Ben Grace Releases 'As If Words Could Heal the Wounds'
Australian born singer-songwriter Ben Grace's debut album 'As If Words Could Heal the Wounds' is a hopeful cross-country Americana road trip for the end of a quarantined summer. Recorded in five different states across the USA, with production by Sheryl Crow guitarist Joshua Grange and cameos from drum legend Fred Eltringham and folk singer Molly Parden, it’s a profoundly intimate look at the wounds and systemic injustices that plague Americans, artfully woven through the perspective and personal religious deconstruction of a single immigrant man.
With streaming totals quickly approaching the 100k mark, the first full length album of Ben Grace’s two decade musical career is landing in an unprecedented time. 2020’s pandemic has been the catalyst for global self-reflection and reinvention, and Grace’s deftly written telling of his own trajectory through divorce, failure, and new love provides an essential soundtrack for our collective transformation.
In an era where anxiety, police brutality, and division populate our news feeds, “As If Words Could Heal the Wounds” comes with eyes wide open to our failings as part lament, part opus, and part hope for our rebuilding. It’s a preposterous idea, that the right words might heal the deep wounds around us. How lucky we are to have artists who continue to try.
At the centre of Australian singer-songwriter Ben Grace’s impeccably crafted songs is a story of undoing. Drawn by the roots-driven tradition of Americana to sing stories that need to be told, Ben’s music hovers in the space between lightness and the depths, wrestling its way through humour and melody to peel back the layers and reveal the naked truth of us. Through the specificity of his own deconstruction, Ben writes into our universal search for belonging, spiritual homecoming, and the desire to live seen and unashamed.
Born and raised in an inner city suburb of Sydney, Ben’s exodus from the beliefs and structures of his working class rigid Christian childhood weaves poignantly through his lyrics, revealing itself in his deep commitment to justice and willingness to call forward the darker themes in American politics. With the lens of an outsider and the bold voice of a witness, Ben writes to challenge and disrupt our comfort with the status quo. Songs like “Mama” and “An Eye for an Eye” take on the realities of systemic racism while holding space for collective mourning, and his 2019 single, “Preacher’s Daughter,” confronts the silencing of patriarchal religious culture through the artfully captured memory of one woman’s intercepted words.
His solo work is the culmination of a 25 year trajectory through the industry that includes the release of over 50 songs and collaborations, each a twist in the gradual unraveling that would lead him to produce under his own name. In the past two years, Ben has joined fellow artists to tour across 20 states and through the UK and Europe both as a solo artist and also a member of the acclaimed NINE BEATS COLLECTIVE, playing everything from house shows to historic venues, singing into the truth of our stories and holding them up to the light.
As well as being a gifted singer, musician and songwriter, Ben is also a talented arranger, engineer and producer. He has recently helmed the production etc of the “Dance on the Deep” EP by Heatherlyn featuring Nine Beats Collective.He has also written, arranged and recorded the songs and music for an Australian children’s TV series and he is one half of the dymanic songwriting team ‘Story & Tune’.
