Down on Midnight Hill: Musician Ben McLaughlin on His Debut Solo Album and a Place Within Us All
- Ripley Scott
- Sep 19
- 6 min read
I’d known Ben McLaughlin’s name long before we ever met, usually hearing it paired with his partner, Care, and their collaborative project, Red Moon Sessions.
About a year ago, my friends Mike, William and Adam, the trio behind local band Horcerer, told me about an interview and live session they recorded in Ben and Care’s basement. After watching their episode, I started streaming the full catalog of Red Moon's videos.
I was hooked.
Red Moon Sessions isn’t just a performance; it reveals the people behind the music. It’s connection you can feel, and right now, that kind of connection is more vital than ever.
I knew I had to meet the folks behind the project, so I reached out.
I first met Ben on a Saturday morning late last fall. We’d planned to explore Retrospect’s outdoor vintage market, but the weather was less than cooperative, so we ducked into a nearby coffee shop instead.
I showed up buzzing with an excited energy and full of questions and ideas. But after a couple of hours, as I started gathering my things to leave, a familiar shadow voice crept in, and I wondered if I’d come on too strong.
Before it could take hold, Ben looked at me and said, “You have such a bright aura.”
He said it with a soft, offhand sincerity that nearly broke open my typically rebellious tear ducts.
In that moment, I understood what people meant when they talked about Ben’s inherent magic. He didn’t even realize he was doing it, but he interrupted a spiral and gave me the motivation I needed to learn to interrupt it too.
Ben McLaughlin seems to carry a well of authentic goodness around inside him. He doesn’t say words to flatter. He means them. And he offers that kind of warmth like it’s the most natural thing in the world, without calling attention to it.
So it makes sense that Midnight Hill, Ben’s first solo album, doesn’t land like a performance. It’s more like driving home after a long trip and finally pulling into your driveway at dusk, seeing the light you left on glowing in the window.
“Midnight Hill is a place,” Ben told me, as I sat on the floor of that cozy basement I’d only ever seen on a screen until then.
“It’s the place where I went to grab my inner child, to break down and cry over that thing I’d experienced seven years ago. A place of reflection, a place of feeling, a place of sorting … appropriately. A place of refuge.”
But this refuge isn’t sanitized. It doesn’t ask you to come in with clean hands and healed wounds. It meets you right where you are and lets the feelings show up how they want to.
Ben recorded most of the album in the home he shares with Care, in the same basement where Red Moon Sessions films. It’s also where he meditates, plays guitar, rehearses with bands and mixes sound.
I asked Ben what the process of creating the album was like. He said the songs came quickly, but the record took five years.
There’s something kind of sacred in that—that space between writing something and feeling ready to share it.
He told me the songs came through naturally, often in meditation, sometimes in dreams, and then just stayed with him for a while. The recording came later. Slower. Heavier. Unrushed.
Care, Ben’s partner and longtime creative collaborator, told me: “I don’t think I can remember a day in the last five years that Ben hasn’t meditated. His relationship with the ethers is something I will forever love about him, and something that I can say with deep certainty was the foundation of Midnight Hill.
“Most of these songs are direct reflections of the synergy between his difficult experiences in his human body and the neutrality and acceptance of those same experiences on a soul level.”
Ben studied music in New Orleans. That’s where he met Care. Most people in the Knoxville music scene know him as a drummer, playing with acts such as Cruz Contreras and The Black Lillies and Sarrenna. But he actually sees himself as a guitarist first, and that becomes obvious the moment you watch him play.
At the Midnight Hill release show at Pilot Light, I was floored.
Ben was barefoot onstage. (I don’t think I’ve ever seen him not barefoot and completely grounded in the moment.)
And the way he and fellow guitarist Jake Smith, one of Ben’s closest friends, moved through each track together, it was like they were sharing one nervous system. They weren’t just playing. They were channeling.
“Ben’s music, and this new album Midnight Hill, is a true expression of his inner self,” Jake told me. “Not just what he sounds like, but what he feels like. It’s an honest invitation to go there with him.”
That invitation, into rawness, into realness, is what gives Midnight Hill its weight.
It doesn’t push you to process. It doesn’t try to fix you. It just sits beside you and says, “Yeah. This is a lot. And I’m here.”
Knoxville musician Travis Bigwood put it like this:
“In just five years, Ben has truly woven himself into the Knoxville music scene. His ability to genuinely be present is a rare and sincere quality, one that shines through both in his approach to music and in everyday interactions. Live shows overflow with emotion and guitar solos, each tune reminding us it’s okay to open up and connect.”
That’s what hums underneath these tracks.
Not flash. Not polish. Just care. The kind that lets stillness carry weight. The kind that says, “You’re not alone.”
If anyone gets the depth of Ben’s creative spirit, it’s his friend and fellow musician Kelsi Walker, who knows him both as a performer and an audio engineer.
“Ben is great at everything he touches, and people hire him because of that,” she said. “But it’s what he does in his spare time, the work he chooses to make, that really shows you who he is.”
Ben served as the sound engineer for Kelsi’s new album, Here and Here Before, which dropped shortly after Midnight Hill.
“For years, Ben’s been making the record he was born to create, like a love letter to being human,” she told me.
“He’s at his best when he’s playing guitar and letting the spirit come through. And that’s what Midnight Hill is.”
This year, Knoxville has known real loss.
Jonathan Keeney. Mike Adams. Names that weren’t just names; they were presences. They were part of the fabric.
Mike’s laugh outside Pilot Light felt like sitting beside your grandparents’ fireplace. Safe. Warm. Without effort and without pretense.
In a year like this, when grief is still echoing through venues, porches and parking lots, Midnight Hill doesn’t land like a release. It lands like a hand on your back in the dark. Quiet. Steady. Letting you know you don’t have to walk it alone.
I asked Ben if there was anything he’d want to offer to the community right now. Something to hold onto.
“I think it’s important to remember that we find ourselves in Knoxville for a reason,” he said. “The universe could not exist without your place in it. Everybody is always doing their roles, and when they step out of those roles and just are, that’s where love grows. That’s how we survive the fuckiness.”
This made sense to me in a fundamental way, but one that I'd somehow missed. When we stop gripping so hard to the jobs, labels and instruments we hide behind, there’s room for the actual human to show up.
And the love that comes from that place is the kind that lasts.
“There are ripples in life. But beneath all that, it’s water. It’s perfect.”
Ben said that too.
And it reminded me of something Pema Chödrön once wrote; that in times of hardship, instead of climbing the mountain, we must soften and descend to its base. To the water. To the beginning. To the part of ourselves we thought was lost but was only waiting for us to stop thrashing.
Midnight Hill is like that. A quiet walk back to what’s always been inside us.
The part we think grief takes away, but it doesn’t. That part’s still there. It always was.
“Probably similarly to the way I walk in the woods,” Ben said, when I asked about his life philosophy. “Quietly and gently. But every step is important.”
That’s how his album moves too. Quiet. Gentle. But it means every note.
And maybe the most hopeful part is this: the core of us, the part that was never broken, never actually goes anywhere.
It’s always right below the surface, untouched. Just waiting for us to remember.
And when we’re ready, we don’t have to climb toward healing. We just have to walk. Gently, quietly and with purpose, down to Midnight Hill.
Shoes optional.
LISTEN / FOLLOW
Check out Midnight Hill on Bandcamp or listen on any major music streaming platform.
Follow Ben McLaughlin @mysticmarauding and Red Moon Sessions @redmoonsound on Instagram.
Subscribe to Red Moon Sessions on YouTube to watch full episodes featuring Horcerer, J Bu$h and other local artists.
Follow Knoxville Ooze contributor Ripley Scott @rip_rip_ripadelphia on Instagram.