cool, who’s looking at you , and blah blah blah blah blah. I’m a bartender so maybe I’m a little jaded about social graces. What’s wrong with just laughing at someone’s joke? Well laughing at a joke produces vulnerability, and you can’t be vulnerable if you’re out in a social setting. We could all be dead man: I don’t want to hang out and be cool, that shit is for the fucking birds. If you’re cool, hang out and share the cool. What’s really cool is laughing at people’s jokes, what’s cool is dancing how you really want to dance. I wish the mashed potato would come back, at least that’s something that we all could do together.

BYT: I wanted to ask about your new record…where did all the reviews get the idea that it’s a concept record?

BF: Man I have no idea; I never said that it was a concept record.

BYT: The name is from an Altman movie right? I remember loving it as a kid but I don’t if it has any bearing on the story of Bobby Dee…

BF: I don’t know, I just stole the title, you know?

BYT: Well even if every song isn’t about the same guy, there’s a common emotion running through it—I think it’s pretty well summed up by that sarcastic line on Pisstopher Crisstopher, “Won’t somebody play the guitar while I cry…” sort of a self-mocking bitterness at your own defeat?

BF: Well that song’s about my friend Christopher who had cancer and he died about seven or eight months ago, so that songs about him. It’s pretty much the story of the life of my friend Chris.

BYT: Am I wrong to hear a lot of bitterness in that track?

BF: I don’t really plan all this stuff out but, with that song, he was a friend of mine, I knew the guy personally, so I got into his head a little bit and at times he was pissed off. For people who get cancer at a young age, I mean, you live and then you get cancel and you die. Now don’t get me wrong, I try my hardest to be a hopeful person, and I’m all about that way of life. But if you die you die, and that’s it. So I imagine that my friend Chris was a little pissed off. You can only fight for so long. I can only really say that much…there’s a lot else I can say but it’s nobody’s business but me and Chris. You know what I’m saying, somebody fights for so long and they never get a break, they never get a breath of air—it’s got to be exhausting. Of course it’s exhausting to have cancer, but it’s got to just beat you down and it’s got to piss you off sometimes. So people say it’s a childish name, I get that all the time, and I say yeah it is a childish name. It’s making fun of somebody for being pissed off. It’s a stupid playground name. People who are dying they don’t have time for metaphor, they don’t dilly dally, they just tell you how they feel about what really matters and what really counts.

BYT: Speaking of hope…

BF: Hell yeah.

BYT: I wanted to ask about what you think of the state of music in DC or in general…there are all these tools now for bands to market and promote themselves…are things getting better for independent musicians?

BF: I’m just holding out. What I mean is, apparently things go in cycles, and I think eventually people are going to stop making such bad music. I mean specifically music that’s bought and sold, I’m not talking about my hometown or New York or any place specifically. It’s like McDonalds meat. People want to eat so much meat that they’ve got to produce so much crappy steroid diseased abused animal meat. So people turn to these magazines that somehow get the idea that they know what’s good for you. See, the most important thing is: going to shows. If you want to get exposed to music, the only way to trust an artist is not by the record but by the show. The record is just a movie that someone makes…if you can’t go see Tom Waits, he doesn’t play shows that often, so here’s a record to hold you over until he plays, it’s better than nothing. It’s a document, a movie, but it’s just manufactured stuff. Like Hip Hop. Hip Hop is one of the best folk music forms in the world but we haven’t heard any good Hip Hop on the radio in a long time. Every once in a while you might but…it sounds like Republican country club music to me. I work in DC I hear country club Republicans all the time, and all they care about is money and stuff I’m not really down with. Just caring about money–it’s not healthy, those aren’t real emotions, they’re Lloyd Dobler emotions. You know how when you hear Britney Spears doing that fake sexy voice?

BYT: Laughs

BF: I’m serious. I’m being serious. I’m not even dissing these girls, I’m just saying, there’s a style of fake emotion that’s supposed to be sexy. Like when you put up the devil horns, that means “rock,” like Jack Black in School of Rock. They’re just House of Blues or Hard Rock Café stereotypes of rock and roll. All the stuff that’s manufactured right now isn’t music, it’s just soulless tripe. Now it’s always been around, but it’s so much worse now with the internet. Like some band will write me on Myspace and they haven’t even heard my music and they want me to advertise theirs. It’s like why would you write me dude? I know you’re into whatever you’re into, and I don’t go around badmouthing the kind of stuff you do, but also I wouldn’t ask someone to advertise for me if I hadn’t met them in person. I know I’m an old man, but that’s just soulless. I appreciate kids that give out flyers, even if it’s a band I don’t like, because they’re putting their money where their mouth is, they’re living it. They are who they say they are, not who they want people to think of them. I’m not saying everyone has to be poor to be a real artist, but you do have to be honest. You have to be honest to be a real artist. But this whole tangent I went on is just about consumerism and the machine of music, not real music, not the music I listen to. I don’t read Rolling Stone or Spin unless I’m sitting on a toilet in the airport.

BYT: So to you there are these two worlds of music, one local and underground and the other online and mainstream and the one isn’t ever going to kill the other? You think good music will always be around?

BF: Always always always. Even if I don’t believe it I have to tell myself over and over and eventually I’ll believe it. It’s always going to be there. Unless some scientist comes down and disproves it. From heaven. Some scientist from heaven, an alien or something like that comes down and says “Music is never going to be good again in my mathematic calculations blah blah blah,” maybe I’ll believe that. But even then, I’m sorry—the human spirit will prevail.

Benjy is playing for free on Saturday at one of the last bastions of reality in DC, Som Records, to celebrate Record Store day. Come feel the realness, I promise it is at least twice as intense as this interview.

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