Legendary Producer ROGER GREENAWALT Makes Debut Album at 65
LEGENDARY PRODUCER MAKES LONG-AWAITED DEBUT
PRODUCED BY FORMER PROTÉGÉ BEN KWELLER
ROGER GREENAWALT'S YOU ARE MY STAR
AVAILABLE TODAY VIA THE NOISE COMPANY
Legendary producer Roger Greenawalt has shared his first-ever solo album, You Are My Star, produced by his former protégé Ben Kweller, and it’s available everywhere now via The Noise Company.
“Roger was my first musical mentor,” Ben Kweller says. “He was the first person who opened my eyes to what the life of an artist could be.”
STREAM/PURCHASE YOU ARE MY STAR
Known for his work with such artists as Iggy Pop, Rufus Wainwright, Nils Lofgren, The Pierces, Branford Marsalis, Joe Strummer, and Philip Glass, and many more, Greenawalt was born in Berlin, Germany, and raised in the United States, where he studied at Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music. In 1980, he formed The Dark, whose self-described brand of “Sarcastic Post Punk No Wave Death Disco” caught the attention of The Cars’ Ric Ocasek, who went on to produce the band’s 1982 EP, Darkworld, spawning the local hit single, “Judy.”
From there, Greenawalt evolved into a highly sought-after producer and session musician, most notably discovering a 14-year-old Ben Kweller and playing a crucial role in the early days of the iconic indie singer-songwriter’s development. As legend has it, when Kweller was starting out in music, he knew one other person who was really doing it, his father’s high school friend, singer-songwriter and guitarist in both Neil Young’s Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band) Nils Lofgren. From the time Kweller started writing songs at age 7, he would send cassettes to Lofgren. In 1995, Greenawalt was visiting Lofgren and noticed a CD laying on the guitarist’s coffee table – Dizzy, the self-released album from Kweller’s teenage band, Radish. After one listen, Greenawalt was on the phone, ringing up Kweller.
“I basically got a call one day,” Kweller says. “‘Hi Ben, my name is Roger Greenawalt. I’m a record producer from New York. I’m friends with Nils, just heard your band’s CD and really like it! I’d love to come to Texas and work with you — maybe record a demo and shop it around to record labels.’ My 14-year-old brain had no idea what any of that meant, but I knew it was something I wanted to do.
“Roger flew to Texas and worked with me intensely for weeks – deconstructing songs, teaching me about song arrangement, the importance of the relative minor, and the impact of the bass drum locking with the bass guitar. It was the first time I’d ever worked with a metronome, a producer, or another songwriter, for that matter. His guidance eventually led to my first record deal when I was 15.”
Three decades after the young artist connected with his first producer, Kweller got another call from Greenawalt. Though his career has largely been spent behind the scenes, Greenawalt has been writing songs his entire life – hundreds of them, maybe even thousands. Songs that piled up in notebooks, on cassettes, and in late-night conversations. Songs that never chased an audience, but simply needed to exist. Songs people would like if they were fans of Daniel Johnston, Michael Hurley, or Talking Heads.
“Roger called out of the blue and was like, ‘Hey, BK! You know how I have a million songs that I've never done anything with,’” Kweller says. “‘Well, I think it’s time for me to finally make my own album, and I’d be honored if you produced it.’ I mean, I didn’t hesitate for a second. This guy has taught me so much of what I know, and here he is coming to me like Mr. Miyagi coming to Daniel-san for help.”
Currently based in Bangkok, Thailand (and known for carrying a ukulele with him at all times since 2001), Greenawalt soon made a pilgrimage to Kweller’s home in the Texas Hill Country, where they set to work breaking the songs down one by one, dialing in arrangements, much as they had together all those years ago. As if that wasn’t enough sentimentality on its own, they called on Radish drummer John Kent to join them in the recording, affirming You Are My Star as more than just a collaboration between old friends – it was a handoff, a reckoning, a quiet acknowledgment of influence coming home.
What emerged is something truly rare, a new artist with decades of experience, an unknown legend finally stepping into the light not to reinvent himself, but to reveal what’s been there all along. You Are My Star plays like a lost tape from the past, buried but then unearthed. Still humming. Still loud. Still strange with unpolished quirks and imperfections. Greenawalt – who in recent years has battled cancer, mental illness, and recurring depression, all of which has focused him in on the undeniable fragility of life – has created an idiosyncratic collection equal parts eccentric, vulnerable, and wholly unconcerned with convention. Songs such as “Children on Crack,” “Ain’t It A Shame,” and “Brother Brad” are fragile but defiant, cracked open but still standing. There’s humor, darkness, innocence, and disorientation, often all in the same breath. Nothing hidden inside. Nothing was cleaned up. With You Are My Star, Roger Greenawalt and Ben Kweller bring their shared experiences together to craft something utterly unique and deeply personal, a full-circle moment for both artists that borders on something close to myth: the teacher becoming the student, the student becoming the guide.
“I’ve come to realize that we never know when our time is up,” Roger Greenawalt says. “I’ve been through so much in these 65 years and decided that finally making my own album was now or never. When you’re musically connected with someone the way Ben and I are connected, it’s like a spiritual thing. So, making the album with him is something we’ll both have forever.”
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