S2E03 Circle of Trust - Interview with Ben VanBuskirk + Blackout Orchestra Single "Nothing But Blue Skies"
The Creative SoberShow Notes
Blackout Orchestra mastermind Ben VanBuskirk was going through a transitional period after years of ups and downs. At the end of a troubled relationship, he found himself two musical projects (the critic-approved death-obsessed shoegaze-pop band The Dearly Bereft, and feminist grunge provocateurs Green Girl), and at the end of his rope. Depression, anxiety, and alcoholism had him metaphorically, and on one night, literally, staring down the tracks at the lights of an oncoming train. He wasn't sure he wanted to get out of the way, but he did, and with the help of some close friends, he started to manage these issues that once seemed unsolvable. He got sober, he got counseling, and he started writing.
With the time and money no longer spent inching closer and closer to the floor of local dive bars and rock venues, he started writing songs, recording them on the only tools available to the self-professed Luddite — a guitar, a cheap Yamaha keyboard, and his BlackBerry cell phone. Instead of learning to bake bread or crochet, he spent his quarantine learning music production and putting together an album documenting the fall and rise of the last months and years.
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