I first read about him in a Seventeen magazine article when he must have been about sixteen. Sometime around the “Grandpaw Would” release. I was very impressed because he was so young and making a name for himself with his own style of music. None of this manufactured pop nonsense where somebody casts a good looking guy who can get the teenyboppers to buy his albums. Ben seemed like the real thing and well…real looking. I followed his personal life through the years. I’ve heard radio interviews with him, as well. It took some time before I really started listening to his stuff. Probably the “Breathing Tornados” disc and his most recent “Awake is the New Sleep”. If I got to meet him, I’d tell him that he doesn’t know it, but he and I sort of grew up together in a very roundabout way. Also I would say I think it’s funny he is singing about what is probably Pomona’s “The Glass House” and the wild Santa Ana winds in “Catch My Disease”. (Anyway, who else could make catching his disease sound so enticing?)