for Jay Bennett
My most vivid memory of Jay is absurd, bittersweet and powerful, and somehow in its ridiculousness, exemplifies, for me, the qualities that made him a remarkable man. I held Jay Bennett while he wept in a Home Depot. This was about four or five years ago and my band had recently finished making a record at Jay’s Pieholden Suite Sounds when the studio was located in Chicago. I think we made one of last recordings there before Jay and Matt DeWine moved the studio down to the Champaign-Urbana area. Matt is an old friend and I had come by to lend a hand packing up equipment. It was an unreal scene. It will likely come as no surprise to learn that Jay was a pack-rat. There was gear everywhere—broken amps, loose cables, tape machines, crates of records, boxes of reels, compressors, all manner of musical ephemera…
Moving a studio 150 miles is a difficult task, moving Jay Bennett’s studio nears impossibility. But we were making good progress until Jay remembered the basement. With flashlights we discovered what was essentially another studio’s-worth of gear in the dank underground. Jay and I hustled over to Home Depot to buy a bunch of large containers to pack all that stuff in, and when, at first, we couldn’t find lids that fit, Jay lost it and began to weep. He hadn’t slept for days trying to get everything ready for the move and was just completely overwhelmed. I put my arm around his shoulders and as he pulled himself together, he kept saying “I gotta keep moving, keep going, just gotta keep moving”. And I realized that we weren’t just packing a studio. I was watching a man start a new life, trying, through so many hardships, to continue to do what he knew best and what he loved—making and sharing music.
The studio was moved, and I’ve been fortunate in the time since to have had the chance to record there. And Jay kept going, making terrific music and serving as a kind of older brother to a bunch of my friends and our bands. I can say with certainty, that I would have never had the chance to make the music I have made, if it wasn’t for Jay’s generosity. He and Matt offered their studio and Jay’s amazing collection of equipment up for astonishingly low rates and his supportive creative energy permeated that space and has imprinted every record made there, including my own.
I don’t know what happens now. And my heart goes out Jay’s family and his close friends. Jay and I were never more than acquaintances, but now I desperately wish I had told him how much his generosity affected my life, and how that spirit I glimpsed on moving day has informed my own decisions. When Jay said “keep moving”, what I heard and what I saw from him after, was “keep making”. I promise I will try. Goodbye friend, may you rest in peace.
