Ben Trainor, a Union University alumnus, performed his newest album “Rare as Silence” on Oct. 21 at Turntable Coffee Counter in downtown Jackson.
Turntable is a hole in the wall coffeeshop mostly populated by Union students migrating from the monotony of daily student life. The store stayed open past regular hours for the concert and kept their coffee bar open for those interested. Trainor performed songs from his new album “Rare As Silence” with a live band consisting of friends and his wife. Trainor’s newest album released a few weeks ago, and friends and family came to support him and his music. The event was an intergenerational get together with people of all ages attending.
“The story of this album is the story of every album I write,” Trainor said. “Which is, I sit down with the guitar a couple times a week maybe and more often than not I come up with something and save it to my voice memos.”
Trainor continued to describe his music.
“These are songs that are very meaningful to me,” he said. “And they have been driven by experiences over the past two years or so. The titles are usually from poems I’ve written, so it’s very personal.”
Emmaline Arehart, senior film studies major, attended the concert.
“I loved the music tonight, it kind of brings my college career and coffee shop music full circle,” Arehart said. “My freshman year Ben performed around a campfire behind the Bowld and so it’s really cool seeing him perform with a whole band now.”
Trainor is a composer, audio engineer, full stack web developer and has even created scores for Hub City Theatre Company and shorts films from Union’s very own Dr. Rachael Camp.
“My day job is that I’m a software developer and I really enjoy programming,” Trainor said. “But with all of my free time I’m either scoring some play or short film or writing ‘Paper Watch’ stuff.”
The new “Paper Watch” album “Rare As Silence” can be streamed on Spotify and Apple Music.
