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<a href="http://www.bennyyurco.com/">BennyYurco.com</a> for more information and where to buy or stream over there in the sidebar.

Daniel Pinkwater may be my favorite young adult author. His skewed sense of absurdist humor and playfulness is a welcome refresher from the sometime moralistic kids books lining shelves of Barnes & Noble nationwide. A few days back I was reading Pinkwater's book "Big Orange Splot" to my youngest when the following thought occurred to me. Benny Yurco's newest release "This Is A Future" is not a "Neat Street" where expectations can be met. 

For those of you out of the loop on Pinkwater I'll take the liberty of quoting another source to explain what the book is, ostensibly "about". 

<blockquote>Mr. Plumbean lives on a 'neat street' where all the houses look the same. One day, an orange splot of paint is dropped on his roof, and instead of removing it, Plumbean begins to transform his house into a mecca of color, palm trees, and a hammock. The neighbors are aghast! As each goes to convince him to make it a neat street again, Plumbean explains, 'My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.' The neighbors end up chatting into the night about their own interests and dreams, and subsequently create their fantasy houses, including a castle and a ship. The formerly neat, now fascinating and alive street, lives happily ever after. With charming illustrations and Pinkwater's quirky humor, this tale reminds us all that sometimes breaking the mold is the best way to express our passions and aspirations.</blockquote>

-- <a href="http://www.criticalconcern.com/nonviolence/big-orange-splot.htm">http://www.criticalconcern.com/nonviolence/big-orange-splot.htm
</a>

What, you may rightly ask, in the hell are you talking about? Well, I'll get to it. Benny Yurco is a guitarist in a band called "Grace Potter and the Nocturnals" - you may have heard of them. GPN plays a physically demanding, muscular style of rock and roll music that requires from its members a certain projected energy. I picture Benny in the back of the bus cruising down the highways of the country after these demanding shows and simply coming down off the experience. He's listening to the tunes he likes, electronica, dub reggae, keyboard based riffing, surf tunes and whatever else brings you slowly down from your musical high. He dreams of making his own music - the house he lives in in his head. After months on the road rolling the thoughts around in his head he returns to Vermont and starts the process. No, this will not be a "neat street" type of record. Expectations of crushing blues riffs and intricate solos are not where his head is. 

<a href=" http://www.7dvt.com/2012benny-yurco ">The 7DVT crew picks up the story. </a>

<blockquote>“There’s a lot of ‘Did they just do that?’ on this record,” Yurco says.

Before ending a long day’s session during the week of recording, Kauffman proposes Yurco chase the tribal drums on “The Times” with a noisy guitar. Yurco grabs his baby-blue Jazzmaster with matching headstock — a gift from Fender after he earned a sponsorship from the company — and sashays into the sound booth. It is well past midnight. Gebhardt turns the lights down in the control room to better see Yurco’s densely bearded face floating in the red glow of the sound-booth lamp. Yurco plucks a few loud notes of distorted twang, amplified through a 1965 Ampeg Gemini.

“Sounding ridic,” says Kauffman at the controls.

Kauffman hits “record” and the analog tape rolls to speed. Beginning with hesitant phrases, Yurco’s guitar lines evolve to trace his falsetto vocal melody, then transition to noise, then shredding.

Yurco exits the booth and returns to the control room. “Can you work with anything in there?” he asks. He’s confident in his guitar playing but abides by a humble mantra: “No selfishness. No ego.
</blockquote>

I put "This Is A Future" on often while I'm driving through Vermont. It weaves and bobs its way through the landscape. You'd think all these tunes with their electronic processing and sounds from inside an imagination sticking their necks out the window would be out of place amongst the pine trees and hills - they are not. Benny's falsetto, the guitar, the sheer thrill he gets from making music, it's all in there. I'm loathe to label it or pick out individual tracks for dissection. I imagine Benny saying - "This record is me and I am it" - our own Mister Plumbeam.

<img src="http://www.thisissomewhere.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/aliga.jpg" alt="" title="aliga" width="400" height="307" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-8764" />

Pull up a spot on the hammock and sit with Benny for a listen - I think you'll enjoy it. 

** Sidenote - Pinkwater responding to a 10 year olds questions. **
Have you ever partaken of any hallucinogenic substances, either prior to sitting down to write, or at any point in your life? You sound an awful lot like the protagonist of Alan Mendelsohn. The yoga and everything. Did you do that on purpose? Who are you? 

Daniel replies: I have overdosed on Fox's U-Bet syrup. I am your friend. 

via - <a href="http://www.pinkwater.com/pzone/">http://www.pinkwater.com/pzone/</a>