[photo by Cass Blair]
Founding Lost Dog Street Band vocalist/guitarist BENJAMIN TOD issued his second solo album, A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find, through Anti-Corporate Music this week, where it debuted at #46 on the Billboard Country Album Sales Chart. This has transpired just six months after Lost Dog Street Band’s acclaimed Weight Of A Trigger LP rode the Billboard Bluegrass charts upon its release through the same label in March.
BENJAMIN TOD‘s A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find delivers ten bold, personal, heart-wrenching tracks of dark country/Americana recorded, mixed, and mastered by Dan Emery at Black Matter Mastering/Anti-Corp label headquarters. The album was completed with photos by Bradley Methe, Tim Duggan, and Matt Heckler, and layout and design by Cud Eastbound.
“This album is unlike my other albums in that every song is dedicated to someone,” TOD offers. “This album follows some of my deepest friendships and rawest emotional wounds. I am excited to get rid of it. Once it is released it’s no longer mine and that is the best feeling you get as a songwriter.”
Stream BENJAMIN TOD’s A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find LP in its entirety RIGHT HERE.
See the GemsOnVHS video for the album’s “We Ain’t Even Kin” HERE and watch for an official video from the LP to be released in the weeks ahead.
A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find is out now on CD, LP, and digital formats through Anti-Corporate Music, available at the label webstore HERE and Bandcamp HERE.
There are few people who can say they’ve lived as much in one lifetime as songwriter BENJAMIN TOD. His music is an honest account and true testament to a life lived in grit, adversity, and rebellion. His upcoming solo album, A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find is another work that wouldn’t be out of place alongside the collections of the great American songwriters that inspired his sound in the first place.
With a mix of new original songs, all of which feature his trademark lonesome sound, he manages to keep things from stagnating by including unexpected new arrangements of familiar Lost Dog Street Band songs. With the release of this album and albums like I Will Rise,” and his countless other projects, BENJAMIN TOD has proven himself to be more than just another troubadour, tramp, or outlaw. He is one of the great American songwriters of our time.
“Every track is a gem in its own way. Having been familiar with Lost Dog Street Band, I expected to like A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find. I just didn’t know that it would affect me as deeply as it has. If there is still justice in this tired and jaded world, BENJAMIN TOD‘s new album should top every Americana album of the year list. It’s something very special.” – Americana Highways
“…a devastatingly stark tune… TOD‘s clarity and honesty in the vocal performance is heart-stopping, not dissimilar to John Moreland’s ability to speak previously unspoken truths sans hyperbole. If, as late Morphine frontman Mark Sandman once sang, a day comes when there is a cure for pain, ‘Saguaro’s Flower’ may be a premonition of that moment, a way to stave off the ghosts that haunt the heart as the embers of ache flicker for the last time and remind us of what once was..” – PopMatters on the track “Saguaro’s Flower”
“The quiet Americana ballads on A Heart Of Gold Is Hard To Find, just vocals and acoustic guitar, are full of regret, melancholy, and at times self-loathing. His lyrics have an easy cleverness about them…” – Alternative Control
http://www.benjamintodmusic.com
https://www.instagram.com/benjamintodmusic
https://www.facebook.com/benjamintodmusic
http://anticorporatemusic.com
http://facebook.com/anticorpmusic