After working in music for 10 years, Ben Callicott scheduled his first album, Late, for release on June 8th.
And, even though he now lives in New York, Callicott recorded his album in his native Memphis.
The album spans his range of music influences, including R&B, blues, alternative, singer-songwriter, and sound collage. “I brought it back full circle where it was just me in my room again playing the guitar, figuring something out,” Callicott says. “Trying to get back to where it started.”
He thought, “I’m going to make something, but I want it to be with some of the friends that I played with over the years.”
As for the material, he says, “Some of these ideas have been hanging around in the closet for a long time.”
Callicott booked time at Memphis Magnetic Recording Co. “I wanted to put my first record out on my 27th birthday.”
Friends in New York gave him flack when he said he was recording his album in Memphis instead of New York. “It’s because I was born there. And, historically, there’s an aspect of it where I want to leave my stamp on it. And I want to be included in some of that music lineage conversation. But in another way, it’s been really important for me to tend to the relationship garden.”
Among those on the album are Kyle Neblett on drums; Harrison Neblett on synthesizer, upright bass, and grand piano; and Ali Abu-Khraybeh on piano and vocals — all people he “loves and respects.”
The album is close to Callicott because “there are memories attached to it. It’s not made in a vacuum. It’s not just me on my laptop in my room. We’re doing it with my friends at a Memphis studio.”
Callicott, who grew up in Senatobia, Mississippi, began taking guitar lessons when he was 12. He wanted to make his own music instead of just listening to it on his iPod. He thought, “I know there’s a feeling I get when I listen to it. How can I get the same feeling without having to press the play button?”
When he turned 16, Callicott began traveling to Memphis in search of a music scene. “I knew that there were kids up there that think like this.”
He got to know musicians who were around his age. These included the Nebletts, Will Tucker, and Drew Erwin. “Everybody was just really fired up about being that age and playing music and singing and going to shows.”
After he graduated high school, Callicott began playing solo gigs, as well as shows with the R&B-infused Bluff City Soul Collective.
But things came to a halt March 9, 2018. Callicott, who was at Erwin’s Downtown studio, decided to take a break, go up on the roof, and look around. “I fell three stories down into this alley.
“I shattered my right foot and my right lung collapsed. And my pelvis was broken and three of my ribs were broken.”
Callicott dropped out of school. “I was in a wheelchair for a little bit. And then I was pretty dead set on recovering fast.”
He went on tour with Ethan Healy less than 100 days later. “I had to sit down with my leg all propped up on a chair. My foot hurt the whole tour.”
Callicott still has steel in his right foot. “Fast forward to today, I run every day. Modern medicine. It’s solid in there. The screws and the plate.”
He played in Old News, The PRVLG, and with Healy before moving to New York in 2020 — right before Covid hit. “Music was out of the question. Just no shows.”
In addition to taking odd jobs, Callicott began revisiting old voice memos from his past. “In that moment of revisiting all these fragments of ideas, I realized I had a record.”
He describes “All Ways (Everyday),” one of the songs on Late, as “weathering the mundane aspects of life. You have to keep waking up and doing it.”
His album is something he “can look back on and just kind of look at with rose-colored glasses.”
And, Callicott adds, “This is putting my cards on the table. Symbolically.”
