Hello, and welcome to my blog. I’ve never had one before, so this is a new and somewhat nerve-racking frontier: writing things down, letting people read them, and then having the temerity to promise I’ll do it again. I’m more accustomed to putting my thoughts into songs, where an awkward admission can at least be accompanied by a reasonably agreeable chord.
But I’d like somewhere to keep in touch with you all, share what I’m working on, and tell you a little about the music and the life around it. So I thought I’d begin with The Heartbreak Handbook, and the rather longer-than-anticipated journey towards finishing it.
I thought I knew what this record was going to be about when I started it. It turns out I’d submitted a working hypothesis.
The Heartbreak Handbook came from a somewhat stereotypical place for anyone who’s ever gone through a breakup: sadness, loss, anger, grief, and all the other feelings that become your entire world when you’re in the middle of it. It’s a very self-absorbing sort of crisis. You know countless people have been through it before, but that doesn’t make what you’re feeling any less overwhelming or any easier to see beyond. The human race has had centuries to perfect the experience and has, apparently, made very little progress. Writing the songs was my way of trying to make sense of it all.
Music has always been the most consistent grounding force in my life. The places have changed, the bands have changed, and people have come and gone, but I’ve always been able to pick up an instrument and begin somewhere.
That doesn’t mean I’ve always found an answer. Quite often, I’ve just found another verse. But the process helps.
Then life gave the title a much broader meaning than I’d intended.
My dad died in January 2023, three months after being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. I went home to be with him, and everything else, including the record, had to wait.
Three months is very little time to take in news like that. By the time you’re beginning to understand what’s happening, you’re already having to face what comes next.
During the time I wasn’t working, I built up credit card debt. After Dad died, I had to get back to earning a living and pay that off before I could afford to continue recording. Alongside the grief, there was the practical business of getting myself back on my feet. It took time.
When I was finally in a position to carry on, my producer and one of my best friends, Chris Gage, became ill.
The album went on pause for another year.
If you knew Chris, you’ll understand why writing about him is difficult. If you didn’t, I wish you could have met him.
He was a remarkable musician. Piano, guitar, mandolin, dobro, accordion: the list was substantial, and he could move between them with an ease that made you forget how much skill was involved. His life in music took him from South Dakota and the Red Willow Band to years on the road with Roy Clark, and eventually to Austin. His work with Christine Albert as Albert and Gage, his performances and his recording work made him part of the fabric of this city’s music community.
To me, Chris was one of my best friends. He was also my musical mentor, someone I looked up to and learned from. Being that much older than me, he became a father figure in my life as well. Those relationships all existed together. Each was important, and together they made him someone I relied on in ways that went well beyond the studio.
Making this record with him meant sharing something I loved with someone who mattered enormously to me. I trusted his musical judgement, but our connection went much deeper than the work.
Chris passed away in August 2025, only a couple of years after I’d lost my own dad.
His loss was doubly hard because of that. I was still learning to live without Dad, and now I had lost another person who gave me a sense of guidance and reassurance. With Chris, I lost a dear friend, my mentor, and someone I’d come to lean on in a fatherly way. There was so much wrapped up in one person.
I missed him, and I found myself wanting to ask his advice about the very thing I was facing: how to carry on without him.
For quite a while afterwards, I couldn’t see how to finish the album. I wanted to, but wanting to do something and being able to face it are different things. I spent a long time trying to work out how to continue emotionally, how to pay for it, and who could help me carry forward something that held so much of our friendship.
The support of Howlin’ Dog Music Group made an enormous difference. Being awarded their Carl Hearne Memorial Grant gave me a practical way forward. It also brought back some much-needed enthusiasm. Finishing the record began to feel possible again, and I’m enormously grateful to them for that.
Which brings me to Don Richmond.
Don is someone I’ve befriended over the years, and I’m very grateful that he’s helping me finish this project. He’s spent more than fifty years making music in Colorado and New Mexico as a songwriter, performer, multi-instrumentalist and producer. Through Howlin’ Dog, he’s helped hundreds of records into the world, alongside his own music and his work with the Rifters. It’s the sort of musical CV that makes you wonder whether he’s been quietly allotted a longer working week than the rest of us.
But his experience is only part of why this feels right.
I’ve come to think of Don as a spiritual and musical brother to Chris. There’s something in his relationship with music that feels familiar to me. Bringing another person into this project was a deeply personal decision, and that familiarity matters. With Don, I feel able to return to the work and carry it forward.
The original songs and their intention are still at the heart of The Heartbreak Handbook. But I hear the project differently now. It carries the breakup that started it, the loss of my dad, the loss of Chris, and all the time spent trying to get back to it.
Finishing it has become a way of honouring Chris: one of my best friends, my mentor, and someone who helped me find my feet in music and in life.
I’ve always hoped my songs might be useful to somebody. That someone might recognise a little of their own experience in them and feel less alone. I know how much I’ve needed that from music myself.
We’ve now begun assembling the missing pieces of the musical puzzle that will become this album, and it’s lovely to hear it taking shape again. Don’s musical sensitivity and brilliance have breathed new life into the project and renewed my excitement about what it can become.
I’ll check back in soon to start talking about the songs individually, give you some insight into the recording process, and introduce you to the other musicians I’ve been lucky enough to feature on the album. I intend to make this a regular conversation, so this first excursion into blogging will have to be followed by a second. I’ve rather committed myself now.
Thank you for staying with me through all of this. It means a great deal.
Ben