Ben Vaughn

Who knew that artists as disparate as Fred Neil, the Ventures, and Alan Vega were actually spiritual kin? Ben Vaughn knew all along and he proved it on this album of covers. Vaughn has always been part musicologist, and he probably thumbed through a record collection the size of two rooms to rescue the songs (and in some instances, the artists themselves) featured on Mono USA from the gutters of rock history in which they had lay forgotten. The album was a labor of love, collecting four years worth of eight-track home recordings from Vaughn's basement studio, each of them lovingly recorded in mono ("It was good enough for Phil Spector and Brian Wilson...," the liners intone) with Vaughn playing all the instruments himself. The result is a trip to the wrong side of the early-pop-music tracks -- trashy surf, adrenalized rock & roll, unhinged rockabilly, blues both rollicking and brooding, beer-soaked honky tonk, galloping cowboy tunes, weepy pop ballads, country, and R&B nuggets -- with nary a roots genre bypassed. Some of the names covered on Mono USA are familiar (Dion, Link Wray, Willie Nelson), some are cult artists (Lee Hazlewood, Neil), some have remained obscure despite having a measure of success (Lobo, Henson Cargill, Tom T. Hall), and some are just plain obscure (Jody Chastain, Ersel Hickey). No matter what each artist's legacy is, however, each of the eighteen songs is stellar. The album plays like an old, half-imagined AM radio station, and it inspires the same sort of excitement that a teenager must have felt listening at night to an old scratchy signal in his or her bedroom during the '50s and '60s. Vaughn's intent was neither to dramatically alter nor exactly mimic the original versions, just to resurrect some lost classics and have some fun doing so, and the joy shines through. This is not, however, exactly a conventional cover album. It is neither a genre exercise nor a vanity project, and it is not a throwaway. Instead, it is Vaughn's lifeblood, the music that made him, and the same cloth from which he is cut. Vaughn's own original songbook is filled with tunes that aspire to the same heights (or lows, as the case may be) and the same spirit as his archival selections. The album is ultimately held together by his inimitable charm and his audible love for these songs, as well as his skill as a musician and interpreter. One gets a distinct feeling after listening to Mono USA that Vaughn is among like-minded artists, that decades from now one of his own lost classics will appear on an album just like this one. ~ Stanton Swihart, All Music Guide