“What makes Ben different is that he thinks out of the box and the universe.” He sees colors differently. He looks at problems, beauty, pain and more from a different slant, and a powerful creative force comes out of him that often I feel he has no control over. Ben has no boundaries.”

-Pebbles Wadsworth, former director of the University of Texas Performing Arts Center

Dig this!

Every Monday evening in November at 8:30 - Continental Club Gallery 

As one interested in experiencing other's creative process, I like the way Spalding Gray used to do his works in progress - live. 

So, I will be fleshing out many of my new songs LIVE at the CONTINENTAL CLUB GALLERY for recording in collaboration with my mentor/partner Denny Bruce - along with friends like the amazing Dan Kaplan (Harmonica) and Kristopher Wade - stand up bassist extraordinaire (Marshal Ford Swing Band and Ghosts Along The Brazos). 

This residency at the mighty Continental Club is really important to me for many reasons. For one, my dear pal and awesome talent - Barbara K believed in me enough to help make it happen. 

So with that, I'd really appreciate your support on any or all of these Mondays for your own enjoyment and so they will ask us to continue in December and beyond. That way I can continue to create and complete this record of new original songs.. 

Please come on up and join us for refreshments + interesting songs + great music = experience artist's work in progress.. This is going to be the GOOD stuff!

XOBen

"In a decade of journalism on art and architecture I have met no other artist with the charisma, determination, and buoyant delight in sharing knowledge and new perceptions as Ben Livingston. I believe many of his visitors will never be able to consider their communities just no-place ever again, but collections of strange yet explicable radiances worthy of study and respect."

-Eve M. Kahn, Freelance Writer for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, NY, NY.

Ben has partnered up with his pal - the ledgendary producer Denny Bruce. 

Denny is responsible for beautiful sounds of (now) household names like John Hiatt, Leo Kotke, John Fahey, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Doug Sahm, The Monkees, Marcia Ball, T-Bone Burnet, Michael Bloomfield and many more - even including Charles Bukowski!

This is an amazing journey.. And it's barley even started...

Stay tuned! This is going to be GREAT! - Texas style.

The Austin Chronicle

The Alternative Root Magazine - Ben Livingston

AltCountry.NL 

Rootstime.be

 I heard this cd the first time driving in my truck out to a friends ranch to borrow some bolt cutters.  It was cold brittle New Mexico day with wide windy vistas.  I thought about a lot of things while I drove and listened...stuff like neon and Cambodia and Thai bands and the sudden impact of dead artists and Tibetan breath music and my old friend Butch Hancock’s High Plains tuna fish observation can and Spike Jones and some Buddhists I know and care about in the Texas Hill Country.  Driving and listening to music is pretty much my favorite religious experience, especially if the music hooks in with the rhythms of the tires and takes you further than just picking up some bolt cutters. New voices in my head.  So thanks, Ben.  You kept me listening and kept me moving.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             -Terry Allen 

By TIM DELANEY

tdelaney@vicad.com

Ben Livingston moved across the stage toward the microphone at Austin's seasoned Continental Club. He shouldered his Gretch guitar and began to sing.

But Livingston, a Victoria native, is known more for his neon art, having once won a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship that he used to search for phosphors in Nepal.

That fellowship was more than 15 years ago. "Been dormant" all that time, he said, "meditating." How in the world did an internationally known neon artist get a stage at the Continental Club in the middle of the South by Southwest festival, where more than 1,500 bands were playing in Austin?

Helps to know the club's owner, Steve Wertheimer, who Livingston said is a good friend from way back.

"She got me to look a little deeper.," he sang in front of his band - the That's What She Said Boys - he'd assembled for his first art exhibit in all those years. The song was a dedication to the late Madeline O'Connor of Victoria, an accomplished artist who inspired and served as a mentor to Livingston.

All of the 11 original songs Livingston sang thematically connected to his life, his family, his experience and his love.

Livingston said he always wanted to sing and play in a band, so he rounded up some impressive musicians for the gig to present his original songs. The bass player was Bob Livingston (no relation), who once played with Jerry Jeff Walker.

On the walls of the club hung his latest neon works - all tying in to his songs. Vibrant colors emanated in the darkened club as Livingston played his life. One work titled, "Lucky Linda's 40th Orbit" was valued at $18,000.

Livingston said there were two reasons he all of a sudden sprang to life with his art:

"So I'm doing this (neon) demo and I notice a familiar-looking woman in the audience looking at me . Then, a few minutes later during a break, she and her husband appear, both with a huge smile on their faces. She threw her arms around me as she exclaimed loudly, 'Look Bill. He is alive! I told you he wasn't dead!' I thought to myself, 'Jesus! I gotta get out more!'"

And Livingston shared his other reason for the long absence from exhibiting.

"I've been through some changes and ruminating on many levels about things, for reasons that I do and don't know much about," he said.

Livingston compared himself to a tree planted in fertile ground with the advent of spring and blossoming.

"This spring, I am in full bloom just for you," he said to the packed upstairs gallery of the Continental Club on South Congress Street.

Livingston belted out one song after another to the audience's delight. More than a neon artist, he proved he was a talented songwriter and musician.

Between his creative music, he told stories about the works of art on the wall and the people who inspired or commissioned the works. Storytelling, too, is one of his multiple talents.

One neon work was dedicated to his grandfather, MO Simon, who had a department store in downtown Victoria by that name.

Livingston also credited his mother, Polly Lou, Wilbur Collins, the late Simon Michael and others in Victoria for inspiring and influencing his development as an artist.

Although he lives in Austin and keeps a studio there, he said he fondly remembers his times in Victoria. Particularly, he remembered Madeline O'Connor for her keen vision.

".She was a searching vine married to the king. I once saw her reaching for heaven through the way that she looked at things," he sang from the song, "Fleming Prairie."

Livingston said he accomplished his immediate goal: "One thing led to another, and I found myself back in the glass shop, and despite my aching joints and crappy vision, I am creating the most interesting, intricate and beautiful work I have ever produced."

What's next? He will show his work at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York on June 11-13. The exhibit will be the Glass Art Society's 39th Annual Conference on local inspiration and global innovation.

And he said he's convinced he will continue working with the band in house concerts. Already, the first offer to present a concert has been made by Pebbles Wadsworth, former director of the Performing Arts Center at the University of Texas.

"He is a fabulous artist," Pebbles said.

Livingston said the band's focus would be "an entertaining and educational spin on heightening awareness of the spirit of creativity through art and music."