Bike riding musician and poet Ben Weaver coming to Velo Cult Thursday night

A bicycle has done much more than simply get musician Ben Weaver to his gigs; the act of pedaling has transformed his music and his mission.

Weaver, who’s set to perform Thursday night at Velo Cult, says something changed deep within him when he stopped touring in a car and started carrying his instruments in bags hooked onto his bike: “Instead of performing in traditional concert settings,” he wrote at BenWeaver.net, “I began building tours around natural spaces, specifically around water. I wanted to give back, build communities, and learn more from the people and places I visited.”

Weaver’s latest tour was a 1,400 mile circumnavigation of Lake Superior. On that ride he had a lot of time to contemplate water in its many forms. The result is his “Surrounding Water” tour which comes to Portland for one night only. At Velo Cult tomorrow, Weaver — who’s described as a musician, poet, letterpress printer and naturalist, — will blend his music and “poetic advocacy” with a talk moderated by bike industry veteran Kevin Murphy.

Weaver’s fully-loaded Salsa.
(Photo: Ben Weaver)

“We’re going to have a discussion about his mission as a musician on a bike,” Murphy shared with us via email yesterday. “His music is soulful and deep, perhaps as a result of his having lots of time to think it through and work it out along the highway, pedal stroke by pedal stroke.”

Weaver’s work is garnering attention in both the music and cycling press. Mojo Magazine referred to him as the “Hillbilly Leonard Cohen” and he’s the subject of a major feature story in the September issue of Bicycling Magazine.

Here’s an excerpt form that article written by Jonathan Miles:

Ben Weaver’s songs are not about cycling, or even traveling. They’re about the things most songs are about: love, or the lack thereof; the highs and lows of existence, and all their attendant mysteries. They’re gravelly, poetic, musically spare, often a little haunted. Their gritty moodiness stands in contrast to what cycling tends to evoke: sunshine, major chords, quick cadences. But then Weaver—whose thick build and scraggly beard give him the look of a 19th-century lumberjack—hews to few stereotypes of the modern cyclist. He has little interest in data points such as speed or mileage, he’s fond of the occasional cigarette, and his primary source of refueling is Little Debbie snack bars. Yet cycling has become as integral to his life as music is—especially since he joined the two pursuits three years ago.

Tomorrow night’s Velo Cult show is free and it starts at 7:00 pm.

After the show Weaver, 36, will pack up his notebooks and instruments and pedal north for shows in Seattle and Bellingham, Washington.

— Learn more at BenWeaver.net.