Ben Arsenault
We may not have walked down Ben Arsenault’s road, or suffered the same slings and arrows of outrageous fortune he has, but if you drop your guard and surrender to his words and inflection, you’ll know that when he moves up to the microphone, they’re not just his songs he’s singing.
That feeling is embedded within the Vancouver-based singer/songwriter’s sophomore album Make Way For This Heartache, a 10-song collection that builds on the promise of his 2022 eponymous debut. It is available now via North Country Collective, and on all digital platforms.
Make Way For This Heartache was produced at Vancouver’s Afterlife Studios and features an all-star cast of Canadian and American musicians, including pedal steel maestros Caleb Melo and Scott Smith, City & Colour band members Erik Nielsen, Matt Kelly and John Sponarski, along with drummer Leon Power (Frazey Ford) and singer-songwriter Marin Patenaude adding harmony vocals.
In essence, Make Way For This Heartache sums up Arsenault’s musical journey to date. Early songs like “Grand Forks” and “Flowers At Your Feet” have been re-done to enhance the poignancy of first heartbreak, while new versions of “Too Late” and “Does A Man Know?” remind us that there are some things we’re probably not meant to figure out. At the same time, the album’s most recent compositions, “Never Been The Boss” and “I’m Changing Too,” express new directions in Arsenault’s musical evolution.
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It began about 15 years ago when he arrived on the scene as singer/guitarist with Real Ponchos, Vancouver’s long-standing psychedelic country-rockers, but Arsenault’s interest in country music started early through exploring his grandfather’s record collection that included Hank Williams, Ray Price and Lefty Frizzell. One of his strongest childhood memories was hearing his father sing Hank Sr. songs while they walked in the woods to let bears know they were coming—something that Ben still does to this day.
Later, Arsenault moved to Montreal where he first took to the stage and found his voice at Barfly’s Sunday Bluegrass jam. But as the lure of the bright lights began to fade and a longing for the wilderness of the west coast set in, Arsenault dug deeper into classic country, at first through the Grateful Dead’s covers of Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins songs, which encouraged him to throw the doors of interpretation wide open, and led to the formation of Real Ponchos.
It’s all come together on Make Way For This Heartache, a soothing balm for brokenhearts and unfulfilled dreams. The truth and hurting that the record embodies is as oldas humanity. “These are all songs that I love to sing, and many of them I have beensinging and performing for years,” Arsenault says. “They’re songs that have stood thetest of time; songs that have become less about the experiences in my life that inspiredthem, and more about life itself.”
Ben Arsenault is now ready to bring his brand of classic country music to the rest of the world. And who knows, someday you might hear someone in the woods singing one of his songs to keep the bears at bay.