BEN TALMI'S authentic nostalgia
Photo by Josh Goleman
Berkshires is the latest album from Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter/producer Ben Talmi.
Ben is best known as an orchestral arranger for artists like Wild Nothing and Manchester Orchestra, but with Berkshires he’s produced a nostalgic, low-key, and heartfelt singer-songwriter narrative album that focuses on his upbringing and the history of his family in the town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts and the surrounding region.
Interview by Interlocutor Magazine
You’ve said that Berkshires is “a love letter to my hometown of Pittsfield, MA nestled between the mountain ranges and valleys of Berkshire County.” What was the initial motivation for this project? Had you been thinking of devoting an entire album to your hometown memories for a while?
I wrote the entire album during lockdown. With the future being so unclear at the time it was admittedly easier to look back and think about the past in a time of such forced introspection. It was also a result of only having access to my guitar and zero studio equipment. My goal was to have a batch of songs that had no influence of anything digital whatsoever, just harmony, melody, and lyrics.
With Berkshires, you have produced an album that seems unabashedly nostalgic at a very cynical time when nostalgia itself is often viewed skeptically as inauthentic. Did you have any reservations about producing something too “earnest” or naive? Or do you see this work as something that particularly stands out because it is not giving in to pessimism and instead has genuinely celebratory and humanistic qualities?
If anything, this is as authentic as I can possibly get. There is a song [“Ralph & Mary”] that literally documents the true story of my grandparents fighting in WWII and then using their GI Bill to fund the family restaurant they ran for 40 years. Another song is about one of my best friends from childhood who after doing a complete lap around the US on his motorcycle finally arrived back home only to die in a motorcycle crash.
I think inauthenticity in nostalgia can result from borrowing ideas and tropes from the past to satisfy a specific aesthetic. I'm just trying to tell true stories from my youth.
Berkshires, Greylock Records - cover art by Robert Gunn
You're best known as an orchestral arranger for artists like Wild Nothing and Manchester Orchestra – in what ways do you think your training in orchestral arrangements influences your approach as a singer-songwriter? For Berkshires in particular, what appeals to you about this more “baroque pop” approach rather than a more stripped-down/minimalist singer-songwriter style?
Writing for orchestral ensembles or in the case of this album it was just a string quartet, flute, and clarinet, is most likely a desire for control and to have things extremely planned out. I’m the type of songwriter that looks at songs sort of like blueprints for a house. If you are building a house, your architect is not leaving anything to chance. Similarly when you hand a group of musicians a stack of sheet music, they have no choice but to play exactly what you are thinking in your head, there is little room for improvisation. Maybe the next record will just be free jazz. Gotta change it up ya know.
The cover art was painted by prominent Neo-Classic Americana artist Robert Gunn in a style that is very reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s iconic Saturday Evening Post illustrations, and it’s special because it depicts the Sugar Bowl restaurant that your grandparents ran in Pittsfield for 40 years (the subject of your song “Ralph & Mary”). Since Rockwell is also such a prominent figure from Western Massachusetts, did you always have a Rockwell-style cover in mind for the album? How did you get Robert Gunn involved in the project?
Everything about this album had to be authentic to The Berkshires or it just wouldn’t work. As a kid we went on about 20 field trips to the Norman Rockwell museum, so his style and influence on my hometown is really everywhere you look. I wanted to see if I could work with one of the artists who contributed to the Saturday Evening Post which led me to Robert Gunn who won the third annual Norman Rockwell cover award for the magazine in 1976. I simply cold called the number on his website, described what I was looking for and next thing I knew the painting arrived in the mail. It’s so rare to get to work with someone who can really handle traditional oil painting like Robert can, a total dream come true.
The video for “Ralph & Mary” extends the love-letter nostalgia theme of the album by depicting you singing and playing in various locations in your hometown and surrounding areas. How closely did you work with director Noah Sandvik in developing the look and feel of the video, and was it a little surreal at times to be back shooting something like this in your old stomping grounds?
Noah is a visual genius, his eye was able to capture the exact vibe I was going for and it just so happens he is from the Berkshires so the whole thing worked out perfectly. We worked super close on the entire project picking out all the locations and ways to really capture the vibe of the area.
It was very surreal and honestly pretty awkward to go back to all the places I have such distinct and often embarrassing memories of. We shot on the steps of my high school, the local museum, Olivia’s lookout, and all up and down North Street in Pittsfield where I just about had every coming of age experience you can think of.
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