Benjamin Waumett
1982 – 2024
By Victor Waumett
Our beautiful son, Benjamin Wuamett, passed on Oct. 26, 2024 just at the start of night. He would have been forty-three years old in December.
There’s a Memorial singalong January 24 at Mississippi Studios, Portland, Ore.
Ben, with the help of his band, Ezra Bell, was the most listened to Subud musician since The Byrds. Listeners on Spotify approach seventy million, plus Apple and other music platforms.
He left us far too soon (from my point of view). But looking back, it wasn’t surprising.
He always wrote about death—and drinking. From one of his first songs:
Let us take the kids to the graveyard
Let them see what’s pushing the stems
Try to be as quiet as they are
Try to think of death as your friend
And…
I go down to the bar to give away my cigarettes,
I go down to the bar to sit and wait for death
But I can’t wait forever with the breezes and the bums
Soldiers came to shoot us down, but Jesus jammed the guns
Pretty literate for a guy who didn’t have a high school diploma. He didn’t start reading books until he was in jail for six months, with nothing else to do.
He didn’t start out trying to be a songwriter. He wanted to be a gangster, but that didn’t work out. Ruslan and Ben’s brother Andrew helped him escape to Europe for a couple of years.
When he came back, he was focused on music. He taught himself to play the guitar, taught himself to sing, taught himself to write songs, forced himself to perform until he was good at it . . . great at it, actually.
Ben moved to Portland, built bands, first Palace Fiction, and then Ezra Bell. They played Portland clubs, the Doug Fir, and Mississippi Studios. They toured the country, played LA, Denver, Memphis, Asheville, New York, Chicago, Seattle…
Ezra Bell launched a nationwide tour at the end of February 2020. Five days into the tour, it was cancelled by Covid, as well as everything else. His disappointment got covered by drinking. Ben sang about drinking a lot.
You just fell asleep right on the floor,
Asleep with all your clothes right on the floor
That’s not how I want my life to be,
Never ever seemed like much of a life to me.
And still, about death:
We cold-called our mothers,
While we waited for the train
All save Cleveland, he sat silent
No cell service from the grave
Ben passed in Salt Lake City, in the midst of negotiations for the band’s best record deal ever. They were to tour the West in late October, then DC, New York and Boston in November.
He loved the Latihan. He said it gave him some of the only peace he ever knew. When I was flying to him, knowing he was dying, I asked (prayed) for Lilijana to come and help him cross over, and she came, but was quickly overshadowed by Bapak, totally in charge, his presence saying to me, “I got this.”
Ben’s story did not end there. The record contract has been signed. There’s enough unreleased music for two more albums. There’s talk of a documentary about his life. Fans still play his songs as the “first dance” at weddings.
We debated about who was the best writer-him or me. You decide. This was one of my favorite verses of his:
Come and push me on the rope swing, darling,
Like back when we were friends.
There was nothing underneath me
And I had the whole sky overhead.
And here’s the last thing I have that he wrote:
Off into the great unknown
They shan’t cast my mistakes in stone
Every place here is home
And every single seat a throne
I’ll tell the truth in case you don’t
I will tell the truth.
Farewell, Ben. May flights of angels wing thee to thy rest.
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