Biography

Contact Information:
Tim Bennett 714/499-4091
tbennettmusic@gmail.com

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“The View From Here”
Release Date: August 11, 2017


Straddling country rock, “The View From Here” employs the same musicians I met while working on “Highly Irregular”. That project took a year and a half. What I got from that experience was a great place to record, Custom Taylored Studios, and a great group of session musicians that I fondly refer to as ‘The Demolitionists’. These guys were pitched to me as today’s ‘Wrecking Crew’ and they have certainly lived up to that comparison.

The full band tracks were recorded in two sessions in January and February, 2017, followed by additional sessions for vocals and solos. I wanted more uptempo and mid-tempo songs for “The View From Here”. As a result, the album has a few more songs that rock than my previous endeavors but never lets go of it’s country roots with 10 original songs and one Bob Dylan cover,

Recorded by: Keith Taylor at Custom Taylored Studios, Fountain Valley, CA
Mastered by: Keith Taylor at Custom Taylored Studios, Fountain Valley, CA
Graphic Design by: Tim Bennett

Order of Songs on The View From Here


1. As Long As You’re Buying (3:18) (Featured Track)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal & rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff - piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

As Long As You’re Buying is another song that I had written in the early 1980s as a straightforward country song that might sound like a Hayes Carll or John Prine tune. I had been hearing it in my head as a country rocker for some time and with the players at my disposal in the studio that’s exactly what this song became.
It’s a country song about drowning your sorrows after losing a job you really didn’t like in the first place. I decided to test my voice with this song, I sang it in E instead of the original key, C. It puts a little more urgency into the vocal, taking it out of that wry country terrain and elevating it to a barnburner.



2. Forgive & Forget (4:38)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmony vocal, and rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric slide guitar
Hal Ratliff - piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

Forgive & Forget is about altering your own behavior despite the way you had been raised. My folks were both Great Depression kids and didn’t talk much about their lives growing up. My paternal grandfather died of tuberculosis six months before my dad was born. My mother’s father was killed when she was five. He drove a truck for Nabisco that got stuck on some railroad tracks in North Carolina and hit by a passing train.

They both definitely had a much tougher childhood than I did and carried some of that pain forward. I’ve tried to leave that pain behind with my own sons. That’s the story behind this song.



3. There Was Nothing I Could Do (4:08) (Featured Track)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmony vocals, and guitar
Matt Brislawn - fiddle
Ernie Nunez – upright bass

There Was Nothing I Could Do is reminiscent of a classic country heartache ballad. The song is sparse instrumentally with just the acoustic guitar, Ernie Nunez on upright bass, and the hauntingly mournful fiddle solo by Matt Brislawn.

Matt was uncertain at the time if he had given us what we were looking for on this song but again, it was what I had heard in my head when I first thought about a fiddle solo. He captured it beautifully.



4. Coulda Woulda Shoulda (3:50)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal & rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff - piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

This song initially was inspired by The United States Congress which after years under the thumb of the Majority Leader accomplished a whole lot of nothing. Chances are none of the members would hear it so I changed my approach reverting to the tried and true method of giving myself advice.

In the studio, I only knew I wanted this one to kick some tail and after a couple of run-throughs, The Demolitionists drove it out of the park. Roger Gillespie on drums had suggested a Sixties feel and with Rick White’s searing guitar opening, we had a winner. The YouTube video captures the fun we had recording it.



5. I’ll Be Expecting You (4:59)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmony vocal, and rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff - piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

I’ll Be Expecting You began with my experimentation with different guitar tunings. Patty Griffin influenced that. The melody formed as I searched for the chord positions in Open D. I finished the music with no idea of a lyric or title.

I allowed myself to imagine that as a young man I had possessed the courage to ask a girl I adored out on a date. It never really happened but as a writer, I am allowed to imagine it did. I filled in the rest from there.

Actor and singer Chris Mulkey also recorded at Custom Taylored Studios. He had heard I’ll Be Expecting You and offered to appear as the lovesick hero in the music video. We shot exteriors at Badlands Park in Laguna Niguel, CA, the same place the album photos were taken. Thank you, Donna Drysdale of Drysdale Imaging for scouting the location and the photography for “The View From Here’.



6. Hot Town (4:36)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal and rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff – electric piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

Hot Town is a song I wrote near the end of summer when the temperature soared and the humidity tried to catch it. We are not used to high humidity in California. We’ve been getting a lot of it for the past few years.

I was in the bedroom banging out a chord riff that sounded danceable, when my wife, a dancer, came in and asked what I was playing. “I don’t know yet,” I said. “Still working on it.” ‘Sounds good,” she said and that was all the encouragement I needed. I finished it pretty quickly after that.



7. A Dangerous Man (4:29)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmony vocal, and rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff –piano and B3 organ
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

True story. Pay attention and figure it out yourself. You’ve been warned.

I started this one during the 2016 Presidential Campaign. I finished it in December 2016 and we recorded it the first Saturday of January 2017. True story.

I can’t imagine this song will get much radio airplay, but who knows?



8. Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You (3:34)

Songwriter: Bob Dylan
Publisher/PRO: Big Sky Music / SESAC
License Info: IDBLM 051726
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal & rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff –piano and B3 organ
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

I love this song but I never thought it was a country song even though the original recording was made in Nashville for Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” album. It always felt like an R&B song which is why I chose the organ solo for this cover version.



9. Ain’t Got Time For This (3:11)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal & rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff –piano and B3 organ
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

I think my Bluegrass days are showing on this song even though there’s not a banjo or fiddle in sight. This one is about how frantic and hectic everyday life can be. The solos by Rick White on electric guitar and Hal Ratliff on piano are frenetic and capture the song’s theme perfectly.



10. Awakened By My Breaking Heart (3:59)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmonica, and guitar
Ernie Nunez – upright bass

Just me and Ernie on this one. The video is my submission for The Tiny Desk Contest in 2018. Just me and my rolltop desk.

I woke up one morning hearing my own heart beating. Not fast or erratic, but I swear I could hear it. Maybe I had rolled over in my sleep into a position that caused it. I don’t know. I got a song title out of it and moved on from there.



11. The End of the Line (4:12)

Songwriter: Timothy K Bennett
Publisher/PRO: tbennettmusic, ASCAP
Administered by: Tunecore
Release Date: August 11, 2017

Musicians:
Tim Bennett - lead vocal, harmony vocal, and rhythm guitar
Rick White – lead electric guitar
Hal Ratliff – piano
Ernie Nunez – bass
Roger Gillespie – drums

You have reached The End of the Line. Yeah, I know, another train song. But in the intro, Hal Ratliff does this little thing on the piano that I was hearing in my head as I wrote the song. I couldn’t describe it and couldn’t play it on the guitar.

But in the studio without me telling him about it, he played it. What level of communication is that?





Tim Bennett grew up in Southern California listening to a wide variety of music from Rock, Pop, Country, Blues, Folk, and Bluegrass.

Tim is the former lead singer/songwriter for the band Whistler’s Father, an Americana group whose independent 2015 release “Highly Irregular” received airplay in the United States and Europe. "I Really Don't Miss You At All" made the Top 40 of The Roots Music Report Americana Country Chart and reached The Top 75 on The Fan Voted Chart