Travis Love Benson – Indie Interview – Mad Indie Media

We’re really excited to introduce to you a new segment on Mad Indie Media – our Indie Interview Series. We’re happy to share with you Mad Indie Media’s maiden interview! We interviewed DIY, improv, anti-folk musician Travis Love Benson regarding their recent music releases, their new job as an art therapist, and their experimental vaporwave side project, Suzy Sarandamn.

Austin: So excited to chat with you today, Travis Love Benson! How have you been doing?

Travis: I’m doing okay. I’ve been so secluded working on things rather than like constantly posting about the things that I’ve made. It’s like, I can’t post because I don’t want anyone to know what I’m doing. But it’s a lie. I do want people to know what I’m doing. So I’m talking to you!

Austin: I’m sure that that must be hard for you because I feel like you are always posting something about your music. I know on your Patreon you’ve been doing a song a day.

Travis: That’s what I strive for, is – I write a song a day, I post it. It’s more of a journal and then I’m working on all of these other “secret” things. Don’t think that old Travis Love Benson hasn’t been working on things, but I can’t prove that.

Austin: Have you been doing anything virtually in this weird time right now?

Travis: When everything first started last year, I was doing weekly online shows and I was trying to do as many online open mics as I could. And I was trying to create shows and have people play at them just to create a sense of community. In June for my birthday show, I had a bunch of people play. And then we did a compilation album of songs written during the pandemic and that was called This Pie is Only Crust. And I loved all of that, but obviously the pandemic hit us all differently and for me, I moved three hours away and had to be totally online with my last semester of graduate school and I finished my thesis online. And my thesis is a very emotional, touching thing that I wanted to be presenting in person. So I haven’t been doing online shows mostly because it’s this sad realization that when the world goes back to “what it was,” I’m terrified that I won’t have a place in that any more for live shows. I love seeing the responses of people to my music in real time and existing with people in a moment because that’s what music is, it’s existing in a moment with people.

Austin: Your thesis is a really amazing glimpse into your song writing process and how you create the amazing art that you do. Can you talk about that?

Travis: I’m a music therapist and I went to SUNY New Paltz for my master’s degree in music therapy. There were some issues, but I was vocal and was very much an advocate for queer and trans and non-binary rights. My master’s thesis was on my song writing and it started as me journaling my life. Every Tuesday, I’d pick up the guitar, turn on a phone recorder, and just strum and sing, whatever comes out of my mouth.

The insight that I got into how I was feeling and the absolute turmoil of emotions that I was hiding, because I didn’t realize that I was feeling them, was so shocking that I just kept doing it. And I did it over the course of a year. And then in 2019 in the summer, I visited the West Coast for the first time ever. Right after I got back from that is when I started writing music pretty much every day. Some depressive months happened where it was just like, I can’t think of anything to even improvise, but I did my best.

I started working on my thesis in the fall of 2019. I took all my improv music and I wrote down all of the lyrics and I coded those lyrics for themes. Like this line is: “the sun comes up over the hill.” What does that make me think of? Happiness, joy, elation. And then at the end of the song, I asked, “what were the major themes from this song?” And then I collected the themes by season. And it’s so powerful to see how my emotions changed based on what season it was outside.

My thesis project ended up being a five song EP. I wrote all the themes for each season – summer of 2018, for instance, was about bitterness, loss, and wonder. And then I took these main themes and did an improv based on them, and from that improv I wrote a song. I wrote a very cohesive five-song cycle as my thesis, which was about how I’ve grown as a music therapist and how I can take what I’ve learned on my journey of expressive music journaling and use it with my clients. Journaling has allowed me and hopefully allows others to connect to their past in a real way.

Austin: What your expressive music journaling process has highlighted to me, is that everybody can write music because everybody has stories to tell. There’s a lot of power in that. So since you do have the lyric booklet out, was there anything you would like to kind of share with us from that journey?

Travis: I have a song called “House that We Built,” which is this concept that all relationships that you build with absolutely anybody is like building a foundation and then building a house and that house has space in your mind.

And sometimes you only get as far as the foundation. But sometimes you build up an entire house and you get to choose what it looks like. And then the whole idea was, “what happens to that house when there’s no longer anybody living in it? How do you tear down this house?” Over the course of my song cycle, in summer 2018, there’s a lyric that’s, “place me in your house and then forget about me. Tell me I bring you luck and tell me that together we can do anything. When your house gets torn down, down to the ground, will you remember to bring me?” And then in autumn 2018, the lyrics are all about being lost. “I think a compass never points North if you’re always facing South. I know that we are lost, but we’ll be found somehow,” and then that turns into making your way back to your house.

And then transitioning into winter 2019 is all about going back to that house and then making peace with it: “I pack up my car, take one last look around, and when I blink, it’s all gone. It is just fertile ground.” And, “I take a shower and there’s just some spots that I can’t touch. I still smell the stink of you on me. But I look mirror and I say, ‘You’re beautiful. And you are loved. You can do anything that you set your mind to.’ Telling myself this everyday helps me recover. And I know depression will not find me here.”

So what I learned the most about myself through the thesis was when I was writing these songs from these time periods in my life, I didn’t realize that I had completely changed. I didn’t realize that I had grown and transitioned like that until I listened back to all of those songs and then wrote these new lyrics out based on those themes and said, wow, you know, I have grown, I have changed.

Austin: So you have a really cool and interesting side project by the name of Suzy Sarandamn. Do you want to speak a little bit about that?

Travis: So here’s the thing: I’ve never been electronically musically inclined, and that’s kind of like the joke going around recently is that all non-binary musicians make electronic music. So I wanted to try that, and I wanted to just make fun music as a side project, because Travis Love Benson was starting to get serious.

I started Suzy Sarandamn as a fun thing I created. I used to take kids songs and like warp them and like try and layer them over each other. And recently, I took Hanson’s album, Middle of Nowhere, and I created an album of every single song done in a different way. And there’s a very, very, very slowed down version of “MMMBop” that got some notice because it’s beautiful.

There’s nothing added to any of the songs, everything that you hear when you listen, is authentic to the original song. And I wanted to do that on purpose because I didn’t want to skew anyone’s perception of the song other than I’m hearing this song that exists in a new way.

You know, I’m sure that Hanson, when they perform, are so sick of performing “MMMBop,” because that is their number one song and they have to perform it at every show – the curse of having a one hit wonder. But if they could take it and turn it into something new, take it and make it something that they enjoy…that’s the point of art: to take old things and make something new out of them.

Austin:  So with that, I think we’re probably at the end of our time here. So what would you like to leave folks with?

Travis: Well first, let me just say thank you because it’s just so nice to talk about my process. This is the reason I do music: to just talk to people about doing music. But two, you can find me literally anywhere as Travis Love Benson. I’m everywhere. And I guess I’ll just leave you with some lyrics here from summer 2019:

“As each day comes and then it passes, I find myself growing. I am still growing, planting my roots in as I reached toward the bright, blessed day and the dark, secret night.” So just remember that you are always growing and you are always changing. Never feel like you’re stuck, because if you were to really look at it from an outsider perspective, I bet that noticing that you feel stuck is part of the growing process. You are changing every single day and you should learn to love who you are now rather than who you once were.

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Travis Love Benson is a DIY, improv, anti-folk artist originating from New Jersey. They currently reside in Pennsylvania and work as a music therapist. You can follow Travis Love Benson on Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, and Bandcamp. You can follow their experimental vaporwave side project, Suzy Sarandamn, on Bandcamp.

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