• ...strange, skin-prickling tales picked up from the Moebius strip of a lost highway he's been compelled to travel on.... like a hillbilly Leonard Cohen.

    — MOJO

  • Ben Weaver is the most exciting young songwriter I've come across, an American original whose voice and guitar are matched only by the power of his words. His songs are an incredible, haunting gift of music.

    — Author Larry Brown

  • ...musical postcards that recall a rural Tom Waits, or Greg Brown in his dark, bluesy moments. He's like that spooky old guy who lives in a trailer but tells amazing stories.

    — Utne Reader

  • ...country-rooted Americana full of weary determination and aphoristic clarity, somewhere between the Band and Tom Waits.

    — The New York Times

  • Weaver remains a riveting lyricist and A-level student of the Tom Waits School of Gutter Bum Poetry.

    — Twin Cities Metromix

  • The folk artist Leonard Cohen would have been if he'd have grown up a few Great Lakes away in the northern United States

    — Daily Nebrasken
Hometown: 
Minneapolis, MN

A writer of great nuance and simplicity and simple wonder, Ben suffuses his songs with a sense of place and detail.  Natural, everyday wonders are his inspiration (and shouldn't they be for everyone, really?)

Born in Eugene, OR, Ben calls the upper reaches of Minnesota his home now, and it shows.

He's been compared to such songwriting and performance luminaries as Greg Brown, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen and Richard Buckner, and while he can channel their raspy growls and mystical sense,  Ben remains his own artist.  Stridently independent and unbending in his quests, Ben might not be everyone's cup of herbal tea, but if he were, he'd be boring.

Weaver is also an accomplished artist and writer: You can find his short story "Humanesque" in Amplified, a collection of fiction by songwriters including Rhett Miller, Robbie Fulks, and Jon Langford, while his art is often posted to his Tumblr.

Artist Website
Compilation Tracks: 
Recommended if You Like: 
Leonard Cohen
Richard Bucknet
Iron & Wine
Bon Iver
Bill Callahan
Vic Chesnutt

Similar Bloodshot Artists

  • Robbie Fulks Bloodshot Records

    Robbie Fulks

    Twenty years ago, Robbie’s exuberance for old-school country made a lot of noise. Today, his storytelling through folk and bluegrass music on Upland Stories delivers the quieter, sometimes unsettling truths of humanity.

  • I'm Not Jim

    A genre-bending collaboration between the renowned novelist Jonathan Lethem ("Motherless Brooklyn," "Fortress of Solitude") and songwriter Walter Salas-Humara of the Silos.

  • Exene Cervenka

    The foundation of the best punk rock, the music that lasts and remains relevant, isn’t self-destructive anger or smash the state bravado, but a sense of alienation and dislocation. The longing of the outsider.

  • The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir

    TSYGC is a Chicago-based free-spirited collective of musical visionaries who turn out exuberant and rough-hewn chamber pop based on the template: Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy. Crushing breakup inevitably ensues.

  • Jim and Jennie & the Pinetops

    Weaving together Southern rock and folk idioms, the Pinetops ease into space that is an irresistible match between the Harry Smith creak of our American musical backwaters and the psychedelic vibe of the Fairport Convention and Buffalo Springfield.

  • The Silos

    Heralded at their outset by Rolling Stone as "America's Best New Band," the resilient Silos mix punk, roots, rock, and sage art-damaged truth telling. "The astringent twang of The Velvet Underground with the drone of R.E.M"--NY TImes

  • Ben Kweller

    Since his arrival, he's been called everything from balladeer to punk rocker, anti-folker to indie-popper. His ability to weave together opposites that coexist happily on the same album is something few can do.
  • Cory Branan Bloodshot Records

    Cory Branan

    Throughout his career, Cory Branan has been too punk for country, too country for punk, too Memphis for Nashville, and probably a little too Cory Branan for anyone’s damn good.

  • Justin Townes Earle

    From Music Row classicism to the storycraft of Greenwich Village-era Dylan to laid back soulful cool, and inspirations as diverse as Townes Van Zandt, Jimmy Reed, Kurt Cobain, The Replacements, Mance Lipscomb, Ray Charles and The Pogues, it's hard to say what JTE does the best.