Interview: Ben Meyers

Folk-rock artist and ICMP alumnus Ben Meyers is gearing up for a busy few months with the release of his new charity single, 'Water Rising'.

Recorded remotely with a cast of more than 50 friends, fans and family members, the song is the start of a new musical chapter for an artist who has delighted audiences in both the UK and his native US. 

This new song is full of driving guitars and harmonica licks, and, according to Ben is "a dose of happiness for happiness’ sake - an anthem for everybody currently in isolation".

We caught up with him to learn more about this new track, time at ICMP, lockdown experiences and how his future projects are sounding... 

What led you to ICMP? 

When I was 16 I ended up living in Paris - my mother had a job there - so we left New Jersey in the US and moved to Paris where I ended up studying at an international school. It was the first time I lived in a city or visited Europe and fell in love with it. 

While there, I committed to music, not necessarily as a career but as a passion and lifestyle.

At the point around making a decision about higher education, I did some research and found some amazing courses, including ICMP.

ICMP’s culture really resonated with me, this college offering lessons to this small community of creatives in their own corner of London."

Back then it was the two buildings and I ended up meeting Leo Martin, the drummer on my new track, on the first open day I went to. 

What did you study when with us? 

I initially applied to the BA in Creative Musicianship course but ended up switching to the BA in Songwriting. I loved it, met some amazing people and became friends with some brilliant musicians. 

We put on some jam nights, hosted a couple of sessions where people could network and play. ICMP was always really open to enabling students to take the initiative and engage with its community: that was one of the reasons I was so drawn to it. 

Could you talk a bit about this new project? 

I’m here in Maryland with my family. I’d been doing a lot of songwriting during lockdown, came across this nice riff and it snowballed into a song. 

I ended up co-writing it with my father about these lockdown sentiments, touching upon this well of frustration and wanderlust. We workshopped the song here as a group, and usually I’d like to wait if I had a good song and go into a studio with some musicians. 

But obviously that's not something we could really do at the time, so I thought we could put together a live version, then release that instead. From there, we realised that everyone else was in lockdown too so we asked for their videos and contributions as well.

What was the best thing about working on the project? 

It turned out to be this great way of engaging with friends, family and fans. We asked them to send in their videos to be featured in the music video to the song. I was able to work with some of my fellow ICMP alumni and friends. For instance, Adrian Valia was our videographer, one of my old friends, a bass player called Matt Dinnadge, performed too.  

What were the biggest challenges with the project? 

I’m a seasoned recording artist but not a sound engineer. My engineer is in London so I had to have multiple calls with him on the position of mikes and where best to use them. I still got the levels a little too hot. Working remotely was challenging in a sense that it was so new. At the same time, it was really revealing as you could still make anything possible regardless of the distance. 

The video and audio was done remotely across different time zones, and we were able to produce something as good as if we had all been physically together. That was a really nice lesson and experience."

What’s the plan with the release? 

We’ll be releasing this on 12th March. There will be a video and a Bandcamp release too as all the proceeds will be going to music charity Help Musicians UK and their Covid-19 relief fund.  I’m excited to be using this song and experience to try and fundraise for the UK community. 

What else do you have lined up for this year?

I have another new track called ‘Thunder’ due for release soon after, it’s something I wrote in 2020 about love and life, and finding courage inside you during difficult times. It's going to be a busy year.

Visit benmeyersmusic.com for more information. 

Watch out the video and new track, 'Water Rising', below.