In the basement of his childhood home, Ben O’Brien sits at a keyboard and starts working out a new song. He says he hasn’t started writing lyrics for it yet but is intent on using a recent experience to help guide his songwriting.
“The other day, I yawned and sneezed,” he said. “So I wrote in my joke songs notes folder, ‘yawn, sneeze, burp,’ and my goal now is to write a song like that.”
These joke songs, or “silly songs” as Ben refers to them, have been his main creative focus recently. After spending more than 10 years playing in his former band Foggy May and other groups around the Baltimore area, he feels the transition to working as a solo performer is seamless and enjoys the challenges that come with it.
“I’ve had to step up as a writer,” he said. “I’ve only been playing open mics so far. It’s just me strumming simple chords and singing lyrics that I really believe in — really lyrically driven stuff.”
Ben’s passion for being a musician came when he was young. The 28-year-old Westminster native had a neighbor who would take him to shows at different clubs around the city, like the Ottobar, and hosted the bands at her house. One night, she had a few touring bands play at her house party, and Ben said watching those bands play, along with later playing “Guitar Hero,” are what inspired him to pick up a guitar and pursue music. From there, he would meet his future bandmates through school and from playing recreational basketball in Westminster.
Growing up, Ben said he struggled with anxiety. While exercising gave him some relief, he said he discovered Cannabis in the summer before his senior year of high school, and after smoking for the first time, he admits it changed his consciousness.
“Discovering this thing really brought a sense of calm, and even if it wasn’t always a sense of calm, it was a sense of adventure,” he said, adding that he got his medical card in 2018.
When writing his songs, Ben says they almost always start with the topic, whether it’s stepping into a funny situation or thinking of an imaginary encounter. One of his favorite songs he’s put out is called “Ex,” which is a fictional take on the possibility of seeing an ex-partner out in public with the added challenge of starting each line of lyrics with a word that begins with “ex.”
“I feel like with me writing these songs recently, I’ve been more receptive to the world and people in general,” he said. “I hear someone say something and I put it into my blender, and it makes it into one of my songs.”
Ben said he prefers smoking a hybrid strain of dry flower that’s split right down the middle in terms of where the effect leans. While he can’t recall any strain in particular that stands out as a favorite, he said when he’s working on a song and takes a break to smoke, the song goes in a different direction when he revisits it later on.
“You might hear some people say, ‘Sleep on it.’ I say, ‘Smoke on it,’” he said. “Cannabis definitely grants you a slightly different perspective.”
Cannabis also brings him an element of introspectiveness, describing his nightly session as a “self-audit.”
“I think about different things that happened that day — some things I’m proud of or things I could do better — and I try to do better the next day,” he said. “Obviously, you don’t need to smoke marijuana to have that kind of self-audit, but I think it helps me be more sensitive. I think it takes away a bit of my ego.”
In addition to writing original songs, Ben also creates “mash-up poems,” which are different lines he’s written that don’t have or necessarily need music to accompany them. He takes two topics the audience wouldn’t normally associate with each other and uses the whole poem to marry the two topics. A few examples of these poems include various Disney villains attending the Olympic Games or a fictional account of Bob Marley going to a Planet Fitness.
“I try to create something every day, whether it’s one line lyrically or a new lick on guitar. That’s how I judge me being productive,” he said. “It’s not always about how much money I can make but how much I get out of me and into the world today.”
Ben said he intends to release an EP of some of his silly songs in the near future while enlisting a few friends to collaborate with him and eventually put together a live band to perform these songs beyond an open mic setting. He describes the EP as having a country music vibe that some would liken to a “concussed Charley Crockett,” based on the nature of the songs.
“I heard Tim Dillon once say, ‘Do what makes you feel most alive,’” he said. “When I’m putting the chords together and I come up with the lines, I feel like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing.”
