Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Spencer Patterson: Spiritual journey is the secret of Lee’s success

The Ben Lee of five or 10 years ago might have felt a sense of competition with the other two singer-songwriters on this summer's "Odd Men Out" tour, Ben Folds and Rufus Wainwright.

Not anymore, says the one-time teenage rock phenom from Australia, a few weeks shy of his 27th birthday.

"I didn't understand it as a younger dude, but now I see that success can't be measured in terms of record sales and stuff like that," Lee said in a phone interview from a Denver hotel room on Tuesday. "As much as I got the theory then, I still thought it was like, 'This guy's more successful than me.' "

After spending the past couple of years making regular journeys to India to visit with a personal guru, Lee sounds at peace with his role as the opening act for his two co-headlining tour mates.

"I don't get as competitive anymore," Lee said. "Now I know that real success in this world is living your truth 100 percent, and then doing whatever you can to help other people. And on that level I feel like a total success, because there aren't many people that I've met who have the tenacity and drive to really commit to that kind of path."

Lee, Wainwright and Folds stop by The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel on Saturday night. Doors open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35.

For Lee, the show represents a chance to expose his alterna-pop songs to audiences primed to appreciate his winsome melodies and earnest lyrics.

"The kind of people that are coming are real fans of songwriting, so it's a really brilliant audience," he said.

Lee's fifth full-length solo album, "Awake Is the New Sleep," hit stores in February. The recording sessions reunited Lee with producer Brad Wood (Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins), who worked on Lee's first two discs in the mid-1990s.

"Since then we've both experienced different techniques and different kinds of studios, but it's like we've matured enough to go back and pick up some things from when we were younger that we wanted to reclaim," Lee said. "One of those was an organic sense of recording. He made (this album) in his home studio. But above all it was a sense of fun, which often gets missed when you go into bigger budget sorts of things."

Lee's latest single, "Catch My Disease" features some curious lyrics for a guy generally associated with the indie scene.

"They play Good Charlotte on the radio/And that's the way I like it/I hear Beyonce on the radio/And that's the way I like it."

The verse -- which concludes, "They don't play me on the radio/And that's the way I like it" -- could easily be interpreted as a total goof. Not so.

"I do love all that. I love the radio and I love pop music, and I don't think there's anything small or slight about that," Lee said. "And of course, I'd love to have that kind of success in that world. Who doesn't want to play arenas and win Grammys?

"But my feeling of success doesn't depend on that, so that's really why I can make a joke like that and why, to me, that joke is funny still."

Lee also has to laugh when he looks back at the attention paid to him at age 13, when Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and the Beastie Boys began championing him as a rising star.

"That whole world -- getting that kind of critical acclaim -- it has to do with being the coolest kid in class," Lee said. "Like the Arcade Fire now or something. They're the cool kids, and they can't do anything wrong.

"But inevitably that ends. It doesn't matter how great you are, even if you're Bob Dylan. Eventually you have to become uncool, and it's only when you become uncool that you can really show who you are. I don't care about cool. I want hot. I want passionate. I want real feelings."

Many in the industry expected one specific feeling, heartache, to be the dominant theme on "Awake Is the New Sleep," since the CD followed Lee's much-publicized 2003 breakup with actress Claire Danes.

But Lee says he wasn't in a depressed mindframe when he penned the album's 14 tracks, contrary to what outsiders might assume.

"When they say that, it's because they're thinking, 'When I went through that, all I could do was wallow'," Lee said. "But I'm a different person. Me and Claire breaking up, it wasn't an isolated thing. It was one symptom of major changes going on in my life, all the spiritual things, the musical changes, all these things happening so that I could move on to the next chapter of my destiny.

"We do live in a bit of culture that's obsessed with romance, so I think they just assumed that the whole album would be about that. But to me, romance comes and goes, but your love of life doesn't need to go anywhere."

Quick hits

A look at a few of the shows scheduled to hit Southern Nevada in the next week:

Velvet Revolver is expected to be without drummer Matt Sorum when the hard-rock supergroup plays the Aladdin's Theatre for the Performing Arts on Saturday night.

Sorum reportedly broke one of his hands during a recent boating accident, and is undergoing physical therapy in hopes of rejoining the band for its upcoming Ozzfest dates.

Mark Schulman, who has drummed for Cher, Stevie Nicks and Foreigner, among others, is expected to man the skins for Velvet Revolver in Las Vegas. He will join regulars Scott Weiland, Slash, Duff McKagan and Dave Kushner in the lineup.

Doors are slated to open at 7 p.m., with Chevelle pencilled in as the opening act. Tickets cost $35 to $57.50.

This week marks the 36th anniversary of the first Woodstock Music and Art Festival, and local music fans can celebrate the occasion at Saturday's Cannerystock concert at the Club at the Cannery.

The show, which kicks off at 4 p.m., will feature performances by three acts that took part in the 1969 original: Canned Heat, Mountain and the Family Stone Experience, comprised of Sly & The Family Stone alumni (minus the reclusive frontman, of course).

Tickets are $9.95 to $29.95.

The Rev. Al Green continues his secular soul resurgence with a return engagement at the House of Blues at Mandalay Bay on Saturday night. The 59-year-old vocalist also performed at the venue in July 2004.

Green is touring behind March's "Everything's OK," his second nongospel album released in the past three years. Doors to the 21-and-over show open at 7 p.m. Tickets are $52 to $75.

On sale

Rapper KRS-One holds court at Jillian's on Sept. 17. Tickets are $15 and are on sale now at the Jillian's box office, at Ticketmaster outlets, by phone at 474-4000 and at www.ticketmaster.com.

Less Than Jake lands at the House of Blues on Oct. 2. Tickets are $17 and are on sale now.

Mae plays Jillian's on Nov. 2. Tickets are $10 and are on sale now.

The B-52's touch down at Primm's Star of the Desert Arena on Sept. 16. Tickets are $32.45 to $43.45 and go on sale today at 2 p.m. through the Star of the Desert box office and Ticketmaster.

Coheed and Cambria team with the Blood Brothers, Dredg and mewithoutyou for an Oct. 19 date at the House of Blues. Tickets are $19 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday through the House of Blues box office and Ticketmaster.

The Proclaimers stop at the House of Blues on Oct. 13. Tickets are $17.50 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Hawthorne Heights hits the House of Blues on Nov. 8. Tickets are $15 and go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday.

Tickets are on sale now for two other recent additions to the House of Blues calendar: the Bangels on Oct. 8 ($25, $35) and Dropkick Murphys on Oct. 15 ($16).

archive