![]() And it’s extra sad because things were going so good in my career. ![]() I’m a fucking zombie right now.” I didn’t want to leave my family, I didn’t want to work. On the drive home back to Texas, I called my booking agent and my publicist and everybody. They were like, “You guys 15 minutes away from not waking up.” Then we were in the hospital for two days on oxygen. Long story short, it was carbon monoxide in our cabin. I don’t know what’s going on.” I stood up and collapsed to the ground. Liz woke up in the middle of the night and was feeling really sick. That winter, we went to this cute little cabin at the top of a mountain. ![]() ![]() Obviously, you can fly to Colorado or fly to any beautiful beach, but we like to hop in the car. When you go to the mountains, it’s usually in New Mexico. We live in Texas, so when you go to the beach, it’s usually the panhandle of Florida. Me, Liz, Dorian and Judah, we often in the wintertime go to New Mexico. Things were really on a high in the Ben Kweller universe. It was a whole interactive album art experience that got nominated for a Grammy. The lyric book had all the guitar chords in it, so it was like a sing-along book. It was this fold-out diorama that was really beautiful. It sold a bunch of records on our label, which was like, “Wow, this is fucking cool.” We put together this ambitious album artwork concept. For an independent release, Go Fly A Kite did really well, commercially - whatever that means. I had just started a new label, The Noise Company. KWELLER: In 2013 I had released an album called Go Fly A Kite. How are the events of 2013 connected to this moment? And what have you planned in the live shows to honor Dorian’s memory? No one would have blamed you if you just… didn’t want to return to work, ever. Right, Dorian’s passing happened in February, just as you were about to start promoting the 20th anniversary of your solo debut album, Sha Sha. We were like, oh my god, do we just cancel everything? But that rewinds us back to 2013 - when I disappeared. That was gonna be so much fun… and then he died. It was gonna be his first tour opening for me. I was thinking a lot about you and your family when I saw the news.īEN KWELLER: Thank you so much. Please know how incredibly sorry I am for your loss. Ahead of tour kick-off, Kweller was kind enough to sit down with me for a Zoom call, where we dug into memories around Sha Sha, being mentored by Evan Dando, witnessing Bright Eyes history, and letting music lead the way in the wake of Dorian’s loss. Up next are dates in Minneapolis, Chicago, and back-to-back shows in New York on Nov. 4, he kicked off its 20th anniversary tour at LA’s Teragram Ballroom. By playing through his pain, Kweller finds a way to honor his son.Įarlier this year, Kweller released a Sha Sha deluxe edition, and on Nov. Though no one would blame him for wanting to hide away again after Dorian’s death, Kweller has made a concerted effort to keep going. Kweller has discussed his disappearance in plenty of interviews, and he does again in this one: Following a near-death experience, he fell into a lengthy depression and just couldn’t bring himself to record or tour. Save for one extended break, Kweller has steadily released albums since then - six in total, with 2021’s Circuit Boredom arriving nearly a decade after 2012’s Go Fly A Kite. In the early-to-mid 2000s, Sha Sha created a middle ground between the Moldy Peaches’ quirk-folk and melodic alternative rock marketed to the cargo-shorts-wearing crowd (think: Guster, Pete Yorn). Kweller’s debut solo album, Sha Sha, dropped in 2002 via ATO Records and featured 11 pop-forward tracks that swung between thoughtful (“Family Tree”), sweetly off-the-cuff (“Wasted & Ready”), and genuinely sincere (“Falling”). Unlike scene leaders the Strokes, who melded the Velvet Underground’s downtown nonchalance with the Ramones’ hooky punk, Kweller’s shaggy, unvarnished piano-rock felt distinctly more West Coast, as if the Beach Boys developed a taste for distortion pedals, or if the Schwartzman brothers rocked a little harder in Phantom Planet/Rooney, or if early Weezer had been more irreverent. As he came of age in the early 2000s, Kweller moved to New York and formed relationships with a whole mess of rock revivalists. Originally from Greenville, Texas, Kweller spent the ’90s playing in the alt-grunge outfit Radish, which developed a local following in Dallas. Kweller had been Dorian’s age when multiple record labels started courting him as a budding indie-folk solo artist. Kweller had been preparing to take his oldest on a summer tour, marking something of a full-circle moment for father and son. Dorian had been a musician as well - he’d even released several songs under his middle name, ZEV. In February of this year, the singer-songwriter’s 16-year-old son, Dorian Zev Kweller, was tragically killed in a car accident. Ben Kweller has suffered an inconceivable loss.
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