Ben Crum — the mind behind Great Lakes — cut his teeth in the swirling psych-pop of Athens, Georgia in the mid-’90s. Co-founded with Dan Donahue and Jamey Huggins, Great Lakes emerged amid Elephant Six noise and kaleidoscopic musical offer. But Crum’s ambition wasn’t just to make pretty fuzzy pop — he wanted to channel longing, memory, and the ache of rootedness in motion. Over the years, he traded lo-fi 8-track experiments for smoky, pedal-steel-drenched Americana; his voice, once airy, gained a weight that felt like confession. For Crum, each album is a chapter in a quietly epic journey: 2000’s Great Lakes is an earnest debut, scribbled in a home studio, brimming with youthful hope. By 2002’s The Distance Between, he’d sharpened his sense of space and melancholy. Diamond Times (2006) sees him embracing more control and turning inward, while Ways of Escape (2010) marks a turning point — this is Crum alone at the wheel, writing deeply personal folk-rock with support from a loyal band of travelers. Wild Vision (2016) is probably his creative peak: country-noir textures, vintage harmonies, and singing that runs like a slow river. In Dreaming Too Close to the Edge (2018), Crum confronts fear, regret, and the illusion of second chances, blending raw indie rock with the ghosts of classic songwriters. Then came Contenders (2022), a testament to tireless persistence and quiet wisdom. His latest, Don’t Swim Too Close, released via HHBTM Records on November 7th 2025, drifts in bruised but hopeful — a meditation on mental health, the pull of risk, and the poetic gravity of home.

What He Says: “Don’t Swim Too Close is the first single and title track from my new Great Lakes album. I wrote it while recovering from a severe concussion that left me depressed and questioning my future. I honestly didn’t know if I was going to come back from it, and it scared me. Luckily, I did get better, and the song ended up being an ironically uplifting country/rock toe-tapper; with heavy lyrics (“I was feeling hopeless, but also helpless and alone / and more than a little dangerous to my soul”) set to a groove reminiscent of Doug Sahm, Jerry Jeff Walker, or CCR. The recording benefits from the playing of a group of legit heavies: Sam Cohen (Kevin Morby) on drums, James Richardson (MGMT) on guitar, David Gould (Cardinal) on bass, and Kyle Forester (Woods) on keyboards.“

“I wrote Carry the Message as a quiet, idiosyncratic tribute to David Berman’s last known words. Like so many fans, I was shaken by his suicide, and those words stuck with me. The lyrics came on a day when I’d gone to a Christmas party at Kyle Forester’s house in Kingston. We sang carols around the piano. I remember singing Blue Christmas, but the singalong to Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You was the highlight. That same morning Creem had published an article about Berman’s final days. Jeremy Earl, who co-produced the Purple Mountains record, was at the party, and we talked about the piece. We were both struck by the poignancy of Berman’s parting phrase: “carry the message.” I went home and wrote from a fictionalized perspective, trying to imagine what Berman might have been feeling. The music took shape over the next couple of months. My guitar part, I thought, leaned toward Tom Verlaine. Sam Cohen, who mixed the record, heard Dickey Betts instead—a mismatch that felt oddly right, given my own path as a southern transplant to New York. For the recording, James Richardson added a guitar that gave the song a new dimension, Kyle Forester played the lovely piano, Kevin Shea played drums, and Suzanne Nienaber sang alongside me.”

“I wrote Like An Open Grave as a reflection on regret and the creeping anxiety that hit me in my late 40’s and early 50’s: ‘The future’s out there, waiting like an open grave.’ I’ve never believed it when people claim to live without regrets — it always strikes me as too fervent a denial, like Shakespeare’s The lady doth protest too much. Lyrically, this song focuses on how I’d rather be honest: “I only tell the truth, that way I don’t have to keep track of lies” and admit vulnerability: “I don’t know what I don’t know and it scares me as it’s passing me by.” Over the many years I’ve spent playing in bands, I’ve come to see being ‘out beyond the notes’ as the ideal musical experience–a state where you’re improvising within parameters, not thinking about scales, hand positions, or chord changes. You’re just existing in pure music. It’s rare and fleeting, but when it happens, and you’re able to get past all the little frustrations, annoyances, and inter-personal tensions of being in a band, it feels transcendent. This song puts that idea alongside another: ‘I’d be out beyond the notes if not for the pain / but modern American life’s such a sham, does it matter, anyway?‘ America, both as a concept and in practical reality, feels like a big, empty lie – government, religion, business – it’s all a ripoff. My reaction to that disillusionment, in the form of this song, aims to balance playfulness and defiance: ‘When I fade away I’m gonna ride my skateboard across the astral plane.'”

His Mixtape: “It’s a bad time for America. I disagree with what the current administration is doing and stands for, and as such, the idea of America—its identity and meaning—has been steadily on my mind of late. Releasing music at a time like this feels a bit like fiddling while Rome burns. While my new Great Lakes album, Don’t Swim Too Close, is personal, idiosyncratic, and inward-focused, once it was finished and sequenced, it dawned on me that it’s also a slow-burning commentary on the theme of what America is and means. More pointedly, it’s about how America is a sham, a lie, and a ripoff—how those of us born here are “Americans” only by accident of birth. I think it’s past time we start thinking of borders as nothing more than lines on a map, though it feels like we’re moving in the opposite direction. I’m deeply worried about this turn away from freedom and democracy. I’d love to say I trust that we’ll right the ship, so to speak, but I’m not optimistic. From a place of genuine worry and concern comes this mixtape. These are songs that have not only been important to me over the years, but have also served as mentor texts in the study of my craft.” (Ben Crum, Red Hook, NY, U.S.A.)

Bill Callahan – America!

Callahan said he wrote this in a hotel room in Australia. I love his reference to “Captain Kristofferson, Buck Sergeant Newbury, Leatherneck Jones…”

The Felice Brothers – Jack Reminiscing

These guys are from Palenville, NY—a town I’ve had some great times in and still live close to. The song moves from NYC, the place I’ve lived longer than anywhere else, to Arkansas, where my dad was from and where I spent a lot of time as a kid. I find it musically infectious and lyrically arresting.

The Walkmen – Louisiana

This song’s evocative lyrics, horns, piano glissandos, and Steve Cropper-style guitar licks are inextricably linked in my mind to the experience of packing up a house full of a life’s worth of belongings—going through that process where you handle every item you own and ride the waves of memories that surface. While it certainly makes me think of New Orleans (arguably the best place in the USA), Louisiana served, for me, as a soundtrack to leaving one place for another. So many states.

  

Silver Jews – Tennessee

This song by the late, great David Berman is a favorite of mine. I love the reference to a great American composer—“her doorbell plays a bar of Stephen Foster.” For some reason, I feel like that detail might be taken from real life. If it is, my guess is the doorbell in question played the bit of Oh! Susanna that goes under the “I come from Alabama with a banjo on my knee” lyric.

Michael Holland – Heartless People

This song feels especially applicable to our American moment: “The air we breathe, land and sea / ruled by heartless people.” Dean Wareham did a great cover of it.

Leon Bridges & Khruangbin – Texas Sun

My idiosyncratic reaction to this song is a mental trip to the epic pool at Balmorhea State Park in West Texas. It’s hard to explain what that part of Texas feels like to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

 

Nana Grizol – South Somewhere Else

This song, by Theo Hilton, is—so far as I can tell—about growing up as the son of college professors at the University of Georgia in Athens. It’s a funny place: not quite cosmopolitan, but open-minded, at least. In reality, it’s a little island in the midst of a cultural hellscape. I find the weight of that surrounding culture crushing to the human spirit, though I’m a product of it in many ways.

The Magnetic Fields – Grand Canyon

What’s more American than the Grand Canyon? Or Paul Bunyan? In this song, Stephen Merritt uses two classic American tropes to express his protagonist’s feelings of smallness.

Mercury Rev – Opus 40

This is a song by one of my all-time favorite bands, who happen to be from my adopted part of America. I’ve learned I prefer looking at the Catskills across the river to living in them. But I love the way Mercury Rev takes the quintessentially North American sound of The Band and gives it their trademark epic bombast.

Wilco – Ashes of American Flags

Jeff Tweedy sings, “I would like to salute the ashes of American flags.” I both know exactly what he means and have no idea what he means. I think of this song as a collection of disparate musings with a mildly deconstructed, postmodernist arrangement. I don’t know how much or little Jim O’Rourke changed the identity of this album, but it remains a modern classic.

Father John Misty – Bored in the USA

“Can I get my money back?” Tillman sings. His Letterman moment was over a decade ago, but given where things have gone since, I think maybe he was a decade too soon with this masterwork.

The Album:

“Over 25 years and eight records, Crum has built a reputation for sharp songwriting and interesting stylistic shifts. Don’t Swim Too Close is no exception, as Crum draws from a classic rock tradition, echoing both the Americana spirit of Neil Young and The Band and the proto-indie rock of Television and the Velvet Underground. Immediately accessible, its songs land with the ease of lived-in classics. Themes of empathy and regret (Carry the Message), mental health struggles (Don’t Swim Too Close), disillusionment (Meant to Fly), and the lone journey of the writer (On the Way Back) weave through the record. But this isn’t a bleak listen. Crum’s dry, gallows humor bubbles up throughout, balancing heaviness with wit. He’s the kind of writer who can sing, “the future’s out there, waiting like an open grave,” and leave you smirking instead of sinking—or deadpan, “there’s nothing sexy about Spread Eagle, Wisconsin, or Tightsqueeze, Virginia.” The characters in Crum’s songs are soul-searching, making for a compelling and thought-provoking listen. But there’s tenderness too: Seeing Through Her is a love song without pretense, while Song for the Old Man pays moving tribute to Crum’s late father. The closing track, Are We Here Accidentally, takes on existential purpose—or the lack thereof—in the face of life’s mundane demands: “there’s always someone on the phone / always someone we’re supposed to owe / well, I guess, if you say so.” Don’t Swim Too Close is that rare record that blends superb lyrics with the subtle smoke of melody, and delivers it all in an instantly enjoyable format. For Don’t Swim Too Close, Great Lakes are: Ben Crum (vocals, guitar, bass), Kevin Shea (drums), Kyle Forester (piano, organ), Sam Cohen (drums, guitar, pedal steel), James Richardson (guitar, bass, organ), David Gould (bass), San Fadyl (drums), and Suzanne Nienaber (vocals).”

Don’t Swim Too Close is out now via HHBTM Records. Look HERE for more information on Great Lakes.