Musician Ben Weaver Forges a New Path for His Art

September 22, 2018

“I don’t have choice about making art. I have to do that because the songs are going to keep showing up and the words are going to be there every day. But, what I did realize then is that I did have control over how I wanted to make things in my life.”

Ben Weaver dropped his manager and booking agent and started to be intentional about where he performed his music and why.

One of the major life changes he made was how he traveled to his performances. With a love for cycling, Weaver decided to make his bike his primary source of transport. This devotion further connected him with the land and natural beauty as often his routes took him off the beaten path:

“It’s not that I won’t drive a car or don’t drive a car sometimes, because that’s just the reality. But I try to ride to every show that I can…I’ve seen a lot of the country, and not just the state, by bicycle, but a lot of pieces of those states that you wouldn’t see unless you were on a bike.”

Originally from Oregon, Weaver lives in the Twin Cities. He has followed the Mississippi from Minnesota to New Orleans, circled Lake Superior and explored Alaska and the Pacific Northwest and many places in between. Weaver is, “working on finding different ways to connect the communities I perform in.”

Not only are the pathways themselves different ways in which he tries to connect community, but in his approach to music performance overall:

“If it’s a venue where there’s a dressing room or a backstage, I don’t use that. I want to talk to people and hear what they have to say, so a lot of times I sort of open that space by being vulnerable about the stories I’m sharing and encouraging other people to share their stories. And those are some of my favorite performances, when it’s a smaller audience and people are able to actually talk to one another or we can have a collective conversation and not just a project outward performance.”

Connection is a common theme throughout Weaver’s work: connection to the land, connection to community and using his art to bring both land and people together. Whether riding his bike to his shows, or connecting the audience through story and song, Weaver is forging a new path for his art and his life one show at a time.

Special Thanks
Andy Cotter
Irene Genelin
Monica Larson
Tom Moffatt