Performance, Music, TV and Film
Performance
“Ben is pretty much game for any endeavor that's interesting to him.”
- Lindsey Lane
SONG WRITING & MUSIC
Cactus Café 2013 | Photo: David Barrow
“I started writing songs because I was avoiding work on the Spirit House Safari book manuscript. All I wanted to do was write songs. It was an easier way of telling stories. Plus, I got addicted to the oxygen of performance. For five years, the songs kept coming. They took me to the best venues in Austin all the way to the east coast. My last performance was in New York City. That was enough. I was exhausted. I still perform when it feels right and if it’s relevant, It’s always nice to play a song at speaking gigs.”
Austin Chronicle
Trust Your Equipment
“The essence of Livingston's musical vision is lighthearted – he even attempts Tuvan throat singing on a couple of tracks – but when he gets serious as he does on the luminescent "It's All Water," he recalls James McMurtry with an extra twist of the knife. From blues-rock fiddler "Evil Spirits" to the soundscape jam of "11:11 Floor Elevator," Livingston's all over the place musically, but Trust Your Equipment marks him a true original.”
Live TV Performance (2013)
For network television series, Songwriters Across Texas
Rocking with producer/lead guitarist, Bill Browder and star studded house band.
FILM & TV
"Curly" on the set for The Cherokee Word for Water
Photo: Michael Heller
The Cherokee Word for Water is based on the true story of the Bell Waterline Project. The feature film is set in the early 1980s in a rural Oklahoma Cherokee community where many houses lacked running water. Led by Wilma Mankiller (played by Kimberly Guerrero, A&E’s Longmire) and Cherokee organizer Charlie Soap (played by Mo Brings Plenty, Netflix’s House of Cards), the community of volunteers built nearly 20 miles of waterline to save their community. The successful completion of the waterline, using the traditional concept of Gadugi — working together to solve a problem – led to Wilma’s election as Chief, Wilma and Charlie’s marriage and sparked a movement of similar self-help projects across the Cherokee Nation and in Indian Country that continues to this day.
Autumn & Ben | Extreme Cheapskates TV | 2014.
7,155,250 views as of October, 2020
Extreme Cheapskates The neon biz was a little slow so I thought, why not get a job in movies? I went on the Texas Film Commission website and saw all kinds of casting calls from vampires to defensive driving films. I got cold feet. Then, I saw this ad: TLC is starting a new program called Extreme Cheapskates. If you think you are cheap enough, write us and tell us why. So I did. They called me up and I told them I removed Basal cell skin cancer from my nose with a veggie peeler. I was in like Flynn. They flew down that weekend.
STORYTELLING
The Living Room, Austin, 2013
“Seriously, I love to tell stories. I love to listen to stories. Stories are the way I make sense of experiences. Whether I’m on stage or talking to a university class, stories emerge from me like a fountain and every now and then they actually make sense!”