Today is a great day to share the latest single and music video from indie-folk songwriter Ben Copperhead. On this eclectic new song called “Franny & The Songbirds,” Copperhead channels his love of other indie-folk artists like Father John Misty, Leonard Cohen, and Surfjan Stevens into his own unique psychedelic package. The song comes from Copperhead’s new LP, Wailing Viridescence, out everywhere music is sold on April 28th. I was also able to catch up with this talented artist for a brief interview below.
How does “Franny & The Songbirds” fit into your general vision as a creative, and what made you choose it as the second single to help introduce your new LP?
I’ve been writing string trio arrangements for many of my songs since 2015. Composing a string arrangement for “Franny” allowed me to dive deeper into the harmonic and rhythmic possibilities. This song let me expand my creativity by arranging a quartet instead of just a trio. The strings complimented the song without getting in the way of the vocals and I was very pleased about the recording quality. “Franny” has a catchy melodic hook and one of my favorite bridges, which I wrote with my nylon string guitar. It offers a different kind of listening experience than other songs on the record. It was cool that the music video director, Jonathan Levy, really wanted to do this song. There were so many right reasons to make this song my second single.
Alongside your previous single “Copperhead Vagabond” how would you say “Franny & The Songbirds” fits into the general theme spread across your new LP? Sonically and thematically, where did you take inspiration from?
Franny and the Songbirds is a different type of song than Copperhead Vagabond. It’s a song that is about my cat Franny-Kaede. It’s somewhat thematic, because there’s another song, Feline Feminine, on the album that is about my other cat, Hanamaru. My cat friends are an inspiration and keep me connected to something unexplainable in words. Sonically, I took inspiration from older folk, pop, and jazz records with strings, like the Beatles, Nick Drake, or Jimmy Scott’s ‘The Source’. But I also love Ligeti and other modern and classic composers like Ravel and Debussy. Having studied how some of my favorite records were recorded and produced in the late 50s and 60s gave me inspiration to try something different.
When crafting the forthcoming LP, where did the creative process begin? How does this LP differ from your previous Baby Copperhead work?
The process began by writing new songs that I was excited about and having a desire to record most of it on my own. I’d been learning how to record with a reel to reel tape recorder and really loved the results I got, especially with vocals and acoustic instruments. I like the process of recording while playing my instrument and singing at the same time. There’s also the challenge of recording in my bedroom because there’s an above ground subway directly across the street. I have approx 5 minutes to get an entire take before the walls start shaking. Not an ideal setting for recording, but it makes me really focus, since time is of the essence. It’s about setting parameters, which is different from the way I’ve done previous albums. I put myself in charge this time, and thru trial and error figured out how to get the sounds that I wanted. For previous Baby Copperhead records, I’ve had to rely solely on another engineer to make those decisions. That can be nice when you want to just focus on the music, but maybe the results are not what you want. It’s important to be self reliant, but you still need that objectivity about your own work or it could become self indulgent. Kramer helped finalize the album by taking out a few tracks that didn’t fit and recommended adding a few older gems. He’s got a lot of experience and knows how to make great records.