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- Article author: Sam Phillips
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What follows is the first in a series of interviews LFDW will be presenting from time to time. Here at LFDW, we often have occasion to meet some pretty interesting folks, and thought we’d share some of these dialogues with you, dear reader. Some of these outlaws you’ll already know, some will be new friends. We think these people, coming from all manner of backgrounds and fields of interest, will intrigue you because they are you, after all. The one thing they do have in common is that, no matter what they are doing, they are doing it their way, blazing their own path, creating their own future outside the confines of societal pressures to live any other way. They will have freedom to speak their minds as we rap, tell it like they see it, and their opinions are wholly their own as well. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, and why should you, that’s not why they’re here. They’re here to have a good conversation with us and offer up their unique perspectives. So let’s get to know each other a little better, shall we?
Sam Phillips: I’ve known about Lost Dog Street Band before I knew about you, which I think is true for most people. The first time I have an active memory of your music is when I saw you in San Francisco in September of 2018, and I didn’t know who you were. I showed up to the show with my buddy, and I had just broken up with a girl, and it was the right show to be at. Since then, I’ve dug the whole thing you got going on. But from my understanding, this new record is a departure from a lot of the old stuff. Aside from being more honkey tonk, it’s happier. I’m curious to hear about the transition from doing ten years of “misery songs” into this new world of happy.
Benjamin Tod: Well, it’s more standards-based. In the respect of what you just laid out, I have spent the majority of my career writing extremely personal songs about the darkest parts of the human psyche…my experience with drug addiction and violence and trauma and self-destruction and being in a jail and living as a criminal for years. And I’m kind of coming out of that into adulthood where I have a ton of responsibility now. I own hundreds of acres of land and a cabin and I have a wife and a family and a community, and I am socially responsible for a lot of people’s recovery and overcoming their own personal traumas. And I guess a part of it is starting to take that responsibility seriously and no longer being able to glorify nihilism. I feel like there are certain modes of, there are certain psychologies that are acceptable up until a certain age and I can hear it now. I can hear the difference in psychology from my songs of the past. It’s funny, now I hear it in newer artists that are doing archetypally what I did for the majority of my career. It’s interesting watching the current songwriter and country scene because what is popular right now with Zach, Brian, Wyatt Flores, stuff that is really taking off is essentially what I did the first ten years of my career and I have just stepped out of. It is funny and I also am like, man, if I had just waited and released “I Will Rise” last year and then sort of staggered the trajectory of all those albums, I’d be a lot better off than I am now. But obviously that’s not the case and I’m a different person and that’s perfectly fine. Now it’s like I can’t write songs glorifying death and glorifying that type of hardship. I’d rather warn people like, “Hey, I already had to go through this. I already dealt with these demons and it’s taken me a very long time.” Statistically, I’m really lucky to even be here. Everyone that I know that did what I did is dead or in prison. So now it’s more like trying to tell people there’s nothing wrong with being wholesome. There’s nothing wrong with being normal. There’s nothing wrong with being just a normal working class person with responsibilities and honor and dignity.
SP: I mean, from my point of view, I think that most people that listen to music do fall into that latter category. They wake up, they go to work, they take care of who they take care of, and then they have possibly gone through stuff in the past, but their everyday life now is not this kind of sad thing. But, they can live it through a lot of songs. That’s why people like Zach Bryan are so popular, but most people that go to a Zach Bryan show are not living sad lives on the whole, they’re living normal lives. And I think with the first single off this record, “I Ain’t The Man,” seems like a statement right out of the gate about this sort of shift to be like, I’m not who you think I am. Hearing that, that seems pretty clear now.
BT: Yes. I think it’s such a perfect first track for the whole record, and I think it was a perfect first single release for the record just to be like, Hey, [I’m] putting the country scene on notice, A, and B, this is different. What’s about to happen is completely different.
SP: Do you see yourself continuing down this path?
BT: I think my writing overall, I mean, I’ve already got another album. I’m going to get back to the studio probably in January. My writing in general has all turned more traditionally country, and that’s really the effect. I mean, the past six years, if you went through what I listened to on a daily basis, which isn’t a lot in general, I don’t listen to a whole lot of music, but everything like my Spotify or whatever you want to call it, or the CDs in all my trucks and the tapes in all my trucks, it’s all honky tonk. It’s all Randy Travis, Travis Trit, Keith Whitley, George Jones, Vern Gosden. It’s all old classic country. And then even the newer stuff, it’s like, it’s Jesse Daniels, Zach Top... It’s all my buds.
SP: You have a song with Jesse Daniel coming up.
BT: Yes, yes. We wrote a tune together. I pitched it to him. I had a verse and a chorus and I don’t know, it was a song that kind of shared our common experience of both being drug addicts and kind of outlaws and then coming into the music scene and that kind of saving us through a type of redemption. It was just appropriate. So I pitched that and he wrote a verse and he rearranged some of the chorus and it was perfect. So we cut two songs together. So we’re going to put out a seven inch split in late November, I believe.
SP: That’s what Jesse, your manager, told me.
BT: And then we’re going to be playing four shows in December that have not been announced yet. They’ll be announced, I think by the time this runs.
SP: He [Jesse Daniel] is a very tight honky tonk act. I’ve seen him a couple of times. My wife and I saw him recently. He came through Southgate House and he and the band came by the store. The whole show I was like, shit, this band is just, this is honky tonk music. This is the tightest it gets. The whole show was smooth and clean and with your new kind of direction. I’m excited to see that come together. Since being told about the collab I’ve tried to imagine what you guys would sound like together. I enjoy both of you and I’m stoked on it. I haven’t heard it, but I’m excited to see that collaboration.
BT: Oh yeah.
SP: I run my company with my wife. Your wife is in your band. That keeps, at least for me, that keeps me a little bit more focused, lined up and continuing down the right path because it is not just something that I’m doing for myself. There are other people that rely on me. From my understanding, your wife has been in your band since the beginning.
BT: Yes. Since the inception of Lost Dog. Lost Dog is essentially me and her, and it’s kind of transitioned into, I don’t know, marketing-wise, for tour’s sake, Lost Dog is the band, kind of like Tyler Childers and the Food Stamps, Benjamin Tod and Lost Dog Street Band. But the original concept is anything that’s done with me and Ashley is generally Lost Dog, that’s what defines it. She is the coordinator of my professional life, like with Jesse [manager], Jesse has a direct line to me, but it’s understood that Jesse runs everything through Ashley first. Because my time and my psychology are fragile and important. If you’ve talked to Jesse, you know how, well all managers are like this but, they’re doing a thousand things at once and they have squirrel brains, which works for that. But it doesn’t work for me because I’m bipolar and essentially a sociopath. So, I have to guard my mind from things because if you throw too many things in my brain, I can focus really, really well and execute one or two things at a time. You throw too many things in there, I’ll be psychotic. I’ll fucking kill someone. So Ashley essentially is kind of like the shield between me and the professional world. And she manages all the accounts. It’s like right now I probably got ten bank accounts to hide money from the government, but I don’t have access to any of them. I couldn’t tell you what the hell they are, or I don’t know, account numbers, I don’t know passwords, I don’t know shit.
SP: That works for you?
BT: She’s that woman.
SP: I saw a reel the other day of you guys talking about coming up in more of a punk scene. And I’ve talked to Coleman Williams [IV and the Strange Band] and he’s told me the same thing. I grew up in DC. I came up in a DC punk wave, the third one. And everyone, for the most part that I talked to, that’s in this Americana world artistically, almost everyone I talked to actually grew up not doing a country thing or not listening to it all that much. We came up doing punk stuff, DIY, and then we kind of switched as we aged. We stopped wanting to listen to just loud stuff all the time. And we switched to the older music that we had always heard, but realized we actually really gravitated towards. And something that interests me is the artist doing Americana, but doing it with a DIY kind of punk ethic. I think that it made sense to me hearing that you came from the punk scene, because everything that I know about Ben Tod and the Lost Dog Street band seems very DIY, seems very from the ground up, and I think that’s kind of a new wave in country music. Did you transition DIY punk ethics into doing what you do now?
BT: Well, all that is so far in my past, but it still sort of influences, I guess, the way that I see the world or just the way that… or maybe it just influences the way the world sees me. I guess I tell people now, I don’t encourage alternative cultures, period. Never. If I had a kid or something, I wouldn’t be like, you see people in the punk community, kind of encouraging that alternative [lifestyle]. They’ll have misfit shirts on their kids and stuff like that. If I had a kid, I wouldn’t have ‘em anywhere near it. I’d be like, go to church, eat your vegetables, all that shit. So I’m not an advocate for alternative culture now, so it’s hard for me to speak on it. People, please don’t get into rebellious punk rock music. And that’s more because of the statistical line of it, the majority of people get into that. The majority of people that I grew up with are dead or they’re in prison. It’s like I’m an anomaly.
SP: I got very lucky, lucky that I came up in DC where it was very straight edge.
BT: Yes, yes. You see, in Nashville, there was no sobriety culture anywhere that went within the punk scene, no one even talked about it. I mean, even if you had problems, even if a really bad night happened and somebody went to jail or someone got their ass beat, or you burned half the punk house down. No one was like, maybe we should slow down on the drinking and cocaine and stuff. It wasn’t even a thing. You were just like, well, that was a wild night. Alright, well who’s going to go get a 30 rack.
SP: We had Ian McKay [Minor Threat, Fugazi and Dischord Records] looking at us, saying don’t do that.
BT: There you go. See, we didn’t have no Ian McKay, we didn’t have any of that. We had Capitalist Casualties coming up and fucking pissing in the living room.
SP: Yeah, that’s a different scene, man.
BT: I remember I was basically, I mean, I was at odds even when I started hopping trains at 16. By the time I started hopping trains, I didn’t even like other train riders. I didn’t get along with ‘em. And I still have a bunch of buddies who were train riders, but it’s more because we kind of bred into it. Even when I first started hopping trains back in the day, if I ran into people under a bridge, I’d feel it out. But I’d usually go to a different spot to hop.
SP: What got you started with that?
BT: I was just obsessed. I was basically living on the street in Nashville at about the age of 14, and I had grown up in the punk scene already. And back during that time, it was within the social hierarchy. At the top of it was the crusty kids who came through town. I was just enamored being…I remember when I was 13 and we were all in the street punk bands and stuff, but then a pack of crust lords would come through town and be like, oh my gosh, these guys are so cool. They drink and do whatever they want all day and smoke crack and then get on a train and leave, which was very attractive.
SP: But when you’re 30, you find out that’s not the case.
BT: Oh yeah. When you’re 30, you’re like, man, they are a real piece of shit. Why did we do all this?
SP: You find out your idols were flawed.
BT: Yes. So as far as the transition’s concerned, it’s weird because when I look back, I kind of realized that my transition, I think, started almost before I even turned 18. And I lived at punk houses in and out, or was a part of punk communities. I mean, throughout my 20’s, or to 25 maybe. I still have close connections with individuals within that scene. But it is weird. Sometimes people will be at our shows like a pack of crusty punk kids, and I think they have an idea of me, they assume who I am, and this will happen on the road when I’m hopping trains still. They would come up and be like, oh, oh, Benjamin Tod blah, blah, blah. Oh, come here, take a hit of this whiskey and then sit and play songs. And I’m like, no, I don’t do any of that. I’m going to go sit by myself and be sober and smell the air and get on a train and have my own experience. I was just never a part of that pack mentality. I always hopped alone. And most of the writing and traveling that I did in general, I did for the solitude and the experience, not to be a part of the scene. So I think it still confuses people. It’s like, oh, well you’re a punk, but I don’t know. You don’t have a follower mentality, which I think is different from my generation of punk anyway. Punk used to just be anti-authoritarian. It didn’t matter. It really didn’t matter if you were center-left, center-right. It was just like, fuck authority, think for yourself, free speech, freedom of thought. And now I see it’s like, I mean, punk culture is just progressivism. That’s all it is now. And that puts a huge line between me and that community. Like, no bro, no, freedom of speech over everything. Fuck all this shit. It’s like now the punks are like, get your Covid shot and throw your guns away and let the government protect you and believe everything they say and fall in line. It’s like, what the fuck happened to the punk community?
SP: They are in agreement with whoever, whatever party is in charge. It’s a little bit odd. Yeah.
BT: They are a mouthpiece for the status quo progressives now. And I’m like, this is not what the punk scene used to be about. It used to be different, yeah, no, believe the government, CNN, get poked, wear a mask, only the government should have guns. What the fuck? What are we talking about? We used to hate all that shit.
SP: There’s an old SNL skit with Fred Armisen where he plays a Sid Vicious type guy who wrecks his career because he just loves Margaret Thatcher so much. And when it came out, that was a bit, because it was like punk is never that, it is alternative. You would never like the people in power. And it just entirely seems to have switched. Now it’s very odd to see, and when you have people that have a preconceived notion of who you are, and I’ve found this where if someone comes up to me in public and they think you’re the character of you, it’s incredibly odd. And there are people who have been wrecked by that, like Hunter Thompson, Orson Welles, those were people, they were not the characters of Hunter Thompson or Orson Welles.
BT: Well, Kurt Cobain’s probably the best, one of the best examples.
SP: They were people, but the character began to outweigh the person not through anything that they did or wanted to have done. And it’s very odd when that happens because suddenly you find yourself disappointing someone who you didn’t know you could disappoint.
BT: You didn’t even know they existed. But yes, I deal with that on a weekly basis. And I also feel very bad for people who build off of identities that are not sustainable and not well, they’re not healthy. I see people all over the country scene start to get mixed up now, putting on just kind of an outlaw, heavy drinking, eight ball to the nose every night personality.
SP: Oh, I have to tell people all the time. I’m like, I don’t drink. They go, “dude, you like whiskey?” I’m like, no, no, I don’t.
BT: And no one else does either. God damn it. I drank whiskey for 20 years, whiskey’s not good. And I’ve got a buddy who has a distillery in Kentucky and I support him and I love him, but I tell him all the time, I’m like, no one actually likes this shit. If it didn’t have alcohol in it, no one would fucking drink it.
SP: I used to order fucking scotch.
BT: It’s horrible, people are full of shit.
SP: But the songs, “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” those types of songs, they sound great. Aesthetically. But, I mean, we’ve again circled back to the concept of this is a new thing you’re doing. It’s not necessarily a coming out party because you’ve already had, in my opinion, two of those where, hey, here’s Lost Dog. Then: hey, here’s Ben Tod doing solo stuff. But this is a sort of third one. Hey, this is the new Ben Tod. It’s kind of like the “I Ain’t The Man” thing. Again, speaks back to that idea of I’m not the character that you think that I am. And again, I haven’t heard the rest of the album yet.
BT: Oh, you haven’t?
SP: No.
BT: I’ll get them to send it to you.
SP: Yeah, I did a whole shirt design without knowing what that song sounded like.
BT: What the fuck are we doing?
SP: I don’t know. But I mean, I’m excited to hear the record and the direction of it because we have, what, nine other records that you’ve put out. And the last one that was solo Ben Tod, Songs I Swore I’d Never Sing, to me felt a little bit different from some of the other ones, but not an entire departure. And then you had a Lost Dog record in there. Was it one or two Lost Dog records in between then and now? I think it’s just one. I know Survived came out in between then and now.
BT: One. Yeah, I think that’s it.
SP: If you don’t know then I don’t feel bad.
BT: I don’t know shit.
SP: I am very excited to hear this record and hear this kind of mature sound and concept here. I think it’s good for a lot of people who have a concept of what artists are and what a scene is to hear someone that they like and have known and have a relationship with, whether it’s one side or not, and be able to get a discerning opinion on all these hard times, hard drinking songs. But, the last thing that I’m really interested in asking you about, because we put it on the shirt, I want to hear a little bit about your relationship with trucks. I know you like trucks and all guys have our machine that we like. I told my wife the other day, I was looking at shitty pickups on Facebook marketplace and I was like, every guy always wants a shitty pickup.
BT: Yes. That’s just part of what it is.
SP: We put your truck on the shirt and that was the base concept of what we have going on. Transportation seems like a big thing to you, and I want to hear about why that’s so important and why that’s the focal point of the shirt.
BT: Well, basically I collect pre-emissions diesel pickups. I’m not sure exactly why I got obsessed with it. I think it kind of coincided with getting success and having money. I’m lucky in my career, I kept all my publishing throughout my career. So basically on scale I’d probably have as much liquid asset and cash flow as someone three times bigger than me because I never had anyone meddling in my business. I never had to cut anything with anyone. So I mean, there was a period of time there for, I don’t know, five years ago where we actually started making good money and it was just stupid. I didn’t know what to do with all of it. So I started buying trucks and it’s become kind of an issue. Well, I have technically probably over thirty trucks.
SP: That’s a comical amount of trucks.
BT: It’s ridiculous. But most of them are kind of junkyard trucks. I’d say I have twelve to fifteen functioning good trucks in different scales of restoration. But I know I have three seven threes. I have three crew-cab seven threes, and then I have six 12 valves and four 24 valves and a six seven. And I have a couple swap trucks. So it’s like a third gen Dodge, but it has a 12 valve swap. And then I have a Ford Ranger that I built a flatbed for, and I don’t know, it’s a piece of shit. I got to put a new engine in it because the head gasket just blew. And I’ve actually been trying to give that to Matt Heckler for months. But I’m trying to clean house. I’m selling a bunch of trucks or have been getting rid of them. So I’m trying to deal with my truck problem, but I don’t know. I love diesel. I love diesel engines. Maybe that started with working on, I got this land, I bought this land. I actually just bought 200 more acres that run alongside the land that I already had. And I mean, you need equipment. So I started running tractors and bought dozers and excavators and dump trucks and stuff. I needed to manage the land. And within that, you just start, I mean you learn diesel engines in and out and you kind of figure out which ones are the best and which ones are the worst. And I mean, 12 valve is the king. So no matter how you slice it, I don’t give a shit what anyone says. Nobody who’s owned a 12 valve and a seven three is going to be like, oh yeah, the seven three is the best engine that’s ever been put in a pickup. Fuck you. The only people who think that are people who have only owned seven three’s. If you’ve only owned a seven three, you probably think it’s great. But you ever own a 12 valve? Then you don’t think about a seven three. I have three of ‘em. They’re a better ride. The interior forward made a better cab, flat out, it’s better. The most ideal truck in the world would be a ‘73 to ‘79 with a 12 valve swap in it. That’d be the perfect truck ever made. It’s got a metal dash and yeah, it’s perfect. Just doesn’t have AC, but whatever.
SP: It has windows.
BT: Exactly, it has windows.
SP: I found the same thing with motorcycles where I can’t stop now. I’m a big fan of late eighties, early nineties Sportsters. I think they’re the shit. And if anyone wants to talk shit about a Sportster, even if it’s an 883, fuck ‘em.
BT: Them is a ladies motorcycle.
SP: But I’ll show them a picture of Sonny Barger and you tell me what Sonny Barger is riding in that picture. And it’s a fucking Sportster.
BT: That’s what I’ve always heard about Sportsters is people make fun of ‘em. They’re marketed as bikes for women or something.
SP: I’m five foot eight. I can’t reach the ground on a fucking Road King. I can’t control it. What do you want me to do? And a Sportster you can chop easy, you can do whatever you want to it.
BT: You see, I don’t do gasoline engines, so I’m totally out of that conversation. I work on diesel, I understand them. Or the 302 Ford. I get it. I know about them a little bit, but that’s a whole different world. Motorcycles and gasoline engines.
SP: Well, the only way that I ever work on an engine is I pick up my phone and I call someone who knows how to work on an engine. I can do little things. I can change a battery, I can change forward and mid controls, but I’m not fucking with an engine. And that interests me. People that are really into it, I wouldn’t know how to swap an engine.
BT: It’s all having the right tools, having the right space, and being patient and having realistic expectations. That’s the biggest thing. I mean, I would like to write a little or do a little video series about just gearhead shit, just like what it actually takes. You got to remember people think this stuff is really complicated. You gotta have the right tools and the patience and the experience. That’s all it takes to do anything. So anyone who’s ever intimidated by stuff like that, I’m like, well, the biggest thing with mechanics is patience. And it’s useful too because all those little things, just learning the patience of how to disconnect a certain sensor and you have to have the right touch for it or it could break easily. You have to actually pay attention and be in the objective world and work within the boundaries of that and learn the do’s and don’ts. Learn how to be gentle, learn how to, I don’t know, just learn how to compromise I guess. It’s important. It reflects human psychology.
SP: Ben, I’ve taken up too much of your time. Thank you for talking with me.
BT: Of course, we’re on the road and got a show tonight.
SP: New record came out on October 18th and you’re touring all fall to support it. Thank you again for your time.
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