Bio
Singer/songwriter Ben Stein founded Queen Cabbage in late 2017 at SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music; The Queen has since recorded prolifically, played various venues around the New York City area, and busked around the nation, including stops in San Diego, Austin, and Asheville.
Queen Cabbage’s music is difficult to classify, owing mostly to the fact that within the space of one song may arise elements from 1960s folk revival and blues-rock, 1970s arena rock, 1950s outlaw country, lo-fi indie folk, 1920s New Orleans street jazz, and Romantic-era classics.
As a result, the Queen’s music has been compared to Neutral Milk Hotel and Bright Eyes in the same breath as Chicago and The Beatles. AJJ and Say Anything come to mind when their misanthropic side comes to light. Really, it’s anyone’s guess, and it's difficult to guess incorrectly—no matter what comes to mind when you listen, their music is worth the attention it demands.
The Queen released a duo of lo-fi EPs, On the Shortness of Breath and On the Shortness of Life, between April and May of 2018. Their debut full-band LP, An Idiot, Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing, followed in September 2018. Their single Pallid Blue Gown was released in December 2018, followed by their second LP, Hide and/or Seek in April 2019.
Their latest release, the brief but electrifying In This Mist at All Adventures Go, was released on April 17, 2020.
Lore
Queen Cabbage was born into the royal family of the Lettuce Kingdom, during the age of delectable and delicate "bibb" lettuce. The subjects of the Lettuce Kingdom experienced delicious flavors and scintillating textures, but eventually became gravely malnourished and entered a period of extreme poverty. The water-hungry, climate-dependent, nutritionally scant product the kingdom had been built upon was failing them in unforeseen but truly tragic ways.
During this period, Princess Lettuce desperately began to search for a hardy, nutritionally dense crop to supplant the lettuce. It was after this search that the Princess became Princess Cabbage, and then—upon King Lettuce's demise—Queen Cabbage.
Munching on the hearty new crop of choice, the subjects of the Cabbage Queendom soon transformed into the rosy-cheeked, industrious spirits that they had always known they could be. Cabbage cost them next to nothing to grow, and it fed everyone. It was only then, with full stomachs and quickly filling hearts, that the subjects could seek their individual voices and truths.
The Queen, relieved of sustenance-seeking efforts, now croons and screams as seems fit to express these voices and truths. The people of the Cabbage Queendom have amassed near-canonical bodies of philosophy and literature, denouncing excess and lifting up justice and peace unlike any nation the modern world has seen yet. Through the Queen, Cabbage Queendom subjects voice their perspectives to this exhausted rock of a planet.