Creativity Quote by Benmont Tench

“Another level” is musician shorthand for a private ladder: not fame, but seriousness. Benmont Tench isn’t name-dropping Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson to borrow their glow; he’s marking a threshold where a player’s instincts get audited in real time. In the studio-or onstage with figures like that-you don’t get to hide behind tasteful parts or polite professionalism. You’re exposed. The band has to lock, the song has to breathe, and the performance has to mean it.

The intent is both tribute and warning. Jennings and Nelson aren’t just “country legends”; they’re avatars of a particular ethic: anti-corporate grit, songwriter authority, and that outlaw-era refusal to sand down edges for radio. To work with them is to enter a culture where authenticity is policed not by press releases but by feel: pocket, phrasing, economy, nerve. Tench, as a revered sideman and keyboardist, understands that the highest compliment you can give a collaborator is that they raise your standards without speechifying. “Takes you up” implies they do it almost accidentally, by sheer force of musical gravity.

There’s also subtext about hierarchy in American music. Some artists function like institutions; being in their orbit turns your craft into a credential. The phrase nods to an informal apprenticeship system where reputation is built through proximity to uncompromising elders. Tench’s line captures the moment when collaboration stops being a gig and becomes a test of whether you can meet the song at full volume, emotionally and technically, with nowhere to retreat.