New Ben Franklins celebrate 20th anniversary with release of full length CD, [peter gabriel].
Sonic rock’n’country band NEW BEN FRANKLINS will release their new full length CD [peter gabriel] on April 17, 2012, a full twenty years from their first live appearance in the small clubs of Denver. 2012 promises to be a great year for the band; in addition to the release of [peter gabriel], the band has a song featured in the upcoming film Derby Baby, and multiple video and recording projects in the works.
[peter gabriel] is the follow-up to last year’s critically acclaimed Miserable EP and is a perfect way to hear the true breadth of the band’s sound. From the full-on honky-tonk of “Miserable” to the shoegazey walls of guitars on “Mourning,” the album promises to have a bit of aural bliss for any listener. The lyrical punch and pop of “Detroit Party Jesus” is already making waves with Colorado alternative radio and the band will shortly release a new music video for the new wavey “About You.”
“While the record really has nothing to do with Peter Gabriel himself, for more than twenty years now I’ve thought that if I ever made a really, really grand record I would title it Peter Gabriel,” said lead singer David DeVoe. “I figured that if Gabriel could title his first three records that, why couldn’t I borrow it, too?”
The fourteen-track musical adventure finds DeVoe, Tom Oberheide (pedal steel guitar, banjo), Mark Kosta (drums), and Benjamin Williams (bass), experimenting with instrumentation as varied as fiddle and dobro to horn sections and choral vocals. Written over the past decade or so and put to (digital tape) over the past six months, DeVoe stresses that even though he was using modern technology the record was made in a very traditional manner. “The album is very human,” he explains. “There are very few overdubs and edits, and absolutely no devices like autotune. The effects we used are minimal too. I really just wanted the soul of the band and the truth of the songs to show through as clearly as possible.”