[MUSIC- Luscious Jackson: Citysong]

David Furst: This is All Of It. I'm David Furst, in for Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC studios in SoHo. On today's show, Eddie Chacon joins us for a listening party for his most recent album, Lay Low. We'll talk with Andee Gosnell, assistant food editor at Food and Wine, about great meals to cook when it is cold outside. We'll speak with a curator at the New York Historical about a new exhibit about Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who spent a year living above Manhattan. That's the plan. Let's get this started with the man behind this band's signature keyboard sound.

[MUSIC- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: Don't Do Me Like That]

Tom Petty: I was talking with a friend of mine

Said the woman that hurt his pride

Told him that you loved him so--

David Furst: Benmont Tench is a co-founder of the Heartbreakers with Tom Petty. When I think of keyboard players in rock bands, I probably think first of Benmont Tench and his organ and piano work that helped define so much of the music from that incredible band.

This week, he made his debut at Cafe Carlisle in Manhattan. He's performing there through Saturday. You can still catch shows tonight and tomorrow. He's gearing up for a new solo album out March 7, called The Melancholy Season. It is his first in over a decade and he is here with us in WNYC's Studio 5 at the piano. Welcome, Benmont Tench.

Benmont Tench: Hi. Thanks for having me.

David Furst: It is so great to have you here. Can we just get started with some music? Maybe something from the new album?

Benmont Tench: Yes. I'll play the, as they say, the title song.

David Furst: Okay.

Benmont Tench: This is called The Melancholy Season.

[MUSIC- Benmont Tench: The Melancholy Season]

Adjusting to the fading light

My eyes dilate in the hollow

We'll sit out light in falling night

So still against the shadows

The constellations rise and span

The planets start their courses

Orion's on the threshold now

The melancholy season is upon us

Eternal way within yourself

A place forbidden to me

I'm jealous of the air that you breathe

The cloths that wrap your body

The eucalyptus creaks and sighs

The wind whips round the compass

Orion holds his arm up high

The melancholy season is upon us.

Not older now but later on

Than one long day we're given

Between the opening of our eyes

And the last time that we close them

What would I give to turn the track

Of time to match our traces

Orion cries out from the black

The melancholy season is upon us

Orion cries out from the black

The melancholy season is upon us.

David Furst: Benmont Tench and The Melancholy Season, the title track of your soon-to-be-released album coming out March 7th. "We begin gazing up at the heavens. Orion cries out from the black. The melancholy season is upon us." Striking image. Can you talk about the writing of this song?

Benmont Tench: Yes, I wrote out a long form, not really a poem, just some free verse, just spontaneous, whatever was in my mind at one point. A couple years later, I looked at it and I found a window into putting a melody to it and completely rewrote it, as one does. At the house I used to live in in Tarzana, California, it was very evident. It was dark enough that when the seasons changed and it became colder and moods changed, the constellation Orion would appear in the sky, and sometimes as a friend and sometimes as a warning.

As to what goes on in the song, I told somebody it was about this, that, andthe other. Then I thought about it and I realized not really. Every time I play it, it's about something else.

David Furst: Well, there's some very specific images in the song, but there's also just the power of that feeling, the melancholy season is upon us.

Benmont Tench: Yes, it can be a pretty powerful feeling. Well, it always affects me, but it's not a song about seasonal affective disorder.

David Furst: [chuckles] It's beautiful.

Benmont Tench: Thank you.

David Furst: Thank you for playing it today.

Benmont Tench: Thank you.

David Furst: I want to talk about you making your debut at Cafe Carlisle on Tuesday. This is a pretty revered space. Does this feel like a special moment in your solo career?

Benmont Tench: Absolutely. When I found out that I could play at Cafe Carlisle, I was knocked out. I found out several months ago. I've been trying not to freak out because I haven't played solo since October of '23. I haven't played any shows. Okay, let's go to New York City and play Cafe Carlisle. No pressure.

David Furst: Jumping off the deep end there.

Benmont Tench: Obscure little dive-in, like some town nobody's ever heard of. Let's go in. It has been wonderful, just wonderful.

David Furst: You begin the night in an interesting way with a little Gilbert and Sullivan reading the lyrics to I Am the Very Model from The Pirates of Penzance. Can you talk about that choice and its meaning to you?

Benmont Tench: Yes. I don't always start like that, but I was looking up some exercises for diction the other day. There was like, Betty Bottleworth bashed some bottles into whatever. Then there was I am the very model of modern major general. I'm like, wait a minute. I started saying it.

In 2023, I thought I'd had a rough enough year. Right before New year's Eve in '22, I slipped on the ice of the woman rink, ice skating, thinking, "I can do this." I hadn't ice skated in 50 years. I don't recommend it. I broke my pelvis, I broke my hip. I thought, okay, this is it. Great start to the year. I had some oral cancer return a month later. They got rid of that. They say, "You're fine. You're good to go." I go to Florida, see my family and friends.

Come back in August and they take a look at me and go, "Oh, by the way, we're taking you in in October and taking half your jaw out." I'm like, "You got to?" They said, "Yes, you got cancer in your jaw." They took my jaw out October 23, the same week that this record was going to come out. My wife and my doctors and my daughter were champs and got me through it, and I'm fine. I've got a little bit of a lisp and sometimes if I don't practice, I am the very model, I sound like Suffering Succotash, but it's getting better.

David Furst: [chuckles] That's nice that you have a sense of humor.

Benmont Tench: Well, hey man, I'm here. My daughter, the other day, the other night I said, "Geez, Katherine, why did this happen?" Not self-pitying, just, "Catherine, why? Why did this happen?" She looked at me and went, "So you would live, papa," and she was on to the next thing. It's like out of the mouths of babes. Yes, I'm here.

David Furst: Has that changed your outlook at all, the experience of this past couple of years?

Benmont Tench: I think so. I've been dealing with the cancer for like 12 years, but this time was a really big deal. Hopefully, it's made me unafraid because plenty can happen and more can happen, but hey there's no reason to be afraid of anything.

David Furst: Well, it's great to have you here with us in the studio today and performing in New York City this week. Your last solo album came out over a decade ago, right? Did you expect a full 11 years to pass before you put out another one?

Benmont Tench: No, I didn't. I was, I was hoping I would be able to make it about five years afterwards because I had a lot of the songs, not all of them, but a lot of them, but life intervened. Tom passed away and--

David Furst: Tom Petty, of course, yes.

Benmont Tench: Alice and I had our daughter Catherine. Both of those events were within three months of each other and that changed everything. Then when my daughter had just turned two, the pandemic happened. Everything got shook around and we had to wait.

David Furst: Yes, that's a lot.

Benmont Tench: It's a lot.

David Furst: You have so much experience in the music industry. You've made and played on so many albums, but I want to go back to that first solo album. What was that like? This was your first solo album after all those years. Was that a new learning experience for you, or did this just feel like making any other album?

Benmont Tench: No, it didn't feel like making any other record, but it was very comfortable. The producer was Glen Johns, who's a legend as an engineer and producer.

David Furst: Absolutely. You name it, he's produced them; The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who--

Benmont Tench: Led Zeppelin. He's engineered or produced them all. He was the recording engineer on the Kings You Really Got Me and on My Generation for The Who. You can go on and on and on. Give Me Shelter by the Rolling Stones, all of this.

David Furst: This was a comfortable--

Benmont Tench: He's an old dear friend of mine. We can't even remember where we first met. It's like that. When he said, "If you'd like to make a record, I'm down for it," I took him up on it. The musicians were all really, really good friends of mine who had come over to the house and played the songs a few times, some of them just for fun, not intending to record. It was very comfortable.

David Furst: Well, your new album is produced by Jonathan Wilson who's also worked with Father John, Misty, Roger Waters, the Dawes. How did the process compare when you look at those two producers and their different styles?

Benmont Tench: Well, it was very different. The most important thing to me was that he's a great producer, Jonathan, as is Glenn, but he works on tape, he records on tape. To me that's a big difference.

David Furst: As opposed to just recording everything digitally on computer. He's got the old analog tape does that. That makes a huge difference for you in terms of just the sound?

Benmont Tench: It makes a huge difference in the sound, but also, you're limited. You can't do endless takes of things.

David Furst: Oh, that's interesting.

Benmont Tench: Yes, and so you have to do it right. You don't have a net to fall back on, and you run out of room to do overdubs. You can't go, I want to put five more guitars. It's like, you can't. Sorry, buddy, we don't have five guitar players here. You can't. Also, the first album, you should be so lucky. I had about eight musicians sometimes at once. This one the most we had were me, one guitar, bass, and drums. That makes it different.

David Furst: Did you feel it like a different space in that recording with the minimalist approach?

Benmont Tench: Very different, though. Glenn Johns gets a lot of space out of with even eight instruments, but in this case, since there were so few, we went back and put some overdubs and layered it a bit, but some of these tracks are just piano or just piano and upright bass.

David Furst: You have played on so many albums. I know I was doing some name-dropping there with Glenn Johns, but you've played recorded with Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Stevie Nicks, Elvis Costello, Johnny Cash, so many more. I imagine your Rolodex is impressive. There are some names in there. How do you pick who you want to work with on an album?

Benmont Tench: I've been so ridiculously fortunate. If a friend of mine is producing it and I trust them on the choice of the artist, if it's somebody I haven't heard of, or if it's a friend of mine making the record or-- It's crazy. I get phone calls to play on a Rolling Stone song, or a phone call to play with Bob, or a phone call to do this. If I didn't keep my head straight, it wouldn't give me a big head. It would freak me out because I'm a giant fan of all of those folks.

What happened for me was I loved Tom Petty's writing and voice from the first time I saw him in a band called Mud Crutch, he and Mike Campbell and Tom Leddon and Randall Marsh. I followed them around Gainesville, Florida, like a fan. Eventually, I joined the band that I was a fan of. He was such a good songwriter that the key was when the time came, people heard me playing. We had a producer who turned me up.

People heard what I was playing, but they associated me with great songs. They went, "I want the guy that played on Refugee," but I feel like anybody who played on Refugee would have been great because it's such a great song. How can you go wrong? I'm the one that played on it, so people say, get me that guy.

David Furst: Get me that guy. Well, we're so happy to have that guy with us here. We're going to hear some more music in just a moment. We have to take a quick break. We're speaking with Benmont Tench here on All Of It. This is WNYC.

This is All of It. I'm David Furst, in for Alison Stewart. We are here with Benmont Tench, co-founder of the Heartbreakers with Tom Petty. He has a new solo album coming out March 7th called The Melancholy Season. He's playing at Cafe Carlisle in Manhattan this week. Still another couple of shows left. One tonight, one tomorrow night. Benmont, can we hear another piece of music, something else from the new album?

Benmont Tench: Yes, I'm going to play a song called Like Crystal. Oh, excuse me. It's like crystal as in clear as crystal, not like crystal meth.

David Furst: [chuckles] Okay.

Benmont Tench: Unless that's your poison-

David Furst: Okay. Like Crystal.

Benmont Tench: -it's about poison.

[MUSIC- Benmont Tench: Like Crystal]

Hello, stranger

Don't I know you from around

It's been a little while

Yes, it's been a while

But it's like crystal now

Should have known you come around to raise my blood again

Drag me down again

Down those ancient halls

The paint peeling off the walls and falling on the ground

Littered on the ground

Broken promises should have known they wouldn't stand a lot of kicking round

Now you're back around.

Oh, let your tresses down

Come and fly into my arms

I've missed you, oh so much.

Oh, throw your ways around

Level me to senselessness

Ashamed and whimpering

You dainty little things

How much sorrow can you bring?

Oh, let your tresses down

Come and fly into my arms

I've missed you, oh so much.

Oh, throw your weight around

Level me to senselessness

Ashamed and whimpering

You deinty little thing

How much sorrow can you bring?

But I've been wondering

On that incandescent stuff which inside us spring

Which inside us sings

Such a little thing

But of consequence enough it bears a reckoning

It bears a reckoning

It bears a reckoning

It begs a reckoning

It begs a reckoning

And I hear one beckoning.

David Furst: Benmont Tench and Like Crystal performed live in the studio here on WNYC. The actual studio performance of that will be on your new album, The Melancholy Season, coming out on March 7th. Thank you for performing with us today. I have to mention, your new album is coming out on Dark Horse Records.

Benmont Tench: Yes.

David Furst: This is the label that was founded by George Harrison back in the mid-'70s. How does it feel having this come out on George Harrison's label?

Benmont Tench: I'm knocked out. I am just knocked out because they always put out great stuff. They always put out really great music. To be among the folks that they put out and have put out, and to be with Danny and Olivia and David Zahnshein, all of whom are friends of mine.

David Furst: George's wife and his son.

Benmont Tench: Yes. Also, to be on a record label that has George Harrison's vibe on it is remarkable.

David Furst: There's this incredible video of you. I have to mention this because I just love watching stuff like this, where you're showing all of the gear that you were using on the Heartbreaker's 40th-anniversary tour. You've got your Wurlitzer keyboard, the Hammond C3 organ, a modified rotating Leslie cabinet, a Steinway piano, a Vox continental organ. You're surrounded by the stuff.

Benmont Tench: Yes, it's-- Go on.

David Furst: In these performances here in the studio today and at Cafe Carlisle, all of that stuff is stripped away. You're with your piano, of course, but how does it feel to be on stage without all of that gear around you?

Benmont Tench: Well, to do this stuff, it's to play solo you just need a piano. I used to play a little bit of guitar sometimes because some of the songs I thought were really suitable to the guitar, but it was awkward so I'm just playing them on piano. I like it, but the reason I had all those set up, you can easily get something digital that evokes all of those. If you want to play a different instrument, you program it into a different part of the keyboard or you push a button.

I always admired Garth Hudson, who was the organist and accordionist and saxophonist for the band with Levon and Robbie and Richard and Rick. He was surrounded, and my friend Steve Naive, who plays with Elvis Costello, is also often surrounded. What it is, is that that way, if in the middle of a song, I have an idea, I just reach over to the right and I go, well, I wonder what it would sound like with this texture.

I just reach over and there it is, like by my right hand, or I turn around and there's a Vox Continental behind me and I sit down and there's a grand piano. It's like it's all there. It's wonderful. It was a privilege. Most people can't do it. They don't have a room or whatever, but from day one with the Heartbreakers, we asked the promoter to provide us with some a real piano.

David Furst: It's even better if somebody else is the one who's carrying all that stuff for you instead [laughs].

Benmont Tench: Well, yes. I almost didn't wind up playing with Tom and Mike because the first time they asked me to sit in, after I'd followed them around, I went into the garage at my parents’ house and tried to pick my portable organ up and put it in the station wagon. It was so heavy.

David Furst: It's terrible.

Benmont Tench: I looked at it and I went, "Eh. They say they want me to sit in, but they're just bored. I can leave it here and just go watch them play." There was a split-second decision, I remember it absolutely, of looking down at the Farfisa organ and going, "Ah, what the hell," and hoisting it into my mom's station wagon.

David Furst: We are all happy that you did.

Benmont Tench: Well, I'm happy I did because I wouldn't be here. My life would have been entirely different if I'd gone, "That's too heavy."

David Furst: It's incredible, those little moments.

Benmont Tench: It's wild.

David Furst: Those little moments you remember, and, "Oh, what if I didn't make that decision that day?"

Benmont Tench: Yes, a split-second decision.

David Furst: I read a review mentioning that you played American Girl at Cafe Carlisle. Do you still enjoy playing the Heartbreaker's material?

Benmont Tench: Yes. He's such a wonderful songwriter and so is Mike Campbell. They wrote a lot of songs together. A lot of the best-known songs were written with Tom and Mike, our guitar player, who also has a band called the Dirty Knobs. They're really good. To play those songs, they're so good. I love playing them. I really love playing them, and finding a different way into them, and looking for a different meaning in the lyric.

David Furst: How do you keep it fresh? How do you approach playing American Girl when it's just you at the piano? This is obviously a huge band production on the album.

Benmont Tench: It's such a good song that if he played it for you on the guitar and showed you the song, you just go, what a great song. It doesn't need anything. Like, a really great song usually doesn't need anything. If I have just those chords and just that melody and just those words, then I can play it any way I want to, boogie-woogie or as a really slow, quiet piece, which is how I've been playing it.

David Furst: Can you give us maybe 30 seconds of the feel that it has?

Benmont Tench: Sure

[MUSIC- Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers: American Girl]

Well, she was an American girl

Based on promises

She couldn't help thinking that there was a little more life somewhere else

After all, it was a great big world

With lots of places to run to

Yes and if she had to die trying

She had one little promise she was going to keep

Oh, yes

All right

Take it easy, baby.

She was an American girl.

David Furst: Wow.

Benmont Tench: What a song.

David Furst: Oof. Benmont Tench, thank you so much for being here today. Can we hear one more song to wrap up?

Benmont Tench: Sure.

David Furst: You're going to be playing at Cafe Carlisle in Manhattan tonight and tomorrow. You've been having a residency there this week. Your new solo album, The Melancholy Season, is out on March 7th. Oof. Benmont Tench, thank you so much for joining us today on All Of It. I'm trying not to cry over here after that.

Benmont Tench: [chuckles] Yes, me too, every night. Thank you.

David Furst: What are you going to play here?

Benmont Tench: I am going to play a song called Under the Starlight. I'm looking for the first page because I know these words, but I know I won't.

David Furst: [chuckles] Under the Starlight. This is one of the pieces on your new album, The Melancholy Season. Look for it coming out on March 7th so you can hear the full band takes of these songs.

Benmont Tench: Thanks for having me, David.

[MUSIC- Benmont Tench: Under the Starlight]

Bring me your sorrows

Bring me your troubles

Bring me the devils that howl at your door

Bring me your wishes and all that you long for

All that you run from and all you adore

Let them fall away. Fall where they may

You can walk away from it all

There's nothing to hurt you and nothing to help you

Under the starlight that cradles us all

I had a lover

The kindest of lovers

She brightened my hours with laughter and light

When it was over as all will be over

I gather the ashes up to the night

And let them fall away

Fly where they may

Just follow the way they fall

There's nothing to help you and nothing to hurt you

Under the starlight that cradles us all

When comes the hour

The terrible hour

The wonderful hour that comes to us all

May I wake from my slumber and rise without terror

To stand at the gateway there once was a wall

As it falls away becomes what it may

Just follow the way it falls

There's nothing to hurt you and nothing to help you

Under the starlight that cradles us all

No, nothing can hurt you and nothing can help you

Under the starlight that cradles us all.

David Furst: Benmont Tench, your new solo album, The Melancholy Season is out on March 7th. You're at Cafe Carlisle tonight and tomorrow. Thank you so much for joining us on All Of It.

Benmont Tench: You're very welcome. Again, thank you for having me.