Post #300: Kind Of Like Spitting - 2004 4-track demos

I try to bring some real quality for every post, but when I hit a landmark like a post that ends in "00", I feel like it's time to really dig deep for something most folks haven't heard. So let me give you something from my old friend Ben.

I met Ben Barnett for the first time when he was opening for Braid and Cross My Heart at the old Ottobar in 1999. Braid was on what was then billed as their final tour, soon to partition into Hey Mercedes and the Firebird Band. I know XMH was playing songs from "The Reason I Failed History", arguably their finest record. But it was Kind Of Like Spitting that blew me away, with a folky emo sound that I hadn't really experienced before. Plaintive songs, cracking vocals, violin accompaniment? Yes, yes, and hell yes! I bought the "Birds Of A Feather" 7" that night, and damn near wore through the vinyl over the next year between listening at home and playing it on my radio show.

When Ben came back to Baltimore the following year, he was playing solo, backed with an Insound tour EP and more plainly showing his influences (Joni Mitchell! Jimmie Rodgers! Leonard Cohen!). I ended up chatting with him for almost an hour after his set in the parking lot next to the Sidebar, just rapping about music and touring and how to deal with depression with art. We exchanged numbers, and I told him to give me a shout if he was coming back through town and needed a place to crash. Within a few years, I'd end up booking him a number of shows, both as Kind Of Like Spitting and with the first Thermals tour. The stays would range from a few hours to a few days, and it was great to chop it up with hot goss about what was happening in Seattle and Portland, giggling about his buddies who were ending up in Spin Magazine.

Sometime in the summer of 2004, Ben came to stay with the girlfriend and I in our garden apartment on Calvert St. for a night or two, and ended up crashing for a couple weeks. It'd been a couple of years since he'd put out "Bridges Worth Burning" with Barsuk, and was pivoting towards a more folky sound. After all, mainstream emo only had room for one sensitive singer-songwriter in Chris Carraba, so why not lean into a love of Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger? Before he split for Philadelphia, Ben laid a CD-R on me of songs he was demoing for a new record. And that's what we have here.

The material from these 17 songs would make up parts of the next two Kind Of Like Spitting full-lengths: 2005s "In The Red" and 2006s "The Thrill Of The Hunt". The arrangements are simple and spare. "Worker Bee" here is just acoustic guitar, double tracked vocals and metronome, which gives this early version a real ghostly feel. "Grapes" from "In The Red" is titled "Line And Sinker" in these demos, and has this wonderful hissy quality that reminds me of Ben's earliest tapes. It's the songs that don't appear in studio versions elsewhere that are worth diving into. There are covers of Neil Young's "Losing End", Bad Religion's "You", and Mojave 3's "In Love With A View", the first of which only appears here. "Cheap Drinks" is a great song that really deserved a fleshed-out version. But the capper here is the beautiful rendition of "This Little Light Of Mine", the lullaby turned protest song. It's really outstanding.

I'll argue that Ben Barnett is one of the most underappreciated singer/songwriters of the past 25 years. There's an integrity and honesty present that few artists possess, and fewer still manage to not to lord over people. He's just a fella, as willing to talk and sing about the folk scene in the late 60s as he is about smoking dank buds. There's more than a bit of Ben Barnett in the character Llewyn Davis, although I doubt the Coens ever listened to "$100 Room". That authenticity, even when there's appeal to turning it all down, can't be manufactured; it just is. And it's present in these songs, whether an original composition or in a cover choice.

If you like what you've heard here, and you've not familiar with the Kind Of Like Spitting catalog, swing by the Bandcamp page, where's there's just a monster amount of music to dive into. As I noted a few months ago, the newest Kind Of Like Spitting release is a tribute to the late Karl Hendricks, benefitting his family. Anything you purchase on the page goes to the Hendricks clan, a worthy spend if ever there was one.

Thanks for your continued visits, friends. Enjoy.

Click here to download.

Kind Of Like Spitting - Learn 2: The Songs of the Karl Hendricks Trio

Every town should be so lucky to have a band like the Karl Hendricks Trio.

I learned about them through two people. Henry from Chunklet always rooted hard for this group from Pittsburgh he'd grown up seeing. They'd put out a few records on Merge, so I knew I'd probably dig what they had put out. But it took hearing Ben Barnett cover some KH3 songs for me to go pick up a record. He'd covered the title track from 1993's "Some Girls Like Cigarettes" 10" for MySpace; he burnt it to a CD-R and left it at my house after one of his numerous stop-overs through the years. It was such a great teaser that I had to go check out the original; I picked up the first two Karl Hendricks CDs within a week. They played this noisy indie rock that fit in well with the Dutch East India Trading-era Grass Records lineup. The songs were short, tuneful, had great titles. I always thought of them as the perfect first support band; not flashy, but always entertaining and really...fucking...good. They'd never let you down.

Karl Hendricks died in 2017 from cancer, and, not long afterwards, Ben began posting online that'd he'd be wrapping up his 20+ year career as the leader of Kind of Like Spitting by paying tribute to the bandleader with a second release in his "Learn" series. "Learn 2: The Songs of the Karl Hendricks Trio" comes out today. The first track, "The Scoffer's Reply" (from 1995's "A Gesture of Kindness"), is available as a preview below. All proceeds of the release would be donated to Karl's family in his memory. Seeing how this releases on a Bandcamp Friday, I'd like to suggest you pick it up. It's a great release, from a wonderful person, for a good cause. Y'all know I won't steer you wrong.

Click here to purchase.

Kind of Like Spitting - Nothing Makes Sense Without It

I thought it'd be a lot tougher coming up with things to talk about, and yet, here I am, coming at ya with another mediocrity from the 90's. I kid, of course. Nothing Makes Sense Without It is, to put it mildly, an odd entry in the prolific output from Kind of Like Spitting. It's also probably the most fondly remembered (or at least home to the most requested songs) in my recollection. While this album is still available via iTunes and the Liberation Records webstore, I recall Ben Barnett telling me that he had some serious royalty issues with the label who released the CD initially. As in, he hadn't seen a cent in royalties. But I hear that was a constant issue with releases on the Liberation family of labels.

Enough gossip and shit talk. I always felt like Ben Barnett was one of the few unrecognized greats to come out of the Great Emo Revolution of the late 90's. Every record he recorded is unarguably great. However, outside of opening for Braid on their last tour, a later fantastic record that came out on Barsuk and an opening slot with Saves the Day on their first headlining tour, I think a lot of the listening public just missed the boat. Could it be due to the somewhat-schizophrenic nature of Ben's releases? After all, the follow-up to Northing Makes Sense..., Old Moon in the Arms of the New, harkened more to Karate & Low than the Get Up Kids. Is it possible that relative commercial success and a spot in Alternative Press eluded Mr. Barnett due to him following his muse, no matter what the path? Is Kind of Like Spitting the Raging Bull of emo? Or did I just stay up way too late last night?

Here on Nothing Makes Sense..., the Braid & Mineral influences meld neatly with Ben's obvious singer-songwriter talents. Tip of the cap goes to Jamie Arthurs for the initial play of the Birds of a Feather 7" (released on Bob Nanna's Grand Theft Autumn label), which made me go apeshit before some St. Andrew's show back in '99. I felt like this had a chance to be a great crossover...it felt so goddamned important and adult. And this kind of heartbreak...well, it actually felt more approachable than a Smiths song. Plus I'd never heard violins used to such great effect on an indie record. Like some future stereotype, Nothing Makes Sense... is maudlin and beautiful.

I'm sure I'll write more about Kind of Like Spitting in the future. But, for now, listen and enjoy.










Kind of Like Spitting - Nothing Makes Sense Without It

RIYL: Billy Bragg, Belle & Sebastian, Death Cab for Cutie