Ahead of his Bear in a Birdcage tour, I caught up with Tassie’s Ben Wells of Ben Wells and the Middle Names to chat about the new single, time on the road, and his band’s ever evolving sound.
Your new single “Bear in a Birdcage” has a different sound than the songs I’ve heard from you before. What inspired it?
Something we pride ourselves on is our onstage energy, so I suppose we wanted to write music that we could really let loose to and get the crowd involved in a little more. Also, with the change in the line up of the band recently we wanted to start making a different sound that suited having two lead guitars rather than a violin.
You’re about to kick off a tour of the East Coast. Are you looking forward to it?
Ah I’m so excited about going on tour. Playing live is my favourite thing and because we’re from Tassie we don’t get the opportunity to play to different crowds as often as we’d like, so we take full advantage of going on tour!
You must have the touring bug as you’ve clocked up more than 10, 000 kays in the last year alone. What is your favorite part about being on stage?
I love feeding off the crowd’s energy and the other guys in the band. It’s the only time you can really let loose. Plus you know the people who are there are there to see you play, so we don’t hold back at all.
How do you keep things fresh when you spend so much time on the road?
That’s probably the hardest part about going on tour. Making sure you eat healthy and spend lots of time doing your own thing when we aren’t playing. Going on tour is a good time to check out the rest of the country too!
Probably part of the reason you travel so much is that you live in Tasmania. When so many bands move to the mainland, what is it about the state that keeps you there?
We’ve talked about moving to the mainland before but living in Tassie has its conveniences as well. We recorded “Bear in a Birdcage” at the studio in my house, where we rehearse and write. I think it would be hard to be able to do that in a major city and be able to afford it on a musician’s wage. Plus the music scene down here is really starting to fire. There is so much good music coming out of Tassie it’s all time!
The video for “Bear in a Birdcage” is so much fun. How much input do you have in that creative process?
Thanks! I picked out the direcor (Simon Treweek) for the clip because he’s a prolific surf cinematographer and I knew he’d know what I was getting at with the song. We put a few ideas toward the clip but he knew what he was doing and he nailed it!
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