SOUNDGARDEN Bassist Discusses Solo Album

Rick Florino of PureVolume recently conducted an interview with Ben Shepherd about the SOUNDGARDEN bassist's debut solo album as HBS (his given name of Hunter Benedict Shepherd),"In Deep Owl", which was released on August 27. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

PureVolume: As this has been a long time in the making, when was the first time you got to sit down and listen to it? What was your reaction?

Ben Shepherd: It was a while ago that I actually listened to it. Not having a band, it's hard to go through sequencing by yourself. You're like, "Fuck, what's next?" You have to listen to it as someone else. I tried to imagine how I would want to hear it and then sequence it. Then, I'd run it by everybody involved like Dave French, Chad MacMurray, and all of my friends. I actually did listen to it a bit ago from start to finish. I wanted to make it something you'd want to listen to and keep it fresh. That's all I was aiming for.

PureVolume: It's the first unfiltered and unadulterated look at you that fans have gotten.

Ben Shepherd: That's true. That's why I did it. It was like, "Where is he? Whatever happened to that guy?" It was done before SOUNDGARDEN had ever reunited.

PureVolume: Do you feel like there's a certain mystique to the lyrics?

Ben Shepherd: I want to do that to give people freedom to think and feel about what it is. I don't want to just blurt it out, unless it's one of those songs where you want to say exactly what it is. I don't tend to write journalistically like that when it comes to words. Like "Stone Pale" was made up on the spot years ago. Then, I added a verse during the recording of this record because I thought it needed another verse instead of just repeating a verse.

PureVolume: It's very immediate…

Ben Shepherd: That's really how it was. "Baron Robber" was made up on the spot. I told the drummer Joseph Braley, "I have a song for you to play." Then, I made it up on the spot, and we worked it out as we were doing it. [laughs] He nailed it, man!

PureVolume: Is it fair to say there's a western vibe to the record?

Ben Shepherd: In any town, there's a spot where you can see where it was made. Where we were at in Georgetown, its nickname was Deep Owl. That's all trains and wobbly-era. It's 1800s, early 1900s. People were wearing bowlers and old filson jackets. They're all brick workers, union guys, iron workers, and all kinds of stuff. It definitely has that era feeling with modern stuff thrown on top of it. It was more about absorbing the feeling of it. I always write songs like that anyway. I think that's from my youth. The first song I ever heard in life was "Big River" by Johnny Cash. It's totally in my ilk to do that.

Read the entire interview at PureVolume.