Jesse Bens of Mt Clemens on Life, Lessons & Legacy

Jesse Bens shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Good morning Jesse, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
As a heavily improvisational musician, I think overall it’s always both! And both can be perfectly fine as long as you aren’t too calculated on the path, leaving no room for things to breathe. On the other side you don’t strictly want to wander either, that can be hard to follow and as musicians I think we’re all trying to build a following. I try to do what feels right, that includes walking a path as well as wandering into something beautiful I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Durt is a music project started in 2012 by Jesse Bens. He is a multi-instrumentalist focused both on live performance and recorded music. For live performances, Durt is a solo acoustic show that utilizes guitar effects and looping to expand and layer songs for extended jams and solos. Durt brings the jam band ethos to the solo acoustic show. With selections from 17 albums of originals as well as unreleased material and countless covers from every genre, there is something for everyone in every Durt performance. On the recording side of things, Durt is even more eclectic. The ever growing catalog of recorded work includes rock, punk, metal, ambient, dance, EDM and more.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
On July 12, 2019 I was alone at Alpine Valley seeing Phish and had a crazy epiphany while they were performing Sand to open the show. My entire life up to that moment I had good times and bad but always felt like a dark cloud was following me. Even when it felt further away, I knew it was there and headed my way. But then it clicked. The cloud was following me because I was inviting it. This experience led me to my favorite mantra, “let go and let it be good”. There will be plenty of moments in life that things aren’t good, so I think it’s incredibly important that we let things be good when they are.

If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
I’m not exactly sure what I would say because I think my younger self was really difficult to get through to. Sometimes you have to let people bump their head a few times and learn things when they’re ready, even if it’s the hard way. Some people aren’t ready for help and you can’t make them be ready. So I guess I would tell my younger self to ask for help and he wouldn’t listen, and he would really hurt himself and everybody close to him.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
I used to think that every tool you used to make music had to be analog and that digital tools lacked soul. I heard the Rush lyric “All this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted. Not so coldly charted it’s really just a question of your honesty” a million times before I applied the lesson within it. Especially these days, there are endless digital instruments and tools that are incredibly helpful and have brought great music out of me. My guitar effects are both analog and digital. But I rely heavily on the Strymon Mobius for modulation, Strymon Timeline for delay, and Strymon Bigsky for reverb. All three are large digital units that have been a major part of my sound for years now. I use all sorts of digital tools for recording. There’s a lot of digital midi keyboards and synthesizers in my music. I use amplifier emulation on some stuff. I’m a drummer that uses digital drum programs a lot. I love the quality of what’s available and super accessible these days. When I was younger I wanted everything to be analog. I wanted to record to tape. I was playing on hard mode and that can impede the creative process. Use the tools!

Okay, so before we go, let’s tackle one more area. When do you feel most at peace?
This will sound strange to a lot of people, but some of the most peaceful moments of my life have happened while I’m actively performing. Most often it’s during a deep improvisational moment. I’ll slip into this mode of peace and complete tranquility. Everything is a flow. I’m playing with very little effort or thought. I’m probably not even looking at the fretboard. There was a show this year where I was playing and noticed a very young boy in the crowd and a very old man. I thought to myself that the man probably feels like it could have been yesterday that he was just like that little boy. The sun was slowly sinking on a beautiful summer night and I felt so grateful to be exactly where I was, doing what I love to do. At 33 I feel like life goes so fast. People older than me tell me it only speeds up, so I do my best to be present. I want to feel and experience things as they are happening because life is so fleeting.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.durtmusic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/durt3113/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/durtmusic/videos
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@durtmusic9126
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/durt-music

Image Credits
Andrea Bens