Hey, Mobilers. We recently had the chance to sit down with Indie sensation Ben Karis-Nix and grill him on his music, clothing line and his all around scheming and dreaming. If you’re not yet familiar with Ben, prepare to be. The guy who calls himself the lovechild of Ben Gibbard and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy is on the rise. I mean, do you know anyone else can boast getting a letter of recommendation for grad school from Tom of MySpace? We didn’t think so.

Meet Ben.

1. I fell in love with your sound the moment I heard it. It makes me want to make babies. How would you describe it to people who are not as familiar (or crazy)?

You are fantastic, thank you! If my songs lead to an increase in pregnancies throughout the land, is that good or bad? Pretty awesome, I’d say. [We’d agree!]

I guess I would describe the music as beats, synths and sampled sounds ornamenting contemplative, dreamy folk and rock songs. Speaking of babies, maybe one could say it’s like “if Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie / The Postal Service had music babies with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco.” Is that wishful thinking? haha

2. Who are some of your biggest musical influences?

To be honest, I have this weird thing where I’ll enjoy nearly everything I hear to a certain degree, but at the same time, I’ll only really latch on to an album every couple years. I only have about 15 CDs in my possession and I can probably list about 10 records from elementary school to the present that I listened to obsessively – the highlights being: An old record I bought as a kid that was a compilation of sci-fi themes (Star Wars, the original Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek), that was followed by the Lemonheads – It’s a Shame About Ray, Weezer – The Blue Album, Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Rancid – Out Come the Wolves, Cake – Motorcade of Generosity, the Flaming Lips’ – The Soft Bulletin, Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Feist – The Reminder, and MIA – Kala. I just loved all those records enormously, for one reason or another, and they all have contributed to my songwriting sensibility.

3. What inspires your songs?

A lot of the music from my last EP first took the form of poetry or scattered lyrical ideas from while I was on the road with my last band, Jupiter Sunrise. After the band split up and I moved back east, some of the songs were already written, but others were finished here in NY. The songs chart a journey from a summer when I lived in a van on the beach in CA while we were between tours. I was having an adventure, but feeling pretty lonely and wanting to plant some roots with the girl I would eventually marry.

Generally speaking, I write songs that chart personal experiences or the experiences of my friends, by latching onto the most compelling details of a story and linking them with metaphors that describe big things, like phenomena in nature. I’m a big science nerd and outdoorsy person, so I love to find likenesses and patterns between our little worlds and the wider world. Maybe to show they aren’t so distant or to explore the idea that the code of our lives is reflected in everything and vice versa.

Even melancholy subjects can have a certain sweetness when the song’s tragedy can be spun into the fabric of the larger world. I think people fall in love with songs that make them feel less alone in their worries, help them forget their problems altogether, or otherwise elevate them emotionally, so I always try to weave a transcendent thread into my music somehow. My hope is that the songs will leave the listener invested in the music the way I’ve felt drawn to certain records over the course of my life.



4. I came across your Facebook, MySpace and YouTube profiles online – do you think the online medium is helping artists or hurting them?

Thanks for checking those out!

For larger artists, maybe not so much, but I think the online medium is helping smaller artists, most definitely. So many more artists now have an accessible and highly visible platform to showcase their stuff, and there’s the increased opportunity to sometimes gain instant, huge exposure. On the other hand, there’s a gazillion musicians out there, so the din of music and incessant promotion is very loud and saturated. In a way, the Web might be so saturated that, as an artist, you really have to have something distinguishingly amazing (or very well-positioned) to be propelled. So, in that sense, the honeymoon is over with indie-level bands getting a useful following on MySpace (it was a lot more novel to kids, I think, when it was in its ascendency).

But with all the new ways to reach people that are available now, at least power is no longer centralized with a few folks at the top. So if you have something cool – an inventive video, or a great song – and the right blogger writes about you, or a producer for a TV show stumbles on your MySpace page, something cool can happen, where before those opportunities required hiring an expensive staff of people soliciting you to an inside crowd who only dealt with big companies, agencies, and labels. There are a lot of artists and smaller to mid-sized promotional companies that are doing really well given the leveling effect of the internet.

5. I heard you have some big things in the works, can you share some of them with us?

Sure thing!

Yeah, I’ve been doing a fair amount of scheming and dreaming… when I moved back east I was determined to start a new project based on artistic goals that were better geared for what made me truly happy, but also tailored to the state of the industry and the new opportunities that are out there. So I decided that I would really like to have a little home someplace (and not live in a vehicle), and not necessarily get a new band out on the road, but to start something closer to a multimedia project. The project would be heavily rooted in music and would offer live performances, but was more or less anchored on the Web, as opposed to NY, LA, or a tour bus. Along with it would be a new creative passion of mine, animation, and possibly an online graphic novel presentation of the same material.

As for the music part, I loved being on the road, just not all year long, so I figured I would periodically focus on writing songs and touring in conjunction with film festivals and concerts in major cities, and then come home to keep working on the online side of things – selling music and merchandise that related to all this media content. I, of course, naively assumed I could whip this together in a year or so, so now two years later I’m still in the first half of the process! But what’s cool is that I can release chunks of it at a time.

In fact, there’s no real end in sight, just a lot of songs and stories I can keep creating. I figure I’ll see what people are responding to and adjust the remaining work, accordingly. Right now, this project is called, The Reverie of Ruby Star… there’s a production blog you can follow at www.thereverieofrubystar.com. I can’t wait to share some of it – I’m restraining myself till I get more ahead of things! But I’ll be posting some snippets over the course of the summer, and I’m striving to release some of it in the Fall of this year…

Before all this stuff started, though, I recorded an EP called We Are Giants Now and released it through Collar City Records. That was a lot of fun, and it got me back into the swing of things, propelling me into some new musical frontiers – using beats, synths, and other strategies that I’d never tried before.

6. You’re someone who has their hands in a lot of different things. Tell me about the clothing line and artwork you do?

Right on, yes, I have an art and clothing line I started called, “Run, We Must.” The name comes from a song I wrote and the brand features clothing and poster designs that promote renewable energy and the conservation of nature. It’s been a lot of fun to do, and it’s taught me about the basics of running a tiny business operation. It’s also helped me cooperate with people out there doing good things for clean energy and such. There are some great festivals I’ve been able to take part in such as Solar Fest in Tinmouth, VT, and maybe even the Newport Folk Festival this year if things work out! I wish I could clone myself and do more with the line, but I’m so wrapped up in everything else… I just try to make sure I give it enough attention so that it keeps growing. That way, when I’m out of the development phase of my other projects, it’ll still be ready to go.



7. What are you most excited about these days?

I’m excited about the basics… to be alive, healthy, and lucky enough to do these things. I mean, when you think of it, millions of us Americans in the 21st century enjoy a quality of life that is far beyond what 99.99999% of all humans who ever lived have experienced. On top of that, I have a very supportive wife and family. The other day, Olivia and I were driving by a billboard featuring the lottery jackpot, and we were like, “as improbable as it is to win the lottery, how probable is it that we would be born into a world and a way of life this free and healthy? We’ve already won against impossible odds 100 times over!” Though I’m a fortunate guy there have been some rough patches, of course – but the simple fact of my overall lucky status always stays with me and spurs me on to make the most of these good times and opportunities.

8. What are you hoping to achieve through your music?

Along with not taking for granted my good circumstances, I’m also feeling an increased responsibility to not just enjoy what I have but to give something back. There are so many people out there who have it pretty rough. Not only that, but many folks are arguably kept down by the systemic forces that provide for my comfort. So, I’m trying to think of ways to further align my art and music with something beyond just artistic merit. At the same time, I think music and creative expression are integral to the well-being and basic humanity of everybody, rich and poor, so I think it’s good to keep creating and sharing ideas and sentiments, no matter what. My biggest heroes are the scientists and artists whose work enhanced our experiential and intellectual understanding of ourselves and our world, and just to be part of that flow of ideas that’s been going on since people first started banging on hollow logs and drawing on cave walls is achievement enough.

9. Describe your music making process?

Usually, I start with riffs on guitar. If I find myself responding to something I did, I repeat it until I memorize it and then it goes into the “riff bank.” Sometimes I’ll play it over and over again for months, or even years! Finally, after singing different melodies and lyrics over the riff bank, something will feel “awesome” and I’ll rehearse that. Sometimes, at that point, I’ll combine two ideas, grafting them together by changing keys or altering them in some way. So, in a way, it’s like a monkey on typewriter, where jewels of prose or melody pop out at random… I just cut them out and put them together like magnetic refrigerator poetry. My talent, I guess, might be less of a raw musical ability or knowledge of theory, than that of a sonic/verbal collage artist with a flare for melody. I seem to be able to find patterns that fit and to manipulate them so they constitute a more meaningful whole. This informal process used to stress me out, actually! I would worry if I’d ever write something good again because it was so unpredictable. But given enough time and energy something that moves me always comes along, so it doesn’t worry me anymore.

10. What’s the one performance or professional moment that stands out for you?

Boy, let’s see… there’s been a couple of cool ones. First, to preface, I once had an amazingly bad show in front of some important people, so as time went on I really wanted to have another chance. My chance came when my band played at a really awesome and super-hipster bar in Los Angeles called, the Hotel Cafe. Going out on a limb, we decided to do a song out in the crowd, called Steal Me.



This song is really quiet, and we played it with acoustic guitars amid the crowd and off the mics. Somehow, in this loud place, everyone got totally quiet. As we were playing, I realized that Tom from MySpace was standing nearby, having been invited by a friend of ours who worked for him. I thought to myself, “he seems to be digging this, I’ll go over and play this for Tom.” Afterwards, I could tell he really, really loved it and I just felt like a million bucks. Later, that single performance led to dozens of MySpace features, a full ride on the Warped Tour courtesy of MySpace, and inclusion on MySpace Records first compilation release. He even wrote me a letter of recommendation when I was considering grad schools, it was awesome! We continued to play that song out in the crowd show after show, culminating in some other really magic moments.

One other time was in New Orleans after Katrina, and some kids came to the show from their FEMA trailers. We did the song out in the crowd and hundreds of kids sang along while we stood out there on the floor. It was really wonderful.

To keep tabs Ben’s mesmerizing tunes and clothing line, be sure to check out his MySpace profile, personal site, and zone out to Ben Karis-Nix on YouTube!


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