Conversations with C.J. Benoit

Today we’d like to introduce you to C.J. Benoit

C.J., we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I’ll try to sparknotes this as much as possible. We got some ground to cover, and I want to make sure I throw in the juicy details.

I was born in Olney, MD (a town slightly north of Washington, DC), raised in Woodbine and Sykesville, MD (near Baltimore). Growing up on the Autism spectrum (ASD level 1. For those who had grown up pre-2013, that used to be called Asperger’s Syndrome) had been a real challenge growing up. However, music was prevalent in our home. My dad plays guitar, and was in a band called the Swamp Weasels for a while (foreshadowing), My grandparents were/are into Motown, Big Band, Singing Cowboys, Folk, and Rod Stewart. My parents are big into Classic Rock, Country, and my dad was also big into songwriters that would later be called Americana (Jimmy Buffett, John Prine, Gordon Lightfoot, The Band, etc), my sister is big into the modern stuff (Rock, Pop, little Hip-Hop). Aunts and Uncles got me into the Blues, Rockabilly, etc. Tell you truthful, I wasn’t crazy about Rock at first, being on the Autism spectrum I was very sensitive to light and sound, and the first time I heard a loud Rock band (some Alternative band, I forget who) it HURT.

So I went and found stuff that I did like. Blues, Country, Bluegrass (I would go to Danny Kimball’s New Years Day jam with my dad when I was older), Cajun/Zydeco, old RnB, Folk, Jazz (especially New Orleans Traditional aka Dixieland and Swing) and Southern/Blues Rock were always big with me. While my peers were big on Green Day, Blink-182, Dr. Dre, etc I was listening to Jimmy Buffett (with Fingers Taylor, my biggest influence on Harmonica), Muddy Waters, Dr. John, Little Feat, Hank Williams, Bill Monroe, Louis Armstrong, Waylon Jennings, Buckwheat Zydeco . . . I know the old Rock and Roll saying was never trust anyone over 30, but god-DAMN they got some good record collections!

I first learned how to play Harmonica, then the Alto Saxophone in school. And many times, I’d forego the songs the teacher wanted me to play to play along with records. Later on, I learned how to play Lap Steel, Banjo, and some very rudimentary Guitar. I also was saving up for a paintball gun after playing my dad’s guitar and my dad came in. This is 2005, I was watching the Dukes of Hazzard and my dad gave me an offer that would change my life: We could get the paintball gun, or he’d go half with me and get a guitar. Sure enough, I picked the guitar and have been grateful ever since.

From there, I learned how to play Mandolin and Bass from the back of Acoustic Guitar Magazine (and was a right pain in the ass for sure if you asked my parents. Some kids bring home a stray for a pet. I’d bring home stray songs) and one time, surprised my mother when I sat in with a bluegrass band called the Fox Hunt in New Market, MD. My grandparents owned an antique store there called Yesterday’s Treasures and one day I went down to the New Market General Store and saw the band playing. I talked to them and mentioned I’d like to sit in. They asked what I played and I saw the fiddle player doubled on Mandolin, so I said Mandolin.

Now to my mother’s credit, I had been gone for a while and built up a reputation of just wandering off or flat-out leaving situations. So when I had been gone for so long for getting lunch at the barbecue restaurant behind the store, she came looking. What she DIDN’T expect was me up on the bandstand playing mandolin with a bluegrass band when no more than a month before she was frustrated at me picking up ANOTHER instrument. I can describe her reaction as surprise, pride, and exasperation. I got to sit in with that band again some time later.

Another time, as I was learning how to play guitar, I met a busker in Ocean City, MD named Ed. I never did get his last name, but he was singing old Rockabilly and Blues songs. Ed and I got on like gangbusters. I played harmonica, he played guitar, Ed’s sister played fiddle up until Ed’s guitar string broke, An adventure of us going all the way to find a music store to get a new string. If only someone had a camera crew, that woulda made a good Wes Anderson film.

Somewhere along the way, my sister, dad, and I went to the Zoo together in DC (my parents divorced somewhere before this. I found my escape through music) and we saw a Conjunto band setting up and I saw this BEAUTIFUL guitar. I didn’t realize it but that was a Bajo Sexto. (I did later on get new pickguards on a guitar to look like a bajo sexto though, and currently have three.) I also got into Tex-Mex music after my music teacher in high school (combined with the passing of Freddy Fender, and hearing a Cajun band called Tex-Mex, Los Lobos, and hearing a lot of Flaco Jimenez with Ry Cooder) accidentally put in PBS’ American Roots series in lieu of the Classical music Documentary he intended.

I. Was. Gobsmacked. Here I was, this hillbilly kid and this whole world opened up. Not just through Doug Sahm, Los Lobos, Freddy Fender and Flaco Jimenez, but Mingo Saldivar, Little Joe, Esteban Jordan, Joe King Carrasco, the Sinatra of the Southwest himself, Ruben Ramos . . . the more I went down the rabbit hole, the more I learned and the more I dug it.

2007 I joined my first band, called Rumble 49 (on Guitar, Harmonica, and Bass). Which later merged with a band called Primitive Mind to become the Stranded Travelers, a Reggae/Christian Pop/Americana band. I later focused more on guitar and harmonica when we got a bassist and drummer. Did get a film credit on an independent film my bandmates did the music on, it’s called “Reunion”. Real Jesus-y feel-good movie. Our song is in the credits. I also narrowly missed an opportunity to play with Australian Country artist Eightball Aitken, due to missing the chance to meet up with him while cooking dinner one night. (D’OH!)

I also worked with DC Rockabilly Band The Rockin’ Bones (2009-2010), Dundalk, MD-based Honky-Tonk band Danny Kay & the Nightlifers (2010-2014. I turned 21 on a stage in Brooklyn, NY, then celebrated opening up for Sasquatch and the Sickabillies), Zydeco band The Roux Krewe with my college mentor Bo Eckard (2011-2012), and despite never taking a single class at McDaniel, Bo Eckard roped me in to be first chair alto sax for the McDaniel College Big Band (2010-2014), most of which while I was in college. During which I first came to Nashville, TN in 2010 right before the Nashville Flood, and was on one of the last flights out before the flood. In a situation right out of a Mark Twain book, I came home and went to a guitar recital and was told the professor thought I died in the flood. Last I checked I was still alive!

It was in 2011, that I needed to start my own band. I had tried a few times in High School, which turned out to be duds. Then in 2012 I started gigging as the Firebirds/The Chemical Project, which eventually formed into my main band, Los Swamp Monsters. However, I also worked with Mr. Kanish/33rd/Beyond Parallel (an Alternative Rock/RnB band), The Golden Sombreros (a Cowpunk band), The Pop-Up Trailers (a Rockabilly trio), the Delmarva Railroaders (a Country/Variety band), and did some shows as a one-man band, playing kick drum, hi-hat, guitar, harmonica, and singing. I also hung around Randy Lee Ashcraft and the Saltwater Cowboys, Rock Baker, Jimmy Swope, Husky Burnette, Western Star, Chico McCarty & the Midnight Circus, etc.

However, after a streak of bad luck, I needed to make some changes. Either I needed to give up music to focus on a dead-end day job as a mechanic or get the hell out of the state of Maryland. Thanks to the help of my now wife (of four years this July) I packed down my car with bad brakes, one headlight, bald tires, and a postage stamp’s worth of rear-view window and the day after I played Shakemore (a festival held by Half Japanese) I drove down to where I live now. (even if it took Luna and her mom six months to finally convince me to unpack!)

But I still went back and forth between the Mid-Atlantic and the South with the Trailers, trying to rebuild LSM, and work a job to get cash in. However, when I got sacked by the trailers, I wound up in another band called the Muscadine Fives (a New Orleans Jazz/Variety band). I bought a Bajo Sexto, it got stolen, was gifted another one and bought a third, bandmates came and went, and after I had a hell of a time keeping an accordionist around . . . I decided, “if there was ever a time to get started, now’s it.” So I downloaded apps to learn how to play, the property value around my house went down, and soon in November 2019, I picked up a Hohner Panther accordion and started to apply what I had learned and listened to.

Fortunately, I was in no shortage of time to practice as the pandemic shut everything down for a while. I worked some odd jobs, including cleaning Tracy Lawrence, Doc McGhee, and Billy Ray Cyrus’ pools. Then as things reopened, the deck got shuffled, I played some shows, got married, and soon my current lineup of Los Swamp Monsters got solidified.

However, I still did a lot of side work, working with Killbilly Quartet (Rockabilly Variety band), The Cow Punx (Cowpunk band, my old guitarist Rhoades D’Ablo plays with them now), Tennessee Troubadour Rabblers (Folk Punk band), Catfish Seminar (Roots Rock), Trapped on Earth (RnB Showband I subbed with), Regular of the Obscene (Ska Punk band I subbed with), Andi Jane and the Honky-Tonk Cabaret (Americana/Cabaret), The Beer Dead Charmers (Acoustic Duo), Jane Rose and the Deadends (Rockabilly band), and also co-formed the Regulators, a Blues-Rock band where I play lead and slide guitars.

Nowadays I got my hands full with the Regulators and LSM, that I don’t really do a lot of side-projects nowadays. Would love to work with Cactus Fire (a Tejano band here in Nashville) as well as Ruben Ramos & the Mexican Revolution out of Austin, TX (I’ve been talking to Wild Bill Perkins, etc about that but the logistics never panned out. One day!)

LSM is currently signed with Big Easy Productions out New Orleans for booking.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The music industry ain’t easy. If it was, we’d all be doing it.

Fortunately, things are getting better one step at a time. My booking agent has been great with working with me, but it’s just working with the logistics, finances, and time as a whole. At the time I’m writing this, I’m still recuperating from driving to Louisville, KY and back, we didn’t get home until 3am.

There’s also the fact that LSM is a bit of an odd duck in the music industry. I play accordion, sax, harmonica, guitar, and a few other odds and ends in a band that fuses Tejano, Cajun, Country, Blues, and Rock. Nashville doesn’t know what to do with us. Especially with how our record “From San Antone to Muscle Shoals” has songs in three languages (French, Spanish, and English). We don’t really fit into a neat little niche like Nashville wants. We’re full bore and freaky.

We still need to get a full-time gig vehicle. Hopefully we can get that soon. My car broke down last year near Christmastime due to all the wear and tear. Still working on that.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
As I said, I’m a musician in Los Swamp Monsters, a multi-genre Rock band that borrows influence from Tex-Mex, Blues, Zydeco, Country, Cajun, RnB and Swamp Pop, as well as the Regulators, a Blues-Rock band that borrows heavily from Canned Heat, ZZ Top, and Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Our most recent live bootleg, GUITARRA is on all streaming platforms now. You can find that and more at www.losswampmonsters.com

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.losswampmonsters.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/losswampmonstersofficial
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/losswampmonsters
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxnDyfqlypysbiaFor8kzjrZTN9lS41l3

Image Credits
All photos to their respective owners.