Benmont Tench has not really been out of sight for any truly extended stretch since the Heartbreakers necessarily went their separate ways …. at least not if you have strong eyesight. Since the death of Tom Petty meant an end to his primary job in 2017, Tench has still been visible in the background as a member of the house band in practically any tribute show that’s worth a damn. And now he’s moved up to the front line — a spot he’s very rarely taken for himself — as a solo artist with his second album out on his own, “The Melancholy Season.”
The new release on Dhani Harrison’s Dark Horse label follows 11 years after his first solo record, “You Should Be So Lucky.” What took so long? Therein lies a tale, encompassing reasons both mundane (Tench is fine with not being extraordinarily prolific as a songwriter) and profound (as in, a growing family and a health scare). With Tench having a certain patience about these things by nature, well… the waiting, in some ways, was the easiest part. Fans are happy to see him at center stage, in any case, with a newly doubled personal songbook, which demonstrates that he wasn’t just focused on studying instrumental parts in all his years as a musician.
The man who is arguably the most famous or legendary keyboard sideman in rock talked with Variety about the circumstances of his new album, his current west coast tour (with more dates to be added further east) and his eternal eagerness to salute his forebears.
What are you up to at the moment?
I get to be in the house band for Patti Smith’s tribute at Carnegie Hall, so I’ve got umpteen Patti Smith songs to learn, and they’re so good, it’s crazy. The piano stuff is outrageous. Most of what I’m playing, I think, is (the work of the late) Richard Sohl, who’s unbelievable. What an honor to get to do the tribute to Patti.
How much work does it take for you to learn all that repertoire for a tribute like that?
It’s impossible. It can’t be done. But I’ve done it every time. So, here’s hoping.
Let’s talk about your new record. But let’s also get into your feelings about songwriting in general. You’ve done it to some small degree, at least, for a while — Rosanne Cash had a No. 1 country hit with a song of yours, “Never Be You,” back in 1986. But you’ve said you are not prolific. You are very unique among people who are known mostly for being instrumentalists in a band, because you are very cerebral, not just instinctual, and you have always been able to talk on a very intellectual level about songwriting in a way that’s usually typical of somebody who’s the main songwriter in a band.
I talk a good game. I talk a good game.
Certainy you’ve been in close proximity to some of the greatest songwriters in rock, especially Tom and Bob Dylan. So because you have such an understanding of what makes them great as writers, do you let that put an extra onus on you, that you have to measure up somehow? Or does that not daunt you at all?
Really early on, I had some line in a Mudcrutch song, and our first producer, who signed Mudcrutch in 1974, Denny Cordell, who had produced “Whiter Shade of Pale” and done a lot of great, great music… I played the song, and I don’t think he used the word “bullshit,” but he said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. It sounds nice to put that word there, but it doesn’t really mean anything.” And between that and some things I heard Tom say, I realized that while it’s really fun to play with words, and it’s really fun to write just something that’s nonsense, it’s always good to try to have something you want to get across. And if you want to get across something silly, great; I’m all for it.
But I think the reason that I don’t write songs quickly is that I used to sit down and write a lot of stuff when I used to get high and drink. I quit that a long time ago, but I would just stay up and put stuff together, and some of it was cool, but a lot of it was just clever nonsense. And I looked at it and it was like: Does anybody need this? Is this good enough? I mean, I’m in a band with Tom Petty and Mike Campbell! The level of the songs that Tom would just show up and walk in with… I had played with him since he started — not the very first song he wrote, but since he started to really get serious and dig in on becoming a songwriter. So I watched it develop, and my standard did get high. And while I had friends who really believed in my songwriting, and some of them would choose a song and cover it — like Rosanne, or Dave Stewart got “More Love” to Feargal Sharky, and Jessica Andrews covered “Unbreakable Heart,” as did Carlene Carter — there certainly wasn’t anything that would’ve made up an album for me. Until Glyn (Johns, the producer) offered to record my first album, “You Should Be So Lucky,” and then that was pulled from 30 years’ worth of trying to write songs.
You have made up for lack of quantity with quality. Starting with the title track of “The Melancholy Season,” there are some really lovely lines and ideas in there…
I’m glad. I am working at it. I’m finally getting good, you know? You’ve got to keep doing scary stuff, or you aren’t living. Or stuff that is beyond what you would think your limitations are. You have to keep trying for it, you have to keep seeing what you can learn, what you should do to grow. And for me, making records of my own outside the Heartbreakers, which was a very comfortable environment, along with having a child, and getting married — all these things are like, OK, let’s see if I can do this. And it has consequences. So it’s like: Let’s do something irrevocable. Something irrevocable that’ll make you grow.
When it comes to the time frame it took for this second album to come together and get released, it’s easy to assume you must be a patient person. You’ve said the songs were mostly or all written for it in the late 2010s. Then you recorded it during the pandemic, and then you mentioned at your recent show at Largo that when you last played there, in late 2023, it was originally designed as a record-release show, but a health emergency got in the way. There’s a lot of people who would get impossibly itchy with that kind of gap between the writing and the release of the album.
Well, these don’t feel like they’re old songs; they feel very current. I wrote most of the songs I’d say in a period from 2014 to 2019 or so. I had a child and we navigated that, then Tom died, and I navigated a lot. Making the record, we were delayed a little bit because COVID hit, and then we figured that out; we made it in 2020 or 2021. And then it took some time to get to where Jonathan Wilson, the producer and I, were able to be in the same place at the same time to mix it. It took that kind of a journey to come out. But I don’t feel like it’s some back-of-the-shelf thing that’s like, “Oh, I’m playing these old songs.” I still have not written anything in particular since that record. Because I think that I’ve been waiting until it’s out, and that will free me up to have something else come in. So I believe in the songs, I enjoy playing the songs, and they feel very fresh to me.
Do you go back to being in the same mood you were when you were writing the songs? The album is called “The Melancholy Season,” but anyone’s level of melancholy is going to shift over time.
This record isn’t all morose. It’s not a reflection on the end of life, and it’s not about Tom’s passing, or my daughter being born, or getting married. But I’m sure it’s about all of those things, because everything that happens in your life is gonna come out in the writing and in the performance. The way you sing it, the way you play it, whether you know it or not, I’m sure it is all in there.
I do like sad songs, and there are a few, but I don’t think it’s a wallow in self-pity at all. Once I had written the song, I thought, well, this is a strong title for the record. And I knew pretty much right away the painting that I wanted for the cover, which fit in really well with the title, I thought, and the fact that the song “Melancholy Season” starts at dusk with the constellation Orion on the threshold; it hasn’t risen yet.
I’m not a very prolific writer, but I believed strongly in all of them, and I wanted them all to come out. I didn’t want something to be a bonus track or to be an extra or to disappear. So we found a way to sequence it so that they flowed and so that we could press it on a single LP and not lose sound quality. We pushed the edge but stayed within the limit of how much time you can put on a side and still have it sound really good, and I think it does sound really good on vinyl.
It’s interesting that you said that, even up till now, you wanted to clear the deck of this batch of songs and get them out there before you start in again writing new ones.
Well, I am not in a hurry — except I want to still be around. I had plenty going on. The main reason this record didn’t come out a lot sooner is that I had very serious surgery a year and a half ago, and that set me back. I’ve been dealing with cancer since 2011, and they’ve had to do a series of surgeries on my mouth. This time it got to my jaw, and so they had to remove and replace half of my jaw. It was October of ’23 that the record was supposed to come out, and originally we had thought we’d do a record release party about then, but we had found out a month or two before that I was going to have a really serious surgery at that time. That meant that I would not be able to go play shows, wouldn’t be able to talk to anybody, because it was very difficult to speak for a while, and it’s still not completely back. But they saved my life. I’m here. My surgeons saved my life. And I value my life.
So, “Okay. I love this record — let’s hold off.” And I’m very thankful that Dark Horse was still wanting to put it out and was thoroughly committed to it and believed in the record and just waited until it was the time that I was adequately healed. The other thing is, I have a daughter. So it wasn’t like I was sitting there twidding my thumbs, tapping my foot and patiently going, “We better get this record out.” I was frustrated because I believe in it, and I wanted it to be heard, but I wasn’t frustrated at anybody, or at God or the universe. I was just looking at: Well, this is how it’s going and this is what it is going to take. And it is going out, and I am going to go play the songs so that people can come hear them and see what they think. Hopefully it’ll affect them in some way.
Everyone’s certainly glad to have you back and to be able to hear you singing live, especially after learning how serious things really were. Was there any point at which you were thinking you wouldn’t be able to come back and sound like you did?
Well, I mean, the goal was to be able to live. But I did make a point of saying, “But I’d really like to be able to go and play my songs and sing my songs.” And, you know, they pulled it off — like, serious surgery, half my jaw gone and thrown away, part of my tongue taken out, all of this. And then of course, radiation, very carefully targeted, as they can do these days. And so, yeah, look at this — it’s crazy. Not only do I get to release and promote a record that I think is the best group of songs I’ve ever written, but also, I’m here raising my child, with my wife. And what the heck? You know? Everything is peachy. [Laughs.] Everything’s terrific. I get to watch the films I want to see that I haven’t seen yet. You know, the sky’s the limit, Bob’s your uncle, whatever you want to say. I get to hear Bob Dylan’s next album, whenever he makes one, you know?
How does it feel to be out playing the new stuff?
I’m in a really happy place. I like playing these songs, and I deliberately chose to play them with just the piano. Because I realized that I can have a different idea in the middle of a song and I don’t have to give anybody a cue. I don’t have to hope somebody can follow me. I don’t have to find a great group of musicians. It gives me a great deal of freedom. In some ways, of course, it would be fantastic to have a rhythm section and a guitar player, but there’s also a great freedom in it just being me up there. You have no idea how much I’m changing stuff and jumping around and falling and delaying or jumping the gun or playing faster than I meant, or deciding to do this Bob Dylan song or to not do any Bob songs. I have a set list, but it’s not particularly relevant. I love the freedom of it. And I love to be the one who’s singing my songs. I’m not the best singer, but I think I can communicate what the songs mean, which is the goal of a singer to me.
The record itself is pretty stripped down, with a small combo and not a lot of ornamentation. You’ve done interviews where you said you liked records like John Lennon’s “Plastic Ono Band” where it’s really the songwriter and his instrument plus bass and drums. That made me think that it was ironic that somebody who has been on so many dozens of records as an accompanist is saying, “I like records without a lot of accompaniment.” It’s probably a good thing that everyone who ever hired you didn’t think the same way.
Every time a songwriter in the session is trying to show me the song and they sit down and play it on the piano and say, “It goes something like this,” the first thing I say is, “You play the piano. I’ll play organ or something, but you should play the piano on this, because it’s all right there.” But I do love Beach Boys records and Phil Spector productions and Beethoven symphonies where there’s an awful lot going on. But those records, even though there’s a lot going on, they’re direct; everything locks together so perfectly.
But part of this was COVID. We went into Jonathan’s studio with Taylor Goldsmith and me and Sebastian Steinberg with Jonathan on drums, and we cut it with a very small group, because it was still barely looking safe, and we kept our masks on half the time, being super cautious. That meant that we had a small unit with those players. You didn’t need many overdubs. There were people that came in after, like Sara Watkins, who sings very briefly on the song “Dallas,” but whose voice brings so much to it, and Jenny O sang harmony and played some guitar. Taylor on the song “Like Crystal” plays this gorgeous nylon string solo that’s to me straight out of “El Paso” or “Desolation Row.” … To make it with a small ensemble, that was fine by me and I love the way it came out, and Jonathan and I tried to keep it as spare as we could.
You know, a lot of the Beatles’ records, they’ve got beautiful harmonies and they’ve got guitar and piano, bass and drums, or two guitars, and a couple of cool instruments overdubbed, but lot of the time over their overdubs are a maraca pattern — they change up the shakers and they bring the shakers in for eight bars and then they drop out. They don’t always do the baroque thing that they did on “Sgt. Pepper” and “Magical Mystery Tour.” These groups, they’re like chamber music. What can you do with a small ensemble? You can do an awful lot.
One curiosity spanning your two solo albums is that you have two different versions of the same song, which was presented as an instrumental on the first record and now appears with vocals as the song “Wobbles.” This new version might be my favorite song on the album. It’s a wonderful tune that seems almost a little bit like a sweeter version of something Randy Newman might do — Randy at his least barbed and most easygoing, anyway.
Very much so. I mean, this guy is in New Orleans and he spots a girl when he’s going to work, or it’s dawn and he’s coming home from work. He sees this girl, and she’s wobbling down the Esplanade, swaying to a rhythm in her head and probably a little tipsy. When we cut it instrumentally for the first album, on the drive home from cutting it, the lyrics showed up, completely unbidden. I went, Yeah! So I had to cut it like that, all those years later, and to put a little bit of a “Stand by Me” on it, or a little bit of a Goffin/King or Lieber & Stoller thing, like the Drifters and Coasters and those kinds of Ben E. King things. But yeah, it’s got some humor to it, too, because she’s wobbling! You don’t expect that word in that sweet song, so I kind of like that about it.
“If She Knew” is another fun one, a love song with a fast 6/8 thing…
Yeah. I was going for the Zombies and Bill Fay… I went, that’s the way to cut this.
On a different subject, people are asking you if you’ve read Mike Campell’s book, and you’ve said you haven’t yet. Did Mike ran anything by you, since he does really get into the nitty gritty of a lot of stuff that happened with the Heartbreakers?
He ran some stuff by me about me, so I could fact-check it. But I read excerpts and I thought it was great. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and focus on it, or to sit down and focus on any book. Maybe when I go play some dates, I can sit in the hotel room and actually focus on it, because I think it deserves the focus. And I love the excerpts I’ve read.
Your own book is something people would love to read, even though you’re indicated in the past you’re not in any hurry to do that.
Nahhh, there’s no book coming from me. [Laughs.] There’s no book. Nobody needs a book from me. Mike’s memory is probably a lot better than mine, and I wouldn’t know what to say. I’d rather work on getting things across in a song than try to tackle prose, you know?
I like finding lyrics and I like playing these songs quietly so that people can hear the lyrics. There’s nothing on here where I didn’t pay attention to the lyrics. There may be one or two places where I didn’t quite get the right word, but not many. And that’s important to me. The people I grew up listening to, Dylan, Randy Newman, Mick and Keith — who don’t get the credit they deserve — and Irving Berlin… These folks made sure it was the right word, and for the most part made sure that it didn’t just sound rhymey. Bob’s very playful and his lines are always great, and sometimes really unexpected, but they fit.
You know, Walt Whitman revised “Leaves of Grass” over and over and over again, up till the deathbed edition came out. And I have a volume somewhere in my house of earlier editions of “Leaves of Grass,” and he kept revising it until he found the right words. It’s interesting, because in some cases I think he went past it. And that’s Walt Whitman, who’s the king of all of y’all. But it’s important, the right words, in getting the story across. I hope I got the stories across on these songs.
You have a west coast swing going on now. People on your social media are saying they hope you do even more territories.
Oh, I will. I got a west coast run and we have a few runs planned, and I’m not gonna let this record just go by the wayside. I want people to hear it, so I’m gonna keep going out and playing. I don’t think I can go out for a month at a time, but I’ll make up for it by going out frequently. I can do two-week jaunts and do them frequently so I’m not away from my daughter for too long. Give me time. I can only be in so many places at once. I think I’m unlimited, but I can only be in four places at once right now.
Of course, any time we see you on stage for some of the other things you do, whether it was MusiCares’ Grateful Dead tribute or last fall’s Robbie Robertson tribute, everyone knows your presence means it’s going to be the best band anyone could assemble, and it’s obviously something you love to do.
I’m tackling this Patti Smith concert now because I love and respect her and it’s too good an opportunity to pass up. One of these days I’ll say no to something, but not if it’s like this, you know? The Band, the Grateful Dead, Mavis Staples, Willie Nelson — how can you say no?
Benmont Tench’s tour dates:
April 2— Ojai, CA— Ojai Playhouse
April 4— Santa Cruz, CA— Kuumbwa
April 5— San Francisco, CA— The Independent
April 8— Seattle, WA— Triple Door
April 9— Portland, OR— Old Church
April 11— Grass Valley, CA— Center for the Arts
April 12— Sonoma, CA— Sebastiani Theatre
