A Study in Unknowing
Introducing #SHH001, a beautiful new record from Ben Alleman
Today, Well Kept Secret is announcing it’s first release— and it’s no accident. I purposely wanted this record to be the first thing we shared. There will be no radio singles on this one, nor are we expecting a TikTok viral hit. Honestly, in today’s musical landscape, this is the antithesis of what you might expect.
It takes time. You have to sit with it. It calmly suggests you shut up.
Ben Alleman grew up in Louisiana and he’s played live and on recordings with all the proper nouns you can possibly handle— everyone from Jenny Lewis to The Wood Brothers, from Social Distortion to Willie Nelson, from Betty Who to Dr. John. If it’s a brag sheet you want, he’s got it… but he’s not gonna brag. That’s what I’m for.
I’ve had the pleasure of living with his record for awhile now, and it’s been an ever present companion. I remember putting it on at the end of a 14 hour flight, touching down at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. I remember sitting at my favorite coffee shop here in New Orleans, watching people go by with this music as my soundtrack. When I’m searching for a balm, this music provides it.
It’s also produced by a bandmate of mine, another fella that is handicapped by humility but truly gifted— Parker McAnnally. If there is any justice left in this world, Parker’s work behind the board on this record will be his calling card, an absolutely inspired effort that should keep him working for decades to come.
Today, you can hear the first track from A Study in Unknowing, a beautiful introduction called “Mirlitons & Fig Trees (for Cooney).” You can also preorder a limited edition LP or pre-save the album on your favorite streaming service.
All of these things are accessible here.
I was delighted to get the final packaging for this project and see that Ben had chosen to include a short essay on the back cover, just like my favorite records from half a century ago. I was charmed to see that Parker wrote it. To me, this collaboration is what it’s all about: friends tapping friends to create something special together. It’s why I remain in this crazy business and it’s the inspiration behind starting a new venture. Hopefully, it moves you the way it’s moved me.
Here is that essay, in full. Give it a read and then give this music a listen. It’s worthy.
In 1929 the United States Army Corps of Engineers built a six mile dam in southern Louisiana, consisting of 7,000 movable wooden slats filling 350 concrete bays, in response to the most destructive flood in the history of the United States just two years prior. This system, the Bonnet Carré Spillway, floods the land that separates the Mississippi River from Lake Pontchartrain, diverting the mighty Mississippi from drowning the city it helped create: New Orleans.
As if pulled directly from that soaked ground, New Orleans native Ben Alleman has been confidently and quietly nurturing his distinctive compositional voice, fueled by years of studio excellence and tours with a number of your favorite rock outfits of the last fifteen years. A Study In Unknowing, the fruiting body of his dedication to craft, is at once a remembrance and a path forward. The slow motion, elegiac ritual of “Mirlitons and Fig Trees” is buoyed by the rebirth and celebration of “River.” What gives the album its singularity is the ability of Alleman and his collaborators to communicate sensitivity, anger, tenacity, disappointment and joy, often in the same song. This isn’t only a celebration of musicianship, it’s a celebration of the complexities of being alive.
A Study In Unknowing was made entirely in a small stuccoed garage at Alleman’s new home in Los Angeles, an ideal setting for the close collaboration that made the seeming telepathy of these recordings possible. Questions are posed, occasionally answered, sometimes left open-ended. What’s here is tactile and tangible, valuing discovery over accomplishment, managing to write a new chapter in the book begun by Bill Frisell and Daniel Lanois.
The album spends most of its time in New Orleans, reflecting on the complexity of “home:” Is it a place to return to, or simply the place that shaped you? What comfort can home provide, and at what cost?
Alleman interrogates these ideas, from the harmonic mystery of “1323 Saint Andrew St.,” to the somnambulant seduction of “Pelican 1.” The dream ends with a snare crack that begins “Pelican 2,” and cleaves the album in half. Shoulder to shoulder, Sebastian Steinberg’s relentless ruddered bass and Matt Musty’s muscular drumming lift Alleman’s raging distorted Wurlitzer, all together clawing away layers of rubble to reveal a cornerstone of the album, “Bonnet Carré.” Alleman wisely places the most identifiably New Orleans-drenched song deep in the album, and it feels like an arrival. It is at once regal, funky, menacing and surprising. Joe Harrison’s sepia-toned woodwinds combined with the swirls of organ and percussion create the sensation of plunging a kaleidoscope into a swamp, seeing the flora and fauna animated by Alleman’s sunken piano playing.
You can hear him collecting waterlogged relics in New Orleans amidst the straw, dried leaves and glass that become makeshift percussion - things never broken, only repurposed. After the dust has cleared, he leaves Louisiana for the moving pictures of “California,” which flicker and churn. Alleman’s piano is spare and structural, Musty’s drums smear and skitter across the panorama; nowhere is the idea of The American West more optimistic, complex, or promising.
Like the Spillway that connects the Mississippi to the Lake Pontchartrain, Alleman artfully bridges his New Orleanian roots with his current California surroundings, controlling the flow of what is expected in a search for higher ground, while still showing us what was once submerged isn’t useless; it can become new again.
Home remains - if you listen closely you can hear the river flowing.
Listen, pre-save and preorder Ben Alleman’s new record, A Study in Unknowing, today. It releases to the world in full on June 21, 2024. Click here to get it.
Beautiful.