Something Beautiful

Don’t waste your time looking for Ben Connelly in his third album, Over You; you’ll be misled repeatedly. When he sings about divorce, remember that he’s never been married. When he echoes his son asking, “Would Daddy have loved me if he’d stayed,” realize that Connelly did stay. When he sings, “I found Jesus on the inside. Now I’m out, and he ain’t here. Thirteen years in federal prison, and every day he felt so near,” know that Connelly is a Zen practitioner and has never been in prison.

I'm not an unreliable narrator,” he laughs. “The characters are unreliable narrators. I’m interested in the fact that people seem to think the singer of the song is the narrator. I like playing with the tension of that expectation.”

Connelly isn’t toying with us; he simply has topics more important than self-confession. The born-again excon in “Won’t Do Anything Wrong Tonight” may seem remote to many, but as he wanders through the streets of the song—lonely, desperate, and fighting not to fall back into his old ways—Connelly captures a sense of longing and moral struggle that’s universally human. Seeing yourself in this likely unfamiliar character is a profound and humbling experience. “The song is really about how, with all your faults and all the things that drive you to do what’s wrong, you have a painful opportunity to take care of this moment,” says Connelly.

By not writing about himself, Connelly gives listeners space to bring their own perspectives to the songs. “I really don’t want the writing to be about me,” he says. “I want it to be about you and everyone. Certainly, stories that arise in my life make their way into the songs, but I’m not writing as therapy.”

Iowa native, Connelly broke into the Twin Cities music scene in the early 1990s with Steeplejack. That band is its own story—one of hard drinking, hard rocking, legendary shows, a stab at stardom, eventual sobriety, and an amicable parting of ways in 1998 after a superb album and three EPs.

The story of Connelly’s solo career starts about a year after the band’s demise, when he booked a solo show at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. Connelly’s guitar style—he uses two fingers and a pick—allows him to play multiple parts, combining the sound of a small band with the intimacy of a solo performance. His songs hint at influences—from rock, pop, and blues to classical, gospel, and Tin Pan Alley—without falling into any one camp. All those pieces came together at the BLB. “The first show, it just seemed perfect,” he says. “It was exactly what I wanted it to be. The connection with people just seemed more intimate than anything I could do with a rock band.”

That alchemy defined the sound of his solo career. Though Over You adds some drums, organ, bass, and backing vocals, it’s the intimacy of Connelly’s songwriting, singing, and guitar-playing that make the album. As he hoped, you can enter his songs, and they do become about you.

“Like a lot of people, I was motivated, in part, by wanting to have lots of people love me,” he says of his early career. “But what interests me lately is the desire to connect with people by giving them something beautiful.”

CD available September 12, CD-release party September 25. Varsity Theater, 1308 SE 4th St., Mpls., 612-604-0222, benconnelly.com