Erin Bennett is the front women of the music group Ebb an “Art Rock”group of five women and one guy who spend their time writing their own music and telling their own stories. We appreciate her taking some time to share her words with us.
Q How did Ebb get started? What was the common thread that brought the band members together?
Well, its a bit of a long story, to be honest. I suppose the shortened version would be: In 2005 Dog, Kitty, Suna and Nikki were touring the US in their band MT-TV. I met them all in Alabama where I was living at the time, (I am originally from Texas.) We became instant friends and I joined their crew as a tech and soundy. In 2008, MT-TV returned to the UK and their bassist, Amanda, drummer, Jo and I formed an alternative/rock trio called Syren. I had been in a relationship with Jo pretty much since meeting the group. Syren toured the UK and Europe from 2008 until 2010 and then went into the studio to record our 2nd album. In the meantime, Dog, Kitty, Suna, Nikki, and the rest of MT-TV were living communally in Scotland working on various other projects, like filming, having given up music….or so they thought.
In 2012, Jo, to whom I’d been married, died unexpectedly of a rare type of Breast Cancer and Syren instantly ceased to be. Amanda was too distraught by the loss of Jo to carry on in music and I was intrinsically left with no band and nothing to focus on in my time of immense grief. But only a few months after Jo’s death, friends of mine in a band called Hawkwind, reached out asking if I’d be interested in opening for them at The Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh. But I had no band, right? So I appealed to Dog to come and play bass with me, thinking we could do an acoustic set. In Dog’s words, he saw it as an opportunity to give me something to concentrate on and help me out of the pit of my grief which was truly killing me. So he built a band around me recruiting Suna and Nikki on backing vocals and keys respectively and getting a local drummer to sit in for that specific gig.
In doing that one show, Dog, Suna and Nikki found the potential to heal from the sudden end to their musical past and knew also that it would be a great form of rehab for me. So we started writing and rehearsing and found a permanent drummer in Anna who Dog found at Napier University in Edinburgh studying for her BA in popular music. In 2015 Kitty joined the band, having previously been our mixer. Since 2016 we’ve worked and toured endlessly to find our place in music as a band. We’ve gone from performing simply under my name with all the others effectively being a backing band, and playing power-pop and heavy rock. We released two albums under the ‘Erin Bennett’ banner, but when the worldwide lockdown happened in 2020 we put our heads down and really focused on what type of music we wanted to make. What type of music made us feel, ya know?
We were lucky with the lockdown, in as much as, we all live communally in Scotland in an old hotel we’ve done up. Eventually, and quite organically, we settled on what we do now, which is being described as art/prog/rock; and rebranded, essentially, to form ‘Ebb’ which was initially short for ‘Erin Bennett Band’…but now stands as a metaphor for our movement away from our past and into our future as new people and new musicians. Our debut album ‘Mad & Killing Time’ which we released on November 1st, 2022, is the result of being locked down together in Scotland for 18 months and I believe, in this album which has received some stellar reviews, we have found ourselves as artists, musicians and as a band.
Q How does the band writes its music, there seems to a lot of elements are they usually the product of one person or a collaborative effort?
It really depends. A lot of the time, I will write a song on an acoustic guitar and bring it to the band. We will all get together and add our own ideas to the piece with Dog, who produces all of our stuff, having the overview to add or take away anything that doesn’t ultimately serve the song and the emotions behind it. Sometimes, though, Dog, Nikki, and Anna will be jamming and a musical piece is written that I then write a tune and lyrics for. And then there are also times when we are just messing around in rehearsal and something grows. So I guess it truly is a collaborative effort. Because even if I go and write a whole song from start to finish on my own and bring it to the band, everyone is affected by the song differently. And Dog’s job is to take everyone’s individual emotional reaction to a song and polish it into something that can be universally absorbed and understood and that happens to always come out as art/prog. So without everyone in the band, the music we put out wouldn’t be what it is.
From: https://paperphoenixink.com/2024/11/14/interview-with-erin-bennett-of-musical-group-ebb/
