Benjamin Schultz Reimagines Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song”

Photo: Courtesy of Benjamin Schultz

Benjamin Schultz, the multi-instrumentalist, producer, and rock and roll lifer who jammed with Jimi Hendrix at 17 and produced Buddy Miles at the height of his powers, returns with one of the most ambitious recordings of his career: a cinematic reinterpretation of Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song” featuring powerhouse vocalist Bekka Bramlett.

A producer, engineer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist whose career spans more than five decades of American rock music, Schultz has worked alongside artists including Robert Plant, George Harrison, Buddy Miles, Stephen Stills, Rod Stewart, Johnny Winter, and B.B. King while quietly building a reputation as one of the industry’s most versatile studio craftsmen. A true Swiss Army knife of rock and roll.

The recording does not attempt to replicate the original. Instead, it expands it into something darker, more spacious, and deeply human, shaped by decades of lived musical experience.

“When I decided to cover Led Zeppelin’s ‘The Rain Song,’ I always felt it was meant to be the follow-up to ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” Schultz says. “So I approached it the way I always imagined it should have sounded. Then Bekka Bramlett came into the picture and took it to an entirely different level. When she added her background vocals to this track, suddenly it became something else – Zeppelin with layered harmonies and a darker, emotional feel. We ended up creating a version that feels completely our own while still honoring the spirit of the original.”

Listen to “The Rain Song” here: https://open.spotify.com/track/7CXW4lZqlSv6dB229BhiYB

Bramlett brings a lineage steeped in rock and soul history. The daughter of Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, she grew up surrounded by artists including George Harrison and Eric Clapton before beginning her professional career as a child. Over the years, she has performed with Robert Plant, Billy Joel, Vince Gill, Faith Hill, Buddy Guy, and Dwight Yoakam, and from 1993 to 1995, she was a member of Fleetwood Mac during Stevie Nicks’ departure from the group.

On “The Rain Song,” Bramlett’s voice becomes the emotional center of the recording, shifting between strength and vulnerability with a lived-in depth that reshapes the song’s original atmosphere.

“I sent Bekka the track with no direction because I already knew she was the perfect voice for it,” Schultz says. “Three days later, she delivered far more than I could have hoped for. The lead vocals were perfect."

For the recording, Schultz handles guitars, bass, production, engineering, mixing, mastering, and live drum editing and programming, continuing the multi-instrumental, full-spectrum studio approach that has defined his career. Bramlett provides lead vocals and vocal production on both “The Rain Song” and another forthcoming single, “It Hurts Me Too,” featuring the late Mike Finnigan and slated for release next month, while Patrick Caccia performs live drums, giving the track an organic rhythmic foundation beneath its layered production.

The release represents more than a reinterpretation of a classic to Schultz. It reflects a lifetime spent absorbing music from every angle.

Schultz first met Bramlett through her mother, legendary singer Bonnie Bramlett, during the late 1970s while moving through the same Los Angeles music circles surrounding Stephen Stills, Tim Bogert, and the Hollywood Roxy Theatre scene. Years later, their paths would continue crossing through studio sessions and recording projects.

“I was opening for Stephen Stills at the Roxy for three nights with my band Pipedream featuring Tim Bogert,” Schultz recalls. “I had already been spending a lot of time around Stephen and recording with him when I first met Bonnie at a holiday dinner at Stephen’s house. Bonnie brought Bekka to one of the Roxy shows. At the time, she was only 12 years old.” Years later, while he was working with Rick Knowles recording projects involving The Graces, Gregg Alexander, and Belinda Carlisle at Cherokee Studios, Bekka was working there behind the desk. “We kept crossing paths through the years until we eventually reconnected in Nashville.”

Born in New York City and raised in St. Petersburg, Florida, Schultz showed signs of musical fixation almost immediately. He was experimenting with rhythm on household objects and piano before the age of three. By five he had taken up trumpet. By seven he was playing guitar and performing in school ensembles. By thirteen he held a union card and was already working professionally.

By his teenage years, Schultz had already found himself in rooms that most musicians only read about. One of the most enduring memories came during a live performance when B.B. King placed his guitar Lucille into Schultz’s hands in front of an audience and told him, “I’m gonna hand this young man Lucille and go get a scotch and soda.” Schultz was seventeen.

After studying at Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory under pioneering jazz theorist George Russell, Schultz moved into the world of elite recording studios. At the legendary 3rd Street Record Plant in Los Angeles, he trained under engineers Gary Kellgren, Jack Douglas, Lee DeCarlo, and Michael Braunstein. He credits Kellgren and producer Keith Olsen as formative mentors in shaping his understanding of the studio as an instrument.

One of his most significant collaborations came with Buddy Miles, the drummer and vocalist known for his work with Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. Schultz produced, engineered, composed, and performed extensively on Miles’ mid-1970s albums More Miles Per Gallon and Bicentennial Gathering of the Tribes, projects that blended rock, funk, soul, and psychedelia into a singular creative statement.

“Buddy used to tell me, ‘I don’t want to hear it. I want to feel it,’” Schultz recalls.

One late night during Schultz’s early Los Angeles years while working alongside Buddy Miles, he found himself in the middle of the kind of rock and roll moment that now feels almost mythological. Staying in a Bel Air home regularly filled with musicians after long nights at the Rainbow Room, Schultz recalls an evening when Gregg Allman unexpectedly needed a place to land after an argument with Cher.

“So Buddy and I went and picked him up,” Schultz says. “The rest of the night until sunrise, Gregg and me passed my acoustic guitar back and forth while he and Buddy sang the blues. Man, I wish I had a tape recorder. The memory still serves though. What a night.”

In the mid-1990s, Schultz joined Ray Brinker, Jon Butcher, and Leland Sklar in Barefoot Servants, scoring a Top 5 single with “Box of Miracles” and completing a 69-city U.S. tour in just 90 days. Earlier in his career, his band The Original Wizard became a regional force in Florida, opening for Iron Butterfly, Chicago, Mountain, Rod Stewart, and The Allman Brothers Band, and performing at the legendary Goose Lake Pop Festival before an estimated crowd of more than 600,000 people.

Despite the breadth of his experience, Schultz remains focused less on legacy than on process.

“Everyone talks about those 10,000 hours, but it takes a lifetime to become you,” he says. “For me, the arbitrary Outliers figure of 10,000 just scratches the surface of becoming a pro. It’s a lifelong education from where you started on your journey to get to where you are in any stage of the game.”

That philosophy runs through every moment of “The Rain Song.” It is not simply a cover of a classic. It is a lifetime of music, memory, and musicianship refracted through a single composition.

Benjamin Schultz’s “The Rain Song” featuring Bekka Bramlett is available now on all streaming platforms.