Biography
Arlon Bennett’s work has frequently drawn comparisons to the canvases of Norman Rockwell, and the parallel holds: his folk-rock compositions function as compact musical scenes that capture slices of American existence across different eras. The East Coast singer/songwriter has addressed topics as varied as Vietnam veterans in “Bandanna Man,” the sportscaster and baseball historian Bob Murphy who died in 2004, and couples who have remained married for four or five decades, infusing these portraits with a pronounced Americana flavor reminiscent of Rockwell. Even the song “Be the Change,” which centers on Indian civil rights leader Mahatma Gandhi, carries an American thread; Bennett draws explicit connections between Gandhi’s campaigns and the civil-rights legacy of Rosa Parks in the United States. While Bennett’s own recordings span the 1990s and the twenty-first century, his chief influences remain the folk-rock and soft-rock figures of the 1960s and 1970s—Harry Chapin, James Taylor (the artist once married to Carly Simon rather than the J.T. Taylor known from Kool & the Gang), Cat Stevens, Don McLean, Neil Young, and Jim Croce. Occasional excursions into light country, occasionally evoking Willie Nelson, or jazz-tinged passages reflecting an affinity for Van Morrison, surface from time to time, yet the core of Bennett’s guitar-driven approach stays rooted in folk-rock, delivered through a consistently genial and unpretentious singing style.
Raised in the suburban communities of Long Island outside New York City, Bennett absorbed countless hours of 1960s and 1970s singer/songwriters during his teenage years. At Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he enrolled in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he chose to study mathematics and computer science instead of music, later building a successful career in information technology upon returning to the East Coast. Music remained an avocation through the 1990s and early 2000s, filled with songwriting and club performances in his spare time. He entered numerous singer/songwriter contests, reaching the finals of the New Folk competition in Kerrville, Texas, in 1999 and taking first place at the New Jersey Folk Festival competition in 2001. His debut album, Fountain of Dreams, appeared in 1998, followed by The Watch Man in 2001. In 2003 Bennett made a decisive move, resigning from a lucrative information-technology and software-development position to pursue music full time. Four years later, at age 47, he issued his third album, Summer’s Voice, on his own Red Sea Records imprint; although the set consisted largely of original songs, it also featured a rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Straight A’s in Love.”
Raised in the suburban communities of Long Island outside New York City, Bennett absorbed countless hours of 1960s and 1970s singer/songwriters during his teenage years. At Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, where he enrolled in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he chose to study mathematics and computer science instead of music, later building a successful career in information technology upon returning to the East Coast. Music remained an avocation through the 1990s and early 2000s, filled with songwriting and club performances in his spare time. He entered numerous singer/songwriter contests, reaching the finals of the New Folk competition in Kerrville, Texas, in 1999 and taking first place at the New Jersey Folk Festival competition in 2001. His debut album, Fountain of Dreams, appeared in 1998, followed by The Watch Man in 2001. In 2003 Bennett made a decisive move, resigning from a lucrative information-technology and software-development position to pursue music full time. Four years later, at age 47, he issued his third album, Summer’s Voice, on his own Red Sea Records imprint; although the set consisted largely of original songs, it also featured a rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Straight A’s in Love.”
Albums
