Jay Bennett – Bigger Than Blue

 

Jay Bennett – Bigger Than Blue

By

Jesse E. Mullen

 

You’re a member of one of the most acclaimed indie bands of your time. You can play more musical instruments than can be counted a human’s fingers and toes. Your mind is overflowing with ideas. And then it all goes away.

So was the story of Jay Bennett in the summer of 2001. He had just finished work on the fraught sessions which gave birth to Wilco’s seminal Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. He was likely looking forward to whatever came next with the group – touring, superstardom – but it didn’t happen that way.

Frontman and co-songwriter Jeff Tweedy summoned Bennett to the Wilco loft one evening in August 2001, and – according to Learning How To Die, Greg Kot’s 2004 oral history of the band – looked Bennett in the eye and strung together a metaphor that still lives on in infamy in Wilco lore: “a circle can only have one center.”

Whatever the truth of that may be, one thing is for certain: Bennett was no longer in Wilco. And while he quickly rebounded from that, releasing a new album with Edward Burch, The Palace At 4AM (Part 1) on the same day as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, he would soon have more grief to give him inspiration.

First was his divorce, which as Bennett himself said “there is no such thing as a happy divorce.” On a more public level however was his portrayal in the 2002 Sam Jones documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco which covered the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

Whether through editing or slicing together footage from separate days, Jones cast Bennett as the villain. A pompous know-it-all who lacked the tact to deal with intra-band relationships. However, according to a new documentary – Gorman Bechard’s 2022 film Where Are You, Jay Bennett? – this was fabricated by only including footage where Bennett was acting this way and no other members of the band.

With all of this weighing heavily on his mind, Bennett dealt with it the only way he knew how – make another record. Or three. His creativity and inspiration was overflowing to such a degree at the time that Bennett had more songs than he knew how to deal with.

Always a prolific multi-instrumentalist, Bennett turned into a bit of a “mad scientist” during this period. He would frequently record songs with multiple basses, multiple keyboards, and random sound effects generated from vintage toys which he repurposed as musical instruments.

But prolificy is one thing. The real question is, how did all of this music sound? And could Bennett capture all of his sonic glory going it alone? The first album of the trilogy, Bigger Than Blue, was released on April 20^th, 2004. And it shows Bennett in his full glory.

The album begins with the quiet acoustic strumming of “My Little Wicked One.” Bennett sings in his warm baritone to a lost lover – presumably his ex – saying “I owe you everything, I owe you all of my pain,” and asking her “why can’t you control yourself?” It’s a slow, pretty tune which also manages to draw the listener in.

Next up is the irreverent “Charming And Plastic.” A jaunty rocker which manages to sound like The Byrds, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison, it’s a lot of fun. The lyrics also manage to reference Billy Bob Thorton and Dr. Seuss in the same line.

On a more serious note, is “Let’s Count Our Losses.” A slower country-influenced track, with (more) George Harrison-esque slide guitar and electric piano, Bennett seems to be singing about excesses of a different, non-musical kind. He sings “this rut’s too deep, you’ve cut me down to scale this time,” and that “you could lay your heart down on that line/and I’d still cross it.”

Bennett also questions his sobriety on this track wondering if he’ll ever be so again. However, this seems to have a double meaning, as the previous lyrics deal with the end of a relationship. That relationship seems to be one where neither party is willing to admit defeat, thus Bennett waving the white flag in surrender. “We’ve wasted too much time/Let’s count our losses.”

Back to the Wilco saga, Bennett was heavily involved in the Mermaid Avenue project, where he, Tweedy and English songwriter Billy Bragg selected lyrics from the Woody Guthrie archive to turn into completed songs. As Guthrie dealt with a neurodegenerative disease for the last several years of his life, he was no longer able to play guitar or sing.

However, he wrote hundreds of sets of lyrics, with little notes on them, possibly instructing future songwriters how to “finish” them. One of the most famous examples was “California Stars” where Woody wrote “there’s not a ton of lyrics, so sing em twice.”

But just because Bennett was no longer in Wilco, didn’t mean he wasn’t going to continue the project himself. Bigger Than Blue featured the love song “Cajun Angel.” Set on a shrimp boat in Louisiana, Guthrie wrote a lovely set of lyrics describing a woman with lips like red berries and a voice like an angel.

In Bennett’s hands, the song is poignant and minimal on the sonic landscape, with just a finger-picked acoustic guitar, a national steel guitar, and Bennett’s warm vocal. Bennett also adds a melancholic element – which wasn’t apparent in the original set of lyrics – playing in the key of E minor. A wistful and soothing track.

Speaking of melancholy, perhaps the track which best fits that description is “Songs That Weren’t Finished.” Perhaps recognizing the overflow of ideas for songs that he had, Bennett uses his unfinished works as a metaphor for his inability to save a relationship. Could it be addressed to an ex? Or is this one to Jeff Tweedy himself? Only Bennett knows for sure.

Musically, it’s a sparse tune with keyboards, minor key acoustic guitars, and brush-stroke drumming. Bennett adds high harmonies in the bridge which sweeten the arrangement and make the track an almost-sequel arrangement-wise to “Poor Places” off of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

But perhaps the track with the strongest resemblance to that album is the closer, “God’s Coffee.” No Bennett album would truly be complete without at least one track which is draped in a sonic landscape. And this one fits the bill.

Bennett adds mellotrons (which move from the right speaker to the left), intentional audio dropouts (remember those on old tapes?), backwards guitars, and a rising/falling acoustic guitar melody. It’s a lot of fun to hear Bennett back in full “Wilco” mode, experimenting with recording technology and just generally having a blast.

But unfortunately, the good times wouldn’t last forever. Bennett died in May 2009, due to a leaky pain-patch while awaiting hip surgery. He was 45. But even if Bennett’s ending was a tragic one, his body of work and creative spirit lives on in Bigger Than Blue.

Undertow/2004