Ben Boye is a Chicago-based multi-instrumentalist who has worked with many jazz, indie rock, and folk musicians. He has added pianos, synthesizers, pump organs, and occasionally autoharp, to recordings for artists as wide-ranging as outsider folkie
Bonnie "Prince" Billy and garage iconoclast
Ty Segall.
Early in his run,
Boye was featured on a track on glitch-folk artist
Khonnor's 2004 debut,
Handwriting, but he became far more prolific during the 2010s, appearing on several albums by
Bonnie "Prince" Billy,
the Cairo Gang, and
Ryley Walker. He also played autoharp in
Joshua Abrams' improvisatory ensemble
Natural Information Society. In 2016, he appeared on guitar legend
Harvey Mandel's album
Snake Pit. He also participated in Chivalrous Amoekons, an indie folk supergroup (including
Will Oldham,
Angel Olsen, and
the Cairo Gang's
Emmett Kelly) that performed covers of songs by
the Mekons.
Boye played piano on
Ty Segall's eponymous 2017 full-length. At
Will Oldham's recommendation, he collaborated with
Mark Kozelek, first on
Jesu and
Sun Kil Moon's 2017 album 30 Seconds to the Decline of Planet Earth. Later in the year,
Boye and
Kozelek recorded an album with
Dirty Three drummer
Jim White. Three years later the trio returned with a second volume of their collaborations, aptly titled Mark Kozelek with Ben Boye and Jim White 2. ~ Paul Simpson