Violinist Ben McClelland releases new CD Friday

Ben McClelland drives up to a home recording studio in a beat-up, black Honda Accord missing its muffler. He jokes that “This is the life of a struggling artist.” \nHe sets up his violin in the basement. The room is small but quaint. The walls are baby blue and the couches form a crescent shape around a recording microphone. He pulls out his 1925 violin made by L.S. Ross in Dallas, Texas, and begins to warm up by fiddling.\nFriend of McClelland and studio owner Richard Torstrick sets up the recording equipment in another room and adjusts volume levels as McClelland fiddles.\nMcClelland is putting the final touches on his album “Glasgow Ferry,” which will be released June 29. The first song he begins to record is “Dizzy Mary,” a song about a friend who, while she was out drinking with friends, saw a troop of clowns on stilts. He wrote the song about her tale of what she saw.\nAs McClelland warms up, Torstrick is in the opposite room, listening to the song as a whole. McClelland closes his eyes, breathes through his nose and sways his head as he gently moves the bow across the violin strings.\nAfter recording the fiddle for his CD, McClelland gets ready for a jazz show at Tutto Bene, a local wine cafe. The restaurant smells like wine and Italian food as McClelland and his band Blue Gypsy begin to play. The band’s jazz music flows smoothly over a silent restaurant as the sun begins to set.\n“The music is fantastic and so are the guys I work with,” McClelland says. “That’s a style that works well with the violin.”\nMcClelland met Torstrick in 2003 through the Bloomington Peace and Action Coalition. They were at a protest for the Iraq war when they discovered they both played the fiddle.\n“We have a common interest in the violin,” Torstrick said. “I told him about bluegrass. Ben wasn’t sure if he liked it, but I showed him some older bluegrass players.”\nMcClelland started playing the violin 33 years ago after learning about a program at the University of Providence. He said he was never pushed into playing the violin; it was just something he wanted to do. \nWhen he was six, he enrolled in a Japanese school program that taught a music method originated by Shin’ichi Suzuki. After high school, McClelland enrolled in Oberlin College to learn classical music. He said he slacked off when he realized the college scene wasn’t for him. McClelland quit and went back home to Rhode Island to play in a rock band. \nAfter moving to Mississippi with his parents, McClelland spent a summer in Austria and came back north to work with the Memphis Symphony.\nWanting to complete his violin training, he enrolled at IU in 1991 and worked on violin and composition for four years. He has been in Bloomington for 15 years. \n“My musical outlook extended exponentially to all the bluegrass and jazz here,” McClelland said. \nMcClelland is currently working for his own record label, ASL Records, and said he is in the beginning stages of forming his own music production company. He explained that over the past 10 years, music has undergone huge changes with recording companies.\nMcClelland’s fight for artistic freedom is what led him to create his own record label. His musical interests extended from classical to jazz to bluegrass, and he didn’t want to have his CDs only cover one specific genre.\n“Artists are trying to make their own path,” he said. “(There’s) more artistic freedom and in the long run more profit.”\nBloomington residents John and Julie Lawson met McClelland through Torstrick at a bluegrass gig. The Lawsons have been attending McClelland’s gigs for more than two years now and plan on supporting him throughout the rest of his career.\n“I think he’s versatile,” Julie said. “He brings a lot to it and he’s really talented.”\nJohn said McClelland plays all the types of music that he loves, such as bluegrass and jazz. McClelland also played classical music at his church, he said. \n“He’s got multiple levels of the different types of music,” John said.\nMcClelland said pinpointing the best violin experience was hard and said he’s had some incredible experiences he’ll always remember. One of his most memorable experiences was when he played in an orchestra behind Ray Charles. McClelland was front row in the orchestra and was able to stand feet away from Charles.\nMcClelland will leave July 23 for a U.K. tour. He has shows in Cardiff, Wales; Belfast, Northern Ireland and Edinburgh, Scotland. \nAfter his U.K. tour, McClelland will begin co-teaching a class titled “Entrepreneurial Skills for the Artist” at the John Waldron Arts Center. He said he plans to build his summer 2008 tour by working on publicity, booking and attempting to record a pop-electronica album. \n“And the rest of my life will be similar to this past season,” he said. “Teaching, gigging, playing in orchestras (and) enjoying life in Bloomington.”