Last November, I got an email from my
friend Rik James, host of the Americana Backroads program on KGLT
radio in Bozeman, Montana asking if I knew of Ben Bullington. It was the first time I’d heard of him.
It turned out that Ben, who had died about
a year earlier from pancreatic cancer at age 58, was a family doctor in the tiny
town of White Sulphur Springs, Montana who also wrote songs – mostly, I assume,
for himself, his friends and his family. Between 2007 and 2013, he recorded and
self-released five CDs of his songs.
Rik passed my name and address on to Joanne Gardner, a close friend of Ben’s
who had helped him put out the CDs and who has continued to spread the word
about him and his songs. She sent me the five CDs and they revealed Ben
Bullington as one of the finest singer-songwriters I’d ever encountered. Had I
heard them when they were first released, each would have been on my annual
year-end best-of lists for the years they were released.
DARRELL
SCOTT
10
Songs of Ben Bullington
Full
Light Records
Nashville-based singer-songwriter Darrell Scott met Ben Bullington toward the end of his life through Joanne Gardner,
a mutual friend, and Darrell also discovered what a great songwriter he was. On
10 Songs of Ben Bullington, he offers
some fine, often very moving interpretations of 10 of the 50-something songs from
his five albums.
The album opens with “The One I’m Still
Thinking About,” a beautiful song written with love about a former love. As
someone who hosted a folk music radio program for many years (and who still
does occasionally), I appreciated the way Ben wrote folk music radio into the
song.
Darrell performs solo on the album and
other favorite tracks include “Born in ’55,” a narrative that travels through
the years calling attention to many of the history-changing events that those
of us born in the middle of the last century have been witness to; “Green
Heart,” a vivid reminiscence of falling in love for the first time as teenager;
and “I’ve Got to Leave You Now,” a poignant song I presume Ben wrote for his
sons during his final year after his cancer diagnosis (it was on his final
album).
10
Songs of Ben Bullington is a fine album and great
tribute from one songwriter to another. The greatest success this album can
have – and I’m sure that it will have – would be to inspire listeners
unfamiliar with Ben Bullington to search out his own recordings.
BEN
BULLIGTON
Two
Lane Highway
White
Sulphur Spring
Satisfaction
Garage
Lazy
Moon
Ben
Bullington
Two
Lane Highway, released in 2007, is a superb
introduction to the work of Ben Bullington. Like Darrell’s album, it also opens
with “The One I’m Still Thinking About” before continuing with such fine songs
as “Sittin’ on the Porch,” a tribute to the great joys found in making music
and writing songs; “When the Wind Blows from the East,” written from the
perspective of a D-Day soldier; and “Corby Bond,” a story song in which Ben
assumes the persona of a travelling oil field worker.
As good as the first album was – and it
was, as I said, superb – Ben’s second album, White Sulphur Springs, released in 2008, was even better. Ben’s
singing was more confident and the album, recorded in Tennessee, benefitted
from some stellar backup work from multi-instrumentalist Fats Kaplin and from a fine duet with Rodney Crowell on “Toe the Line.” Other highlights include the
topical commentary of “I’m a Stranger,” featuring lovely harmonies from Tracy Nelson; “Born in ’55,” one of the
best songs on Darrell Scott’s tribute CD; and “White Sulphur Springs,” a vivid
description of Ben’s home and hometown and the people who live there.
The production values and backup musicians
introduced on the second album continued on the third, Satisfaction Garage, released in 2010. And this album also
contained a superb set of highlighted by “The Engineer’s Dark Lover,” a lovely
song inspired by a lonely scene at a small town train station; “Lester Mays (He
Lived the Way He Wanted To),” a tribute to an original character reminiscent of
the old man in Guy Clark’s “Desperadoes
Waiting for a Train”; and “Would You Walk With Me Tonight?” a courting song filled
with vivid imagery.
By 2012, when Ben recorded Lazy Moon, his fourth album. The template
was pretty much set in stone. More great songs with simple but compelling
arrangements sung in a natural storyteller’s voice. While any of these songs
could be picked as a highlight, I’ll mention “I Didn’t See You Maggie,” in
which the narrator sings to an old lover with a new life that doesn’t include
him; “Lone Pine,” about an Afghanistan War vet back tending the family farm
with an appreciation for art, poetry and music; and “Buckles and Leather,” a series
of stream-of-consciousness observations.
Ben Bullington got his cancer diagnosis
about a year or so before he died in November 2013. It was only then that gave
up his medical practice and dedicated his last months to playing music
full-time, performing concerts and recording a final album, the self-titled Ben Bullington. I don’t know how many of
the 11 songs were written that year but there’s a sense of finality, of saying
goodbye to friends and particularly to family in such songs as “I’ve Got to
Leave You Now” and “The Last Adios,” and even indirectly in songs like “His
Chosen Time.”
There is hardly a weak song on any of Ben
Bullington’s five albums. Whether he’s singing of his own life, or of characters
inspired by others, or of fictional characters from his own imagination, the
songs are timeless vignettes marked by a rare authenticity.
I wished I’d known of Ben Bullington’s work
while he was still alive. Each of his albums carries my highest recommendation.
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--Mike
Regenstreif
