Singer-guitarist Ben Kweller was months shy of his 16th birthday when life took a dramatic turn and he found himself being hyped as rock’s next big thing.
Years later, in a heartbreaking parallel, his son Dorian, a budding singer-songwriter, died at age 16 in a car crash in 2023 near the family’s home in Dripping Springs, outside Austin.
“There’s a lot of symmetry with me and Dorian,” says Kweller, who’s now 43. “The path he was on with his music, it was almost like a full circle. I saw a lot of myself in him.”
Kweller pours his grief, shock and anguish into his seventh studio album, Cover the Mirrors, due out May 30, which would have been his son’s 19th birthday. He named the album after a centuries-old mourning ritual.
Yet for all its somber tones, Cover the Mirrors is cathartic at times: “Optimystic” may be the most gleeful song ever written about depression.
I spoke with Kweller by phone from a tour stop in Roanoke, Va. His tour arrives in Dallas on Friday, May 2.
Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
In 1996, your Greenville, Texas, band Radish signed with Mercury Records during the Great Post-Grunge Bidding Wars. The New Yorker even dubbed you “the future of rock and roll.” But Radish’s album sold poorly, and the group broke up. How do you remember those strange days?
Like most precocious teenagers, I just wanted to be taken seriously and treated like an adult, even though I didn’t know a lot about life yet. A few years (after Radish), it was very cringey, like, “Oh my God! It was just my high school band, but it was plastered in big magazines!” But now, with so many years removed, I’m proud of what I was able to achieve as a young kid. The dream of living the rock ‘n’ roll thing and touring, it really came true. I look back with a smile on my face.
I was so sorry to hear about Dorian’s death. Are you comfortable sharing what he was like, as a person and a musician?
He really was always just such a happy, very easygoing person. A friend to everyone. He just saw the world as this fun, beautiful place.
We were very different, but similar in a lot of ways. Musically, he started with what we (Kweller and his wife Liz) would play around the house. But then he made beats on his computer, and he’d also explore the fringes of artsy atonal stuff. He was super into hip-hop and really cool subgenres I didn’t know about, but he was similar to me where he could switch between, like, high-energy punk rock stuff and folky Nick Drake-type stuff. Great melody and lyrics were paramount to him. Eventually, we’re going to put together a full-length album of songs he wrote.
“Optimystic” is so exuberant, but it’s also a portrait of someone frozen in pain. What can you tell me about that tune?
In a song like “Optimystic,” I’m just sitting there alone, in the barn, and I have my Marshall amp turned up really loud and I’m feeling 15 again, going through all these emotions, oscillating between crying and laughing.
You sing “laughing is a waste of time” and “living is a waste of time” in the song “Depression.” Have you gotten to the point where you can enjoy life again?
Yeah, I’m there. The most memorable point was a week after (Dorian) died, and me and Liz and Dorian’s younger brother Judah were sitting in the kitchen and someone says something and we all just start cracking up hysterically. Then we look at each other and realize, like, “Where’s Dorian?” and then the blood drains from our faces.
That first laugh without him is this strange conundrum, because you feel guilty. You feel like it would be rude to ever be happy again. But you also realize he’d want you to be happy forever.
I was a little nervous about putting “living is a waste of time” in there, but I just went for it. That really just came out of me, and I feel like sometimes you have to leave those things in.
For “Killer Bee,” you teamed up with the Flaming Lips to pay tribute to musician Nell Smith, a Lips collaborator from Canada who died in a car crash last year at age 17. How did the song come about?
It was one of these “meant to be” situations. Wayne Coyne from the Lips reached out and said, “I’d love to put you in touch with Nell’s mom and dad,” and Liz and I started this friendship with them over Zoom. We were a year and a half ahead of them in the (grieving) process, and they just wanted a peek behind the curtain, like, “Will we ever be normal again?” We were able to help. It truly is this awful club none of us wanted to be in, but we’re in it, and we’re rolling with it.
What was so interesting is that while Nell and Dorian never knew each other, they were like real soul twins. They both marched to the beat of their own drum. They didn’t get swept up in the pressures of social media to act a certain way, or have certain possessions. Those two kids did not give a s--- about any of that stuff. “Killer Bee” is from the perspective of the kid who is misunderstood and different, but it’s almost like a badge of honor to be a little different.
You mention being part of “this awful club.” Other musicians have also addressed the death of their children, like Eric Clapton (“Tears in Heaven”) and Nick Cave (the album Ghosteen and the book Faith, Hope and Carnage).
(Singer) Kevin Morby sent me the Nick Cave book, and it was very powerful. Reading his book, I’m like, “Oh wow! This is me!” You know? My journey has been very similar to his. I think my connection to God, or the world of spirituality, has increased a ton, as it did for Nick.
You’ve been recording for over 30 years. Is there a song on Cover the Mirrors where you tried a new approach?
Yeah. “Trapped.” It was a song that Dorian was writing before he died. A few weeks before the car crash, I heard him in his bedroom, singing this chorus and melody, and I walked in and I’m like, “Dude! That’s so good! What is this?” He’s like, “It’s just this song I’m working on.” And so I sat down on the bed and grabbed another guitar and we just kind of strummed through it, making voice memos as I was helping him a bit.
When he died, and I started putting together ideas of what this album could be, I kept thinking about “Trapped.” So I listened back to the voice memos and decided this song is too good to leave unfinished. So I tried to finish it. It’s literally a co-write with Dorian. Right now, it’s my favorite song on the album.
How to get help: If you or someone you know is in a mental health crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Details
With opening act Cheese Touch at 8 p.m. Friday, May 2. Echo Lounge & Music Hall, 1323 N. Stemmons Freeway, Dallas, $41.75 and up. theechodallas.com.
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