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Guitarist Ben Schmidt surveys the post-flood landscape

By Steven Horowitz

Since Ben Schmidt’s last record, While You Were Sleeping, the local area was hit hard by a tornado and a flood. The folk rocker had visions of these natural disasters in mind when he wrote the songs for his latest CD, Silt.

“The title comes from the idea of what is left behind after a deluge,” Schmidt says over the phone from his Iowa City home. “In my mind, all of the songs have in common the sense of something collected after a storm, after weathering the literal and or emotional damage that results.”

He cites the song “Ruby Slippers” as an example. The song obviously references “The Wizard of Oz” and alludes to the tornado that hit Iowa City. “The starting place for that song can be found here in town, although I wasn’t consciously aware of that when I began writing it,” Schmidt says.

Schmidt also has been working with Iowa City-based photographer Danny Wilcox Frazier on the soundtrack to a movie based on his book of black and white pictures (Driftless: Photographs from Iowa) that Frazier took of the vanishing towns, farms and rural landscapes of the state.

“The images from that project, and the sensibility of what is happening to the people who continue to live here while so many have evacuated really struck me,” Schmidt says. “I’m sure that’s part of the album as well.”

He explains further: “I tend to have a visual picture in mind when I start to write a song. Then I do some research and pick up random facts, or something will happen to me, or I will overhear a story while the song percolates in my brain. I love the ability of a song to just leap in time and place and connect things in a free association and create a narrative.

“My songs become a little movie, and use techniques like jump cuts and montages to create a frame and a pace for what happens,” Schmidt says. He references artists like musician Bruce Springsteen and the Japanese movie director Akira Kurosawa who are masters of that craft.

“Or think of the rise of hip hop culture,” Schmidt says, “It’s not the field I work in, but I love the way the songwriters can combine references from film, television and other pop culture elements in a dense way to create an open space that their audiences immediately pick up on.

“The lack of cohesion becomes an asset that the listener gets to fill in and be part of the process. That’s what I try to do in songs like ‘Virgin Starts Weeping,’” he adds.

Schmidt will perform songs from his new record at CSPS, 1103 Third St. SE, Cedar Rapids on Feb. 6, accompanied by guitarist and electric bass player Dustin Busch (who will also open the show), drummer Steve Hayes, Cedar Rapids vocalist Lori Lane and mandolin player Larry Mossman. Tickets to the 8 p.m. concert are $11 plus a fee in advance or $15 at the door.

“After Dustin’s set, I will start as a solo, just me and my guitar. I will do some songs with vocals and some more intricate instrumental compositions. Then Larry will join me for a few duets before the whole band comes out. The evening should have a nice build to it,” Schmidt says.

He does not plan to flood the place with sound or blow the audience away. Schmidt knows that Iowans have had enough of that effect in recent years.