BENJI HUGHES I was spinning my way through L.A. songstress Eleni Mandell’s new summer-rific record, I Can See the Future, the other day when, right there on track seven, plain as day, I heard the familiar husky voice of the locally based gentlemen whose Snug Harbor residency ends this evening. Mr. Hughes plays Lee Hazelwood to Ms. Mandell’s Nancy Sinatra on the rollicking Topanga Canyon twang track “Never Have to Fall In Love Again,” a “Me and Bobby McGee” love story, minus the harpoons. The song would fit snugly in Hughes’ own balladeering oeuvre, for, like Mandell’s songs, love, either coming or going, is always in the air in his narratives. Though his residency ends tonight, the good news is that there’s allegedly a follow-up to his 2008 album A Love Extreme somewhere in the pipeline. Of course, much of what Hughes does is shrouded in secrecy, wrapped in enigmas, sprinkled in spirits and often the stuff of myth-making. Still, here’s hoping..

John Schacht