Weekly Neil: Tonight's The Night, With Ben Seretan
The Hudson Valley musician talks grief, his expansive and colorful new album 'Allora,' and getting playfully dissed by Neil Young at a movie theater
This is Weekly Neil, a newsletter about Neil Young. This week, I’m honored to feature a conversation with Ben Seretan, a Hudson Valley artist who might be one of the most boundlessly creative people I’ve ever talked to. His new album Allora is out Friday (July 26). You can see what I mean when you listen to it. Ben’s website mentioned meeting Neil some years ago, and I wanted to know more, so I sent him an email. His affirmative reply is too good not to be shared: “Wow, my time has finally come.”
One day in April, while working from bed and knocked out by COVID (again), I was listening to Yo La Tengo when a friend sent me this song by Ben Seretan. It’s called “New Air,” and it might be the best song of 2024, even though it dates back to 2019. It also sounds, coincidentally, a lot like YLT: eight minutes of guitar freak-outs that bring immense joy. “New Air” opens Ben’s new album Allora, which he has taken to calling “his insane Italy record” due to the high-pressure circumstances of its recording. Basically, he had three days in the studio and two other musicians — bassist Nico Hedley and drummer Dan Knishkowy — to cut it with. They had ambitions for a European tour that didn’t pan out. Back home, Ben’s great friend and collaborator Devra Freelander had just died in a tragic accident.
All of the above exists as narrative surrounding the music itself, a lush swirl of Ben’s soaring voice and the exploring he uses his guitar to do. Allora is not folky but pastoral, a mode Ben is very comfortable in. Allora is likewise gorgeous and sometimes fragile, with topics ranging from clever (“Jubilation Blues”) to yearning (“Climb The Ladder”). A quick peek at his Instagram reveals Ben’s greatest talent for experimentation; he recently pulled off a 24-hour drone event at Basilica Hudson, where he works as director of programs. It’s no surprise to learn that Ben loves Neil, one of the greatest experimenters of his generation. But it was a pleasant story to hear that Ben had once actually met Neil.
Weekly Neil: Your website says that you “once shook hands with Neil Young and he made fun of me (in a nice way).” A big part of why I wanted to talk to you is to find out what happened there. So, what’s that story?
Ben Seretan: This conveniently coincided with the peak of my Neil Young mania. I was really deep in his work, studying it. I was reading Shakey, [Jimmy McDonough’s] biography. I was really having a moment with his work. My employer at the time was Film Society at Lincoln Center. My supervisor, Glenn, knew that I was a huge fan. Jonathan Demme was a regular. Jonathan Demme, famously, was a great resident of the Upper West Side, and he would just wander over to Film Society to catch a flick a few times a month, and everybody knew him. He was really nice.
I think this was during the Le Noise album that Neil Young did with Daniel Lanois. Neil Young came to Lincoln Center. He performed at Alice Tully Hall, which is a very fancy place, and he was doing a Le Noise tour. It was fucking crazy because he parked his bus on 65th St. He had the crazy, chromed-out tour bus. It was so bizarre.
I didn't really figure this out at the time, but Jonathan Demme did three concert films with Neil Young through different eras of his work. They were apparently nearing final edit on the third one, which was documenting this tour. My perception was knowing that Neil Young was going to be around, being obsessed with his music, but not having like the means to get a ticket to see him and just kind of lamenting the fact — when my boss calls me into his office and very unusually he closes the door and tells me to sit down [laughs]. So I did. I assumed I was getting fired, and Glenn goes, “You got plans Wednesday night?” or whatever it was. I said, “I don't know… sounds like I do!” He says, “Be here at 11 o'clock. Jonathan and Neil are coming in are watch a cut of the movie. You're gonna be there.”
Photo by Alexia Webster
The place I was working, the Walter Reade Theater, is one of the nicest theaters in New York City. Obviously, apparently Neil Young has very specific requirements when it comes to the sound of the cinema. He wanted to experience it at the right volume and the 5.1 [surround sound] and all that stuff. We set up the screening, and it was so funny because it was really not a big deal. It was really informal. But a bunch of us on staff were all huge Neil Young fans. I remember talking to one of my bosses beforehand, and she was like, “I took a handful of Klonopin.”
Jonathan comes in, he says hi to us, he’s all nice. I was deep enough into Neil Young at the time that I recognized one of his crew members. Finally Neil walked in and he kind of just said hello to all of us. And then we're like, okay, we'll just go watch the movie now. It has a lot to do with Neil Young going back to where he grew up and talking about his dad and being Canadian and being in these smaller towns in Canada. It’s a very heartfelt, great documentary.
In the lobby afterwards, we're all kind of standing around. There wasn’t a lot of discussion. That was the moment when my boss was like — Glenn is a very tall, athletic, imposing man. He really is an alpha. He really took charge, like, “I'm gonna introduce my staff to Neil Young right now.” I would have just stood there staring at my feet being totally starstruck, but he really took the initiative, and he introduced us one by one. It was like meeting a king, or something. I really felt like it was that level of formal. And he just looks exactly like Neil Young. I can't describe it anymore than that. He’s jowly, his hair’s all fucked up, wearing a little hat, exactly as you'd imagine. I just couldn't distinguish him from images I had burned into my brain.
Then Glenn introduced me, and at the time, I thought I was hot shit or whatever. He said, “This is Ben, he helps manage the theater.” And I said, “Actually, I'm a musician!” And Neil makes a very minorly impressed face, kind of frowns and nods, just the slightest imperceptible acknowledgment. Then he hits me with a brutal joke, which is, “Well you didn't have to dress like me.” That’s what Neil Young says to me as I'm shaking his hand. Yes, I'm wearing a ripped flannel shirt and a band t-shirt. So then they left, and all of us were like, what the fuck just happened? I was up ‘til, like, 6 a.m. because I was so excited.
WN: Your new album Allora is bookended by these long songs with prominent guitar parts, which can obviously be heard through the lens of Neil’s influence. Did you spend a lot of time playing the shredding Neil stuff when you were younger?
Ben: The twin flames for me in terms of my approach to music are Neil Young and also Yo La Tengo. Neil Young is such a master of the folk heartbreak quiet number and Crazy Horse is one of the loudest bands I’ve ever seen in my life. Similarly, Yo La Tengo can do both, sometimes in the same song. I've really loved that approach. I love how you can be ferociously tender and tenderly ferocious. I don’t know if Neil gets all the way tender. There’s always a little bit of bite. But another formative moment for me was seeing him on the fucking Greendale tour. I was like in ninth grade. He came to this like outdoor amphitheater near my house growing up, and it was it was an amazing show because it was him and Elvis Costello. It was just an unhinged performance. It had a full stage set and the guy dressed Satan in a red suit doing pantomime behind the band. It was basically a musical.
WN: You mentioned Tonight's The Night having some thematic overlap with Allora. Obviously they don't sound particularly similar, but they’re both artistic statements working through grief. I want to turn it over to you, and you can kind of speak about that in any way that makes sense to you.
Ben: I love Tonight’s The Night. One thing that I definitely picked up from Neil Young in general, and this is something you hear on a lot of his records, is that he will set kind of an arbitrary limit, or there'll be a scenario in which the album is contained logistically. “This live album, we cut it in a certain amount of time, and it's unedited.” For Greendale, he says, “I wrote the songs on the way to the studio and we tracked him that day, and that's how we did that album.” Tonight’s The Night is one of those things. They went to this place, they ate cheeseburgers, they got fucking drunk all night long, and then at the end of the night, they cut the songs they were working on. They did it in a mobile recording studio. It’s a specific cultivation of a vibe and a narrative and a dread.
I've often done the same thing, to kind of arbitrarily decide that a record is going to be recorded in a certain way or contained in a certain way. It wasn't the intention with Allora, but it just so happened that we only had these two and a half days in the studio [in 2019]. We did everything we could do to do an album, and that's what it ended up being. Also coincidentally, Tonight’s The Night is all about the death of the original front guy from from Crazy Horse, Danny [Whitten]. It's these drunken party buddies trying to reconcile their continuing behavior that killed the man in his honor, knowing that to honor him is to dabble in this thing that killed him. It's a very complicated dance.
[Making Allora], our emotional state was so frenzied. I was putting on the finishing touches of my album that came out in 2020. We were like knee-deep in Youth Pastoral at that time, so I fully had another album in the can. There was really no point in cutting an album when we did, but that was the path that opened up to us. Plus, we could sleep at the studio, so that was another added bonus.
WN: I would imagine that lends itself to creating when you don't physically have to go to a place where you're recording.
Ben: It was pretty idyllic. It was out in the [Venetian] countryside, in the hills. We'd walk to a restaurant after we finished recording for the day and look out at the sunset. It was unlike Tonight’s The Night, which has this pervasive kind of drunken nihilism to it that is delicious and compelling, but it doesn't feel like anyone in that band is thriving. Jacob-wrestling-the-angel style spiritual warfare is happening on that album. And when I listen back to Allora now, I do hear a lot of grief, but a huge part of it is pushing past walls in order to get somewhere new because the situation made us all kind of want to rip our skin off. But I hear so much joy in the music and in the playing.
WN: The other day I was really struggling on a run. It was just going miserably. And I threw on “New Air,” and I have to tell you, I really I got there.
Ben: That’s beautiful. And true to point: This was the peak of my treadmill mania as well. In 2018, I arbitrarily decided that I was going to run 1,000 miles that year. I did it. I kept a spreadsheet and got really obsessed with being on the treadmill. I found myself, after my friend died, my first response was to go running, and my second response was to go dancing the same time. So this was very much cardio, exertion, effort.
WN: At the end of the song “Bend,” you’re singing, “I will bend not break.” There's a lot of hope there — very different from Neil not hitting notes on “Mellow My Mind” at all. And I just think, wow, he kept that take.
Ben: It's that beautiful thing of warts-and-all that I just I love about Neil Young’s oeuvre generally. It's so evident on Tonight’s The Night that he plays fucking bum guitar notes a few times every album. He's one of history's greatest singers, but he does not edit himself. Has he ever comped a vocal taken his life? I don't think so. It makes it just so honest feeling. I so strongly prefer music that is a document to music that is a creation or a collage. I'd much rather hear something that captures the actual event of a room rather than like layering these things on top of it, which is why I hate double-tracked vocals with my whole heart.
Ben Seretan’s new album Allora is out Friday, July 26. Find it here.
“Tonight’s The Night,” written by Neil Young, from Tonight’s The Night (1975)
Neil Young: vocals, piano
Ben Keith: pedal steel vocal, guitar
Nils Lofgren, guitar
Billy Talbot: bass
Ralph Molina: drums, vocal