Justin Farren writes multidimensional songs that are both enchanting and seemingly effortless. Songs that are uniquely personal but endlessly inventive and highly relatable. Songs filled with the kind of sudden twists and turns that you never see coming but will never forget. Rich Warren of Folk Stage Chicago said "Justin Farren is an incredibly original artist with a lot of verve and energy and a terrific guitarist. He will absolutely charm you with the strange humor and cleverness of his lyrics.
What happens when the unstoppable force of our dreams meets the immovable object of reality? It’s unclear… but Ben de la Cour is hell-bent on finding out.
Raised in Brooklyn, Ben de la Cour was playing New York City dive bars with his brother a full decade before he could legally drink. A high-school dropout and former amateur boxer, he received his education by listening to his parent’s record collection – full of everything from Bob Dylan and The Everly Brothers to Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd. At the tender age of nineteen he spent a year in Havana training with members of the Cuban national boxing team before moving to London with his brother to revive their doom metal band, Dead Man’s Root. They lived in a van and toured around Europe until 2008 when de la Cour returned to the states with a head full of softer, bruised, but no less intense acoustic songs later described by No Depression as “brimming with urgent authenticity”.
“I like stories that are specific and I don’t like them to be preachy” Ben continues. “If I think I’m being preached to or if there’s an agenda at play – I’m out of there. I think a lot of people feel that way. When I say I think this album is about dissolution, I mean it on a personal level. How do we cope with this feeling of being lost and unmoored? What happens to relationships when they fall apart? What happens when the unstoppable force of our dreams meets the immovable object of reality? Well, what usually happens is that it turns out our dreams aren’t quite as unstoppable as we once thought!”