Ever-evolving Benchmarks offer Undivided Attention
The first album by Todd Farrell Jr. and The Dirty Birds was memorably titled All Our Heroes Live in Vans. It was a reflection of the fledgling group’s aspirations. Sure, having hits and playing sold-out stadiums would be awesome, but being a working band playing music on its own terms was also a priority, even if it meant spending a big part of life on the road in a van.
The Dirty Birds have flown the coop and the Nashville, Tenn.-based Farrell now plays guitar and sings in his band Benchmarks, a group whose hard-charging power-pop is tinged with themes of nostalgia, wrecked relationships, self-determination and wanderlust. The band’s debut long-player, Our Undivided Attention, appeared in March on Kentucky-based SofaBurn Records and the sound is hook-filled with brawny guitars and soaring, fist-pumping choruses. Benchmarks return tonight for a show at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock. Colour Design will open.
And, yeah, Benchmarks have spent some time living in their van.
An EP, American Nights, was released in 2015 and offered a hint of the promise shown on the new album (a pumped-up version of the touching “Paper Napkins,” which first appeared on the American Nights EP, shows up on Our Undivided Attention). But Farrell also spent a couple of years as a member of Two Cow Garage, touring with the barroom bards from Columbus, Ohio, as well as appearing on and producing their latest album, 2016’s Brand New Flag.
Two Cow Garage, however, is firmly anchored by the songwriting one-two punch of Micah Schnabel and Shane Sweeney, so Farrell, 30, had to find another outlet for his own writing.
“They were my favorite band when I joined, and I love those guys,” he says. “Micah and Shane are now writing at the top of their game. They’re writing amazing songs and I didn’t want to interject and say ‘Let me write some songs.’ I didn’t think that was proper, and I felt that if I was going to take myself seriously as a writer, I should put more time and effort into Benchmarks.”
The group has been steadily evolving since its Dirty Birds days.
“With Dirty Birds, it was still that punk rock, alt-country thing,” Farrell says. Rechristened as Benchmarks, the group started discovering a somewhat different sound. There’s still a little Dirty Birds spirit, but everything is tighter.
“When you first start writing music, you might say you want to be like this band or that band and copy what they do,” Farrell says. “Then you slowly figure out what you really want to sound like and the walls start coming down and you go, ‘Yeah, I can do more guitar solos or write in this weird time signature.’”
Still, Farrell hasn’t forgotten at least one of his Dirty Birds’ highlights.
“We play ‘Pawnshops’ to this day,” he says of the ragged, rock ’n’ roll dreamer’s anthem and the song from which All Our Heroes Live in Vans gets its title, “and we’ll play it at White Water.”
Farrell was born in Texas and grew up in Georgia (he’s a rabid fan of the Atlanta Braves and the Atlanta Falcons) before moving to Nashville. His father was an amateur musician and their house was filled with instruments. Farrell started playing guitar in sixth grade and spent years playing in metal bands before starting to write and sing his own stuff.
The White Water show is a part of a short Benchmarks jaunt, he says, and this stop will include guitarist Chris Jackson, bassist Josh Tousignant and drummer Jack Whitis, a slightly different lineup from the one that appears on Our Undivided Attention.
“It’s sort of an ever-revolving cast of whoever I can bring on the road with me.”