Ben Kweller Goes Country

He started out as a post-punk rocker in his teenage outfit Radish, before becoming a respected solo indie troubadour, and now Ben Kweller is shifting his own artistic landscape once again, releasing a country album, titled 'Changing Horses,' early next year.

The album was recorded in Austin, Texas, in 2007, but Kweller told Spinner he's been writing this album since he was a teen.

"The first song on this album that I wrote was 13 years ago," he says. "Once in a while I would write one that I would would fit good on [2002's] 'Sha-Sha' or [2004's] 'On My Way,' but a lot of these I would say, 'Man, these are so cool and so country that they just deserve to live alone on an album with other brothers and sisters.'"

The earliest cut, 'Ballad of Wendy Baker,' was written when Kweller was in high school and inspired by his friend who died in a car crash.

"Two days after she died, me and some friends went to this Chinese restaurant in my town and my fortune cookie said 'No one loves 'til it's gone,'" Kweller recalls. "So I went back home to my parents house, went up to my bedroom and sat on the bed and wrote this song for her, and one of the key lines was 'no one loves 'til it's gone.' It is a song that I was saving for a certain record ... and 'Changing Horses' was the right album."

Though plenty of Kweller fans had a chance to sample some of the new tunes during his recent tour, as well as with the release of EP 'How Ya Lookin' Southbound? Come In...,' for those who haven't, Kweller isn't worried about the reaction.

"As far as what the audience thinks, that's not really what I'm concerned with," he says. "I just have to make music because it's the only thing I have in my life, other than my son and my wife, that makes me happy. This is my art and I have to do it the way that I want to do it, because at the end of the day, I'm the one that has to live with it."