Blueberry Betty — 18 January 2023 on Rocket Shop Radio Hour

Blueberry Betty joined guest hosts DJ Dr. Jones and DJ Jolie on ‘Rocket Shop,’ Big Heavy World’s weekly local Vermont music radio hour on 105.9 FM The Radiator. Check out their newest release at joshmbens.bandcamp.com

On Wednesday, January 18th, hosts DJ Dr. Jones and DJ Jolie were joined by the band Blueberry Betty for an ebullient set of cheerful and heartfelt indie songs, written locally in Burlington, Vermont!

The band is the primary medium for the warm, quirky, and thoughtful original songs of Ben Schnier. These compositions are brought to life by a band of friends that has changed greatly over the years, featuring many familiar faces in the Burlington music scene. The current lineup features Drew, Danny, Castle, and Joey, in a rotating arrangement of instruments. During the set, they frequently traded spots with each other, playfully jumping into new roles and coloring the songs with a variety of sounds including drum kit, tambourine, harmonica, guitar, bass, banjo, and trumpet. The instrumentalists hail from all over the northeast, and have all found a musical community in Burlington — many of them are members of other notable local bands like H3adgear, Vega, and Danny and the Parts.

Blueberry Betty’s opening number, “Train Song,” exemplifies the playful sincerity found in much of their music. The song begins with a tinny, sunny solo guitar riff and, as everyone joins in, slowly ramps up to a celebratory and emotive crescendo. The style is eclectic, exhibiting notes of country, indie, pop, and rock, but somehow ultimately denying categorization in any one genre.

Another song played in Wednesday’s show, “My Mama Has a House Down in New Orleans,” features inventive vocal delivery, bloopy electronic keyboard, and overall funky, groovy accompaniment.

Although the songs are written by Ben, bringing them to life in a full-band setting is a thoroughly collaborative process. “Everyone adds something,” Ben said. This process itself unfolds in keeping with the eclectic and playful spirit of the group: “Sometimes I’ll get a voice memo with, like, a moving van backing up in the background, and you can hear people gossiping, and he’ll say, ‘I just wrote this song, do your worst with it,’” said Joey of the collaborative process.

“We can all tell that he has a whole song in his head, and we can even hear it, because he records a lot of them, so we hear what he’s bringing, but he really lets us do these exploratory types of additions…. The vibe is also very exploratory… you leave room for us to explore and be artsy,” Danny added.

Blueberry Betty has a show coming up at Radio Bean on February 25th. Beyond that, the band’s immediate future is refreshingly open-ended: “In the most ok way possible, our plans are nothing,” Ben said cheerfully.

You can find Blueberry Betty’s previously released work on Bandcamp, Spotify, and all other streaming platforms. There are also music videos to be found on Ben’s YouTube Ben's YouTube Channel, and his Instagram is a resource for news about upcoming shows and releases!

Text by Gideon Parker

Monochrome photo by James Lockridge