Sitting at a corner café table, Benjamin Tod’s eyes light up when asked what it’s like to finally embrace happiness and accept love. With a slight grin, he sips his coffee and leans back, one arm draped casually and comfortably over the chair.
“I’m kind of settling into my age, into allowing myself to be happy,” the 33-year-old says. “For years, I led myself and the people around me into a lot of unnecessary darkness. And now, I’ve learned how to give and receive affection — it’s helped heal a lot of parts of myself.”
Tod’s demeanor is a far cry from his usual stiff posture stance with arms folded, this permeating sense of trepidation and scrutiny for what trouble may be coming down the pike. The relaxed, calm aura is a sign of a human being who has overcome lifelong personal demons, one who has finally become liberated — not only in his personal life, but also his music.
“This latest record is so unusual for what I do,” Tod says. “It’s almost a spite album, to prove what I can do as a writer in whatever medium I step into.”
Titled Shooting Star, the album carves a fresh creative path for Tod, a storied singer-songwriter and frontman of Lost Dog Street Band. The self-proclaimed “proprietor of misery,” Tod finds himself transcending into a life of gratitude, patience, and stability.
“People evolve and change. You’re growing as a person,” Tod says. “If you want to get healthier, you have to start intentionally behaving like a healthy person. You have to look around you and adapt to those things — if you don’t change your identity, it’s hard to change yourself.”
For this latest solo endeavor, Tod tapped some of Nashville’s finest to conjure country gold. Shifting from his signature somber tone of struggle and survival, Tod and his coal fire throat radiate a feeling of clarity and new beginnings in the face of adversity. The result is this intrinsic, musical crossroads — more Hank Williams than Bob Wills, more Marty Stuart than George Jones.
“Most of my career has been laser-focused on poetic, piercing songwriting in mainly a folk tradition.” Tod says. “I wanted to prove to myself and the industry that I could write an elite country record with ease. Either way, if I didn’t accomplish that goal, I sure as hell came closer than anyone on pop country radio.”
The inspiration for the project struck in the summer of 2022, with Tod penning the opening track “I Ain’t The Man.” From there, it became this unrelenting, internal thirst for Tod to begin “imagining what all I could do within a genre slightly outside my comfort zone.”
With a thick thread of honkytonk woven into it, the album leaves fingerprints on seemingly every style of country, from outlaw to red dirt, folk to indie, the culmination of which being a happily welcomed challenge for Tod — the ethos of his life and career at this juncture howling loudly “obstacles are opportunities.”
Shooting Star is also a full-circle moment for Tod. Coming of age in Music City, he found himself squarely in the midst of rough-n-tumble Lower Broadway. Busking on street corners playing Woody Guthrie and Jim Ringer tunes for spare change. And getting kicked out of Robert’s Western World or Layla’s Honky Tonk “more times than most regulars had been before the age of 20.”
“Growing up on Lower Broad, the influences that I received kind of came later in life,” Tod says. “That sound was always on the tip of my tongue, but it wasn’t until about five or six years ago when I started getting back into my roots, really listening to country again and enjoying honkytonk — this record feels like a homecoming.”
Tod views Shooting Star as a rebuttal to the current state of affairs, for good or ill, of his native Nashville and of the music industry itself. The 10-song LP harkens to the golden era of country music. It’s taking “three chords and the truth” and actually holding yourself to those standards of vulnerability and authenticity.
“I want to make music that helps people on a personal basis, to work through their own trauma and problems, to better serve their families, themselves, and their communities,” Tod says. “As a society, we need to reform back to our spirit. And my intent is to direct people back to their spirit — mind, body, and soul.”
In reflection of the long, arduous road to where he firmly stands today, Tod acknowledges his whirlwind, volatile past. But, the troubadour does so with pure intent, pushing headlong into this unwritten chapter of possibility and purpose.
"Right now, I’m very excited for the future, and very thankful,” Tod says. “I’ve worked incredibly hard and made changes in my life — I’m becoming the person I’ve longed to become for years.”
