Ben Vaughn

Background

Ben Vaughn was born a Rambler man. It’s the only kind of car he’s ever owned, and he’s owned five. The former Jersey native once took me for a spin in his white 1964 Rambler during an interview he popped in an eight-track tape and remarked how music sounds best when it’s played in his car, on monophonic stereo.

Now the 41-year-old coot has recorded an entire album from the back seat of his blue ’65 Rambler, appropriately titled Rambler ’65 (Rhino). Vaughn played every instrument (except for the sitar) on this collection of twangy, rev-’em-up-and-go tunes. He’s left bits of the recording process intact bird chirps, a plane flying overhead and a solo featuring the Rambler’s engine.

The album was recorded more than two years ago in Vaughn’s Collingswood, NJ, driveway. Shortly after he recorded this album, primarily for his own pleasure, Vaughn was chosen to score the music for NBC’s TV show Third Rock From the Sun. Now that Third Rock is a smash, Vaughn has been getting work like crazy. He also writes the music for the TV sitcom Men Behaving Badly and has done soundtracks for a variety of films including Heavy, Swingers and Freeway. Rhino records has also released a short (and very goofy) film that dramatizes the making of the album.

You’re really busy these days!

It’s cool that it’s for the sound I’ve been working with my entire life. Even when I was in high school people used to torture me because of I liked the stuff I liked [a mix of old R?, country, surf, etc.] instead of Aqualung, or Emerson Lake and Palmer. It’s nice to be proven right.

So what made you decide to record in your car?

I was producing some demos in a studio in Hoboken and we had this conga player he just sounded bad, there were all these overtones. Just as a joke I said we should put him in my car and run a mike out; it’s gotta sound better than this. Everybody laughed. Even Ithought I was kidding. Then I started thinking about it. It seemed like a natural extension of what I do. I went from recording in a studio to recording in my house. So, I thought, what’s next?

And Rhino records was interested?

Nobody was interested. When I did the record, I wasn’t even sure if it was going to be my next record. But when I started mixing it, I realized I had something. My manager went nuts. He saw all the other possibilities. He thought, this thing is a story. That didn’t enter my mind at all. To me it was an experiment in sound and in process.

Half the Rambler ’65 movie is taken up by you trying to find a piston so you could get your Rambler running did that really happen?

It’s based on a true story, when I was still in New Jersey making that record, the car wasn’t running and I wanted to do an engine solo on the song “Heavy Machinery.” But I couldn’t do it unless the car was running. So I called my friend Bob who’s also a Rambler nut. He was trying to get the engine running while I was recording the album we’d kinda get in each other’s way. I’d say, well you can get under the hood if you want, ’cause I’m cutting a bass track.

How did you incorporate the sitar player?

I put him in the back seat and we had to roll down the window to stick the neck of the thing out. The only way to play the sitar is to sit cross-legged because it has this heavy bowl and you have to hold it a certain way. I engineered that song from outside of the car because I couldn’t fit in there. I was in the driveway reaching in the driver’s side window.

What was the toughest adjustment you had to make to record in your car?

The toughest thing was using live microphones: I’d have to roll the windows up so it wouldn’t be too noisy. The jet stream from Philly International goes right over my house. This was every five minutes. One of ’em I caught on tape.

Did you have the windows rolled up or down?

I had ’em up whenever I had live microphones. It got very hot in there and claustrophobic. I had everything running from one of those really ugly, long orange extension cords that I plugged into the kitchen wall and ran out the window. The hardest thing about making the record, actually, was the physical placement of my body. My elbows were always up against something and I was always juggling something up against my knees.

But I think this is one of your better albums maybe having this challenge made you overcompensate and play even better?

It brought out an immediacy I’d been lookin’ for my whole career, really. The recording process is like voodoo: nobody knows exactly why something works and you get superstitious about things like how you make a great record. You’re talking about magic and feeling, spirit and all that. Putting myself into this situation I got into a first-take mentality. I’d go to my car and I’d say OK, I’m cutting this song today, these are the instruments I have in mind. I didn’t belabor over anything. Because of the restrictions, I had to plug microphones in wherever I could. I was singing through guitar pedals and things. It sounds more live than anything I’ve ever done.

How do you like L.A.?

I love it. There’s something about L.A. where you really feel like anything is possible. It’s still a frontier town. There’s no founding-father feeling like there is in Philadelphia it’s so new out here. I miss the East Coast a lot, but luckily this town appeals to my sense of humor.

Where do you record these days?

I have my own studio in the Santa Monica airport, in this old hangar. They rent it out as artist space. There’s a sculptor in there I think Ry Cooder’s moving in actually. And there’s actually a mechanic who’s turned one of the spaces into a little garage and he specializes in Ramblers! I’m in really good shape out here. I can be recording and two doors down, the guy’s working on my car.

Ben Vaughn performs on Thursday, March 13 and Friday, March 14 at The Trocadero, 10th & Arch Sts., 922-LIVE.