An Interview with Ben of the band Arizona - part 1 from Dave Allen on Vimeo.

You may have noticed a dearth of new posts from me recently but I have a good excuse - Pop Asheville. Pop Asheville is an annual music festival and conference that takes place in Asheville, North Carolina and I believe this was their third year. This small but vibrant town in the NW of the state has a music festival that reminds me of the early days of SXSW and also of a smaller Portland-like music scene. Anyway I was invited to give the keynote speech this year. I spent an hour reminding the musicians in attendance that they are no longer in the music business, they are in the T-shirt business and they all seemed to agree. The music industry is not hurting, it’s the cd business that is in decline.

I’ll be writing later about the festival after I have gathered my thoughts. What I do want to say today is that I discovered a wonderful band while I was there. Arizona. There were many great bands performing over the weekend but Arizona stood head and shoulders above the crowded field. Perhaps it was just my own sense of the decline of standards in rock music that always leaves me pessimistic but I was shocked at how good these guys were playing live. The next day I had the honor of interviewing their lead singer Benjamin. It turned out to be a lengthy video so I will offer it up in parts. Part 2 will follow real soon.

Benjamin Morris Wigler, the self-described ‘Keith Richard Dreyfuss’ of rock, has much to say. And he says it very well and wittily too. Worth a watch. Listen as Ben talks about his four year old tub of urine that he collected from his stoned friends to load into super soakers to be used to hose down a local child molester. Listen to him sing a beautiful song a cappella and then talk about Dream Theater, Tool and Radiohead.

Arizona - Heath from the album Glowing Bird. Buy it here.

Tags: Amy Ray, Arizona, Indigo Girls, Live, MP3

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 3:47 pm and is filed under Concerts, Downloads, MP3, Music, Portland, Tours, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.