There is an episode of “The Office” in which the character of Michael Scott takes a trip to Jamaica and returns with three (count ‘em, red, yellow and green) beads braided into his Supercuts coif. This image popped into my mind when I saw an email advising me that Ray Benson, the vocalist / guitarist / jefe of Asleep at the Wheel had recorded a reggae album. If not the Michael Scott beads, then maybe Benson’s formidable beard arranged in dreadlocks?
Fortunately, neither one is the case. Benson is still at the helm of Asleep at the Wheel, fronting the best damn western swing band in the country. And this new release, Swingin’ and Skankin’, does not signify a change in direction for the man whose tour bus rivals Willie Nelson’s in terms of its reputation for hospitality and a most convivial atmosphere. And maybe, there’s the link. Swingin’ and Skankin’ was a record waiting to happen.
“I was playing in California,” Benson recalls via Zoom, “and this guy comes up and says, ‘Hey, I’m Dr. Dread. I make reggae records. You could do this. I love your voice.’ And I went, ‘Sure, sure, yeah, right. Yeah, I get this all the time.’ So he persisted, and I said, ‘I love reggae music. I’ve been going to Jamaica for more than 40 years.’ And he said, ‘I’ll get [reggae drummer] Sly Dunbar,’ and I said, ‘Really? I’m there!’ The drummer and singer later hit it off, with Dunbar calling Benson “Professor Longbeard.”
Bassist Tony Garnier, a Bob Dylan sideman and former member of Asleep at the Wheel, was recruited, and studio time was booked. In addition to Dunbar, Jamaican musicians Dwight Pinkney (guitar) and Robbie Lyn (keyboards) are featured on the new record. “The whole idea was to integrate Asleep at the Wheel with these legendary guys,” Benson says.
With this ethos in mind, Benson set out to combine “a Jamaican rhythm section – guitar, keyboards, drums – with Tony on upright bass – as opposed to most Jamaican stuff, which is electric – going back to the early ska stuff, the [Bob] Marley stuff, and seeing how my songs would work [with it]. Honestly, we had no idea. Me and Tony said, ‘This could be really great, or this could suck. Meanwhile, we’ll have a nice trip to Jamaica and get to play with the legends.’”
When it came time to record, Benson was well-prepared but wary. “For me to cover a Marley tune, that takes a lot of guts. I was very concerned, so I worked on it. I can’t, and I’m not going to, sound like Sting, affecting a Jamaican accent,” Benson says, referencing the Police front man’s decision to adopt a pseudo patois on a few of his songs. Benson was reassured regarding his vocal approach by a positive response to playbacks in the studio. “When Sly and those guys said how much they liked us and how much they enjoyed the music and how great it was, I said, ‘Well, that’s all the affirmation I really need.’”
Sharp-eyed readers of CD liner notes may have noticed that Benson is actually no greenhorn when it comes to merging country and reggae, having produced a collaboration between Toots Hibbert (Toots and the Maytals) and Willie Nelson on the Nelson song “Still is Still Moving to Me,” which was featured on Hibbert’s 2004 album True Love. “Yeah,” Benson says, “I met Willie in 1971, and I said, ‘Willie Nelson is my canary in the mine.’”
The cross-pollination among different styles of music creates a complex Venn diagram of overlapping circles. “The early ska stuff, like we do “Boogie in My Bones,” it’s almost rhythm and blues / swing music anyway, except for the use of the ‘one-drop’ [a Jamaican rhythm pattern that drops the “one” beat and places the emphasis on the third beat of each measure], which makes the beat so infectious.
“Going back to the old stuff really gave me a little perspective on how this music is a genre that is its own thing. That’s the same thing with western swing. What’s western swing? Well, they didn’t say, ‘Oh, let’s go out and create western swing.’ They just went out and played music for people to dance to, with their instruments and their abilities. So what we tried to do was take that great reggae with the one-drop and add this flowing bass line, as opposed to a traditional reggae bass line,” Benson says.
After cutting the basic tracks in Jamaica, Benson set about recruiting players to lay down some overdubs. Benson has produced his share of collaborative ventures, recording with the likes of George Strait, The Chicks, the Avett Brothers and, of course, Willie Nelson. So it wasn’t like he didn’t have a long list of badass musicians on his contacts list. Having said that, Benson really struck gold when he began dialing, lining up players like jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan, Warren Haynes (Govt Mule, the Allman Brothers) and, yes, Willie Nelson.
Haynes plays some sizzling slide guitar on a cover of “Highway 61,” but, interestingly, the choice to include the Bob Dylan classic on the album did not necessarily sit well with all concerned. “I got a lot of flack for that,” Benson says. “Dread wanted to do it, and I looked at that song, which is poetry at its best, and to me it wasn’t singable. So I said, ‘Well, I’ll just channel Bob and see how people like it.’ Some of them do, and some of them don’t. But Warren is one of the greatest slide guitar players there is, so no matter what I did, his additions really pulled that cut together and tightened it up.”
The process of assembling ‘Swingin’ and Skankin’ served not only to bring about the somewhat unlikely union of Texan and Jamaican musical traditions, it reinforced some of Benson’s long-held convictions regarding material. Consider “Route 66,” one of the songs included on the album. It’s a late-period standard written by Bobby Troup (maybe best known for his role on the television series “Emergency”) and recorded by everyone from Nat King Cole to the Rolling Stones. Still, Benson’s new interpretation makes an old warhorse sound fresh and vital. “A great song can be done R&B, country, reggae, pop, folk, et cetera,” Benson says. “It’s the way that you dress it. So our whole thing was, ‘If Toots and the Maytals can do “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” [yes, they did] then I can do “On the Road Again” [reggae style].’”
Several years ago, Benson published an autobiography with the information-filled if unwieldy title, Comin’ Right at Ya: How a Jewish Yankee Hippie Went Country, or, the Often Outrageous History of Asleep at the Wheel. There have been many adventures since the book came out in 2015, so is there any chance of volume two? “Yeah,” Benson says. “It’s called Six Degrees of Willie.”
Swingin’ and Skankin’ will be released on Friday, August 30. For more information on Ray Benson and the new album, visit AsleepAtTheWheel.com.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
