This Former Physics Teacher Recorded an Album of Folky Songs Inspired by Sonar

Ben Labat is a singer-songwriter from Louisiana who once taught physics and fronted a rock band. Now he has released a new solo album called Echolocationism — his seventh studio record since 2006. The album is made up of quiet, personal folk-rock songs that he recorded mostly on his own, using an old acoustic guitar that once belonged to his grandfather. The title was inspired by echolocation, the sonar-like ability that dolphins use to find their way through the ocean.

Labat says that as music has leaned more and more on artificial intelligence and technology, he has felt pulled in the opposite direction. He wanted to strip things back to just his voice and an acoustic guitar. 'It felt good to just be me and an acoustic guitar,' he told Rolling Stone magazine. For him, keeping it simple was not a step backward — it was a creative choice.

The guitar he used is a Martin D-28 that his grandfather once owned. At some point, the guitar had been sold, but Labat tracked it down and bought it back. Once he had it in his hands again, he felt inspired to build an entire album around it. He started going through old songs that had never made it onto a full-band record, and slowly they all came together.

Labat wrote 10 of the 11 songs on the album himself. The only song he did not write is a cover of Harry Styles' hit 'Matilda,' which he included because it is his daughter's favorite song. The opening track, 'Set a New Course,' captures the album's main theme — finding your way when life does not go as planned. In that song, Labat sings, 'Life tuned me up and played me like a song / so I set a new course.'

He says the song is about all kinds of turning points — a new job, a new city, a new relationship, or becoming a parent. 'I'm trying to be a parent and explain that things are not always gonna go your way,' Labat said. 'You're gonna have to embrace the change, and sometimes, things are gonna happen and you won't be the same.' He wants listeners, especially younger ones, to understand that change can be hard but also valuable.

Labat's careful approach to recording goes back about 20 years, when his alt-rock band the Terms released their first album, Small Town Computer Crash, in 2006. That record was produced by the late Greg Ladanyi, a Grammy-winning producer who had worked with famous artists like Jackson Browne and Warren Zevon. Labat paid close attention to how Ladanyi worked — listening to recordings on many different devices and rehearsing songs until they were just right. Those habits have never left him.

Small Town Computer Crash earned a spot on the Billboard Heatseeker chart and helped the Terms land some TV appearances. But the band's run was cut short when Labat was in a car accident not long after the album came out. After spending a short time in New York trying to land a new record deal, he returned to Louisiana, started a family, and formed a new group called Ben Labat and the Happy Devil.

These days, Labat performs solo while also working a day job and coaching youth soccer. Earlier in his career, he tried writing songs aimed at radio hits and commercial success. He says he could do it, but it never felt natural to him. What he really wanted was to write songs about things that mattered to him — just like the dolphins that inspired his album title, he is trusting his instincts to guide him forward.