Banjo Ben Clark Interview

[Music] okay okay i am this is awesome so i i've i've been trying to uh make this happen for a while and tonight everything lined up and i'm i'm very happy tonight is going to be ben or banjo ben clark this this guy uh has a great life story uh he is uh an amazing musician um this guy plays guitar and banjo like it is nobody's business and i am from around a place where a lot of people can play the heck out of a guitar um he is a pilot he's an entrepreneur and he's a music educator and he has some great stories to tell so i'm just going to go ahead and bring him on um welcome banjo ben man ben how are you doing good it's great to be with you evan man i i have i've seriously i've been trying to get this to happen for a while and uh when we first set it up you know life happens things come and go and we've had to rearrange and all that but that's because you're a busy man and that's a good thing isn't it well this time of year yeah this is uh this is a busy time of year um it just it always kind of piles up toward the end and so i'm thankful for that uh especially these days and uh but i'm glad we could make this work and i'm excited to talk with you and your audience and hopefully we got some folks from from my audience and community coming over to check out what you do as well so so give us a little bit of background i kind of set this up a little bit of background you you did not start your career path in the direction of music it was something quite different what was what was that about sure man so i i did have a very unique uprising it's nothing that i did we just just was blessed to be in a very diverse um uh family a family that valued um the outdoors we lived on a farm a working farm um and then also paired with that was uh this heritage and legacy of music but particularly classical music and so from a young from a young age i played classical piano and was pretty rigidly trained on that okay and um and so you know i always saw piano and music as a discipline and uh something that i honestly i couldn't wait to quit doing whenever i was old enough to be able to quit um and so you know looking back on that i see that it was that discipline there that helped me later on in life but you know as far as i was um concerned when i graduated high school i was never going to touch a piano again and actually i didn't i went to several years in college without even touching a key on piano that was one of the biggest mistakes ever but i went to college to uh to try and be a veterinarian okay and i majored in pre-med and um through a wacky series of events i i ended up majoring in entomology which is like you do yeah i like like like you do and which is the study of insects and then i was going to texas a m and they had just started this new grad school program uh track that was uh forensic entomology and we won't get into all that either but i went that direction full blast and it was on track to be um the you know the youngest phd to graduate from that program or so i dreamed and but it was during that time that i started playing guitar in banjo and mandolin and i actually had one of my professors in my grad school program that that was nurturing me and that and helped me get my first man learned and we were having jams in the laboratory after we get done with our research and that i had no idea that that whole trajectory trajectory was beginning to form and um actually it just was a result of being completely burnt out in school like i said i was just running a gun and i was up midnight one night working on an insect physiology paper and the internet was still kind of new back this is you know 0102 but i've heard about this school out in west texas called south plains college that had a commercial music program where you could kind of major in banjo and bluegrass okay i thought really is that true so i searched it and i found out to be true so i uh sent a letter i think an actual letter um out there with a cd that i recorded um of a little instrumental that i'd written and said do you have any scholarship money for me because i'm broke and they wrote back and they said absolutely we'll we'll bring you on and so i walked away from a million plus dollar grad school fellowship and um and enrolled in junior college to study bluegrass and banjo and uh moved to nashville from there and many other things have happened since then but yeah find myself now running the website benjamin clark.com and um also working with just a wonderful um talented team of folks in my store and um just having a ball so and this is what i find i mean this is just the best thing so i i actually ran into ran into ben uh i want to say about seven or eight years ago um i was teaching myself guitar um or some different style of guitar i'm you know a rock guy and i was trying to learn some i i i guess you would call it tony rice style you know so i didn't know that at the time um you know i just knew it was this kind of didn't know the names i didn't know the people and so i found this video um and i'm gonna play it uh just to clip just a little bit of it and this is my introduction and the best thing about this is and this is what i love about this because i i've been watching your your your build and it's just been i mean inspiring so let me let me let me pull this up and i may mess this up because it's a youtube video and i'm going to try to make it to where there's no ads or anything like that so let me see let me see what i can do here hold on a second play let me just you know i can go without seeing myself again but it's such a great video because it's basically you i think it's in your bedroom or on the couch or something living room and it is just a webcam in you and you're playing the heck out of a guitar and uh it's just it's just awesome i i'll figure that out later but so tell me so from there you went to you actually got formalized started banjobinclark.com and your production and your videos went up tell me about that well sure well there's there's a big you know a lot of things that happen between uh that time at south plains college and the website um you know we can go back and talk about any of that that you that you want but i spent quite a few years on the road and just blessed to play with uh literally the the biggest artists in the world and got to see the world and and uh have all kinds of cool experiences that i'm thankful for um and then i eventually came off the road and started uh writing songs i got a publishing deal with sony publishing and the landscape was really changing in nashville at that time it still hasn't settled down but that was during the transition uh between you know physical record sales and the whole digital revolution and um things were things were changing especially for how songwriters getting paid and publishing companies and record labels were making their money and uh so i knew that i probably needed something more stable something to devote myself to and build and i had started when i was on the road with with taylor swift i'd started during my downtime making these really low budget silly instructional videos uh with my little macbook um much like what you were going to show there and uh they started getting popularity on youtube because there wasn't a lot of that and a lot of a lot of the instruction that was on youtube honestly um wasn't that good i was trying to learn how to play too and um and so it was either you know the just the masters performing and and you couldn't really hear or tell what they were doing or if someone was trying to teach it they they might not do the best job at slowing down exactly what was being played and it was frustrating to me so i kind of made a a promise to myself that if i was ever going to figure out how these people how tony rice was playing something that i was going to do my best to show other folks and that's what i began doing they got they got more and more popular until i found myself kind of faced with that with that real decision of am i going to try to make a look at this or not and nobody was doing that this was back in 2010 sure it just wasn't around really and so i started my first little website um the first installment of benjamin clark.com where i would just sell tabs for five bucks a pop and people would come and buy a few here and there and i thought what else people actually want to learn and uh and it's just grown from there to where now i'm i'm uh i have a big full-blown video studio um in this old cabin that i that i have here on my property and so it's a lot has changed over the years but it's been a it's been a long slow grow that i've learned a lot and lost a lot too so it's been quite the journey let me i think i got it to work now i want to play this video but then i also want to play uh another video of you teaching something and so people can kind of see uh you know what's going on so i think it'll work this time let us see basic uh guitar licks and uh and i hope you enjoy them okay we're gonna start off with uh what i'll just call g lick number one uh this is one that's used um not only in picking but all the time at the end of musical phrases you'll hear this lick um it's probably the most important one to learn because you'll use it all the time even playing rhythm not just playing lead and as many flat pickers as there are that's how many different ways there are to do this lick so i'm going to show you a few um a few standard ways or a few ways that i may do it a lot of times it depends on the speed of the song as to which one of these that i'll use it sounds something like this [Music] i love that i i love that it's just honest playing but you're right it needed more for growth right for what you've turned it into um but it was helpful to me um and a lot of people and we did respond to that um you're you said you went to to college to to learn this this you know bluegrass to learn how to play bluegrass but gosh ben it seems like when you play it's just so instinctual i i cannot believe that that was all just something that somebody taught you it it has to come from somewhere other than just formal learning well i don't know how formal any of that was out there because it was a commercial music based program so you have it was centered around uh actual performing and real life application of music music theory and and playing so but you have to remember also that i played piano very uh intensely and at a very high level for around uh 13 years growing up so all of the theory knowledge was there and actually in my hands were connected to my brain so i came into it with a bit of a head start as somebody that was first starting but i think one of the reasons why students particularly new players relate to me is because i do remember what it was like to have to learn these things whereas most of my musical heroes you mentioned tony rise him and many others you know they probably don't remember what it was like for their fingers to hurt or to figure out how to uh make a g chord you know it's it goes back so far but i do because i was like 18 20 and 22 years old when i was like ah how do you do that and so that's very recent memory to me and so i'm able to look at folks that are wanting to start playing look at them in the face and say i know what that feels like and look if you just keep doing it you know this way and if you change this maybe um and you keep at it in this direction it'll get better i promise because i remember and so um you know when you have that um paired with i mentioned the discipline earlier of growing up playing piano you you know it was nothing for me to practice many hours you know on piano and multiple hours a day and so uh and and to get something until it's perfect like you have to be trained i think or encouraged i did i think some people naturally do it but i had to be greatly encouraged if you know what i mean to execute something until it is perfect and do not quit until it is and i carried that into that time at south plains college pair that with i was i was grown i was much older than i was kind of the matthew mcconaughey of uh southwind college you know i was i'd already been through undergrad through a pretty rigid program and then into grad school and like i wasn't out there at this junior class to jack around i was out there to learn as much as i could and so i treated it as a full-time job with um with overtime you know so i spent literally 12 hours a day on average playing and studying and uh and trying to get better and so a lot happened in just a few years but um there's a combination of nature and nurture i think sure and and here's what i thought was awesome this is the first and this is the reasons i became a gold pick member of your website and we'll talk about that um i i definitely want people to know about it um yeah there's a lot of people out there with with good intent doing awesome things showing people how to do things on youtube and and that's and that is awesome and i and and i think it's great that that people do that but here's where you did something a little bit different and it seems like a silly thing to say but it was it was just such a big deal you figured out pretty quickly that that one camera view is not going to get it done um and so your setup now is there's a great view of the fretboard there's a great view of the right hand and then there's a little window that shows the tab you start out doing a slow version then a medium version it is like you are sitting in the room with you expand on that sure uh well a lot of that was thanks to folks like you that kept requesting things to change and to get better and uh so my older videos it's not a two-camera view i couldn't afford two cameras sure and uh so and i didn't know how to operate video editing software and get two cameras going at the same time so uh it was definitely a learning curve but yeah it was um again it's putting myself in my student shoes and saying gosh if i was trying to learn this what else would i want to see what would i want to be said more slowly what would i want repeated what do i think is important and you can't you know you try to do those things for the masses you can't possibly personalize that for for everyone right you know my youtube channel the other days it passed a hundred thousand subscribers i was like what in the world so and and so i know from some comments that i get that not everybody's a huge fan of how to go about things and you're you're never going to please everybody but but there's enough people out there that identify with uh the pedagogy approach that i that i have and i'm always trying to think about that i'm always trying to think if i was on the other end of this you know the other side of the screen what would be most helpful for me and that's what i try to do because i'm asking people to pay for this you know i mean there's so many there's a lot of amazing youtube videos out there for free and i still put out a lot of free stuff but i'm also making a living out of this so i do i'm a perfectionist so i do it the best that i can sure let me let me uh play a clip i believe this is cherokee shuffle i'm gonna see if i can do this one right and i'll play a little bit of this and people can kind of see what we're talking about you'll really dig it check it out right [Music] here [Music] i could never play that again it would take me a year to learn that oh my god that was your arrangement though right that's not that's my arrangement but uh goodness who's going to learn that [Laughter] i guess you know well i say that i've had quite a few kiddos really impressed me and played all that stuff note for note um and that's actually still a pretty old video that was probably five six years old no more than that so i've been in my new studio for over six years and that was the old studio so i've done moved to uh to more you know to 4k cameras and and more lighting and everything but um you know i i that kind of reminds me of of something else when i first started teaching um i don't know maybe i had a bit of a a fear of people not thinking i was good enough to teach or something and um and so i would put out a lot of material that was very difficult to play because i think deep down i wanted people to see what i could do right um and and people were like i experienced a lot of wow that's great uh but i could never play that and i i remember i was getting these requests like could you show us how to play that g chord on guitar and i'm like what you know i'm teaching all these tony rice flicks and kept getting those requests and so i put out my first like beginner video i think it was how to play a bluegrass g chord and guitar and it like exploded and i was like okay dummy um people are needing to learn from the very beginning and so that's when i began to keep track of skill levels and trying to fill in the beginners uh learning tracks and and take people on a journey and not not just appeal to those top few percent that might try to learn these crazy licks that honestly i can't even hardly play nowadays like i said it took me a year to learn that again but it's it's a great it's a great version i love how you use your thumb on the on the fifth string um that's that's a lot of fun um and again though just and i guess that's that piano training and because that's a fairly complicated that melodic style you know it's that you came up with on your own and that's i mean that's that's just that's just really good you you've mentioned that growing up there was you know music going on around you and you've kind of hinted that there was a bit of a family component to that and you you were involved in a project with your sisters you have two sisters that are in a group called the purple hulls and you you did some stuff with them too right so tell us about that sure actually three sisters they're all super talented and two of them are twins and are in the band um the purple hulls uh they have moved to town uh probably about well about the time i i left taylor and they actually signed a publishing deal at the same time that i did with sony we weren't really signed as a group but we were signed at the same time knowing that we were probably going to work together and um and through that through that process we decided actually then to start a band because we had access to sony studios and some great musicians and took advantage of that and we recorded an album more of a country album okay i had drums and bass and electric guitars and we began we began touring and uh you know started to get pretty busy and had a lot of things lined up when my we got the news that my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and that he probably had about a year that's what the docs thought which they were ended up being very very accurate so the girls you know i already had a family here with kiddos and uh in a home here in tennessee the girls were a bit more mobile and they uh dropped what they were doing in nashville and made that sacrifice and went back and and took care of my dad uh until he until he passed away the next year now when they were in texas they um you know we didn't play together because you know just the distance thing sure sure and uh they had never really told anybody that they moved to texas but all sudden gigs started getting offered to them in texas and they started doing them as a two-piece and before they knew it they were they were really busy and then after dad passed away they just remained there they're still on the farm and and they've just taken off they turned it into a three-piece with the bass player and and done really well and i rarely get to play with them anymore i actually play with them last weekend in dallas at a festival and that's the first time i played with them in a long time uh they play too fast for me anyway they play all those licks you know in that turkish couple there uh they play all those licks and and much faster and much better than me so i'm i'm their biggest fan and i love watching them get better and better well how i mean how does that like going back to when you guys were kids though i you know you always see um and i'll be honest with you it's kind of i get a little bit jealous of it when i see these families that are out there doing you know music together as a family my son and i do a little something where i play guitar banjo he plays guitar and violin and actually i'll go ahead and we'll self-promote here oh nice um and so uh and uh but how i mean was it was there any any hint when you guys were little that that this was a thing a possibility down the road no there really wasn't ivan because um we're seven years apart in age okay so you think about by the time i started playing banjo and guitar manline i was up around 20 years old and i was out of the house they were 12 13. and uh but i would come i remember my sophomore year in college i started playing banjo and i came home over christmas and brought my banjo home and my mel bay book and i was showing the girls kind of what i was doing and by the time i left to go back to college for spring semester they had already learned everything that i learned for the whole semester and playing it better than me and so my dad recognized that and so uh he he got on some instruments and they they started playing and growing but we never really played together they were learning how to sing harmony together they were learning how to blend and do those things but not not with me we actually never had a band or really made music together until they moved to nashville um and besides maybe doing a christmas carol or something um and then we worked up our first song was it him um what a friend we have in jesus and it was one of those low rate recordings a lot much like you've played earlier and recorded with my macbook and in my kitchen and um that that video as low quality as it is has millions of views across various platforms over a million views on youtube and i see it on facebook all the time with millions of views so that's pretty incredible and that was inspiring because that's the first thing we'd ever done before and people loved it even though it's low quality uh production the the the guts were still there people could tell that that we had something um and that's something being those girls and i was just kind of hanging out for dear life so that's that's what got us um kind of pushed us forward to try to pursue more music so i i'm and i'm i remember you guys you know posting about your dad passing away i actually lost my dad to cancer too was he uh was he a fan was he oh of course yeah but he was very careful uh not to be an ostentatious fan he was he was very humble and and also very humble about his kiddos uh he was but he would sit there just smile you know closed lip smile and and have a tear form on his uh you know he got to see us play at the grand ole opry and um you know did all that he could to get good instruments in in the girls hands and um so yeah as proud as could be um and and i wish that he could see us now and and maybe he can but uh yeah we miss him greatly he he was our our biggest biggest fan even though he wasn't super vocal about it to other folks he was always there to support us that's you know that's it it's hard when you you know like i said i lost my dad too so i understand exactly what you're saying he he was proud of the music i was was doing too um except he could be really loud about it sometimes too but that's that was how he was my dad was not subtle uh by anybody that's personality my sisters were really good basketball players they actually played little ball in college and and uh and they were pretty dominant in high school and you know at the at the basketball games penny and katie would be running over people and and he would just he would just sit there he wouldn't clap or nothing but he'd be really proud but he didn't he didn't want to draw any attention to himself uh and i appreciate that yeah he's a very very humble guy and he he taught me that other people are more important than yourself and uh i'm really thankful for that well that's so and and so you guys kind of you know they're doing their thing the purple holes are doing their thing and then you started doing this and then some some things came along that honestly i i didn't foresee you have a banjo line or or a name model is that correct is that tell me about that yeah we partnered with goldtone instruments to build a banjo model that we um conceptualized it's actually nothing new it was just uh had some appointments and some um some qualities about that were really desirable in older pre-war banjos and goldtone was willing to uh to put that particular combination together and they've done really well and we sold so quite a few of them and and then the of course the the virus hit and uh and shut down a lot of the transport of goods and such so it's been a a little slow since then but uh they're great banjos it's called uh we called it the twanger made by goldtone that's awesome i mean that how cool is that to to wake up one day and say there's a i've i've got this line of of banjos that just goes to show how much your name is out there now i'm gonna i'm gonna you've hinted at this but i'm gonna i'm gonna explore it just a little bit you've said that sometimes people have not been as appreciative of some of your style uh for teaching i think i know what you're talking about um what what do you mean by that some of your characters that you've portrayed or sure yeah i actually i wasn't talking specifically about that but that is that's true you know i think any time that you do something your own weight you're going to have uh criticism and if you're going to put yourself out there and um and try to be authentic and and uh expose yourself you're going to have people criticize you and sometimes that's great criticism actually what i was referring to earlier was uh as i was uh teaching and sometimes i'll be explaining something and and uh people would comment and say hey you talk too much why don't you play in my initial reaction is well uh maybe you should just listen to what i say you know go back and i'll i'll listen to the video and i'm like you know what i did talk for like three minutes in a row about something when i probably could have done that in a minute and a half and gone on playing so it's that kind of feedback that's really helped me if i'll keep myself humble um but and also uh sift through that and see when people are not being helpful as well um as far as some of the characters i've done stuff uh you know you can only this is for me i can only work by myself in a basement studio which i did for many years for so long before i about go crazy and one of the ways i can entertain myself is to invent different characters and uh and have some fun with myself at my expense and i've done that and um i did get some pushback from some of that people would think that that i would make fun of the culture or make fun of the art and tradition of bluegrass that's definitely not the case is actually the opposite um you know i was i was taking this maybe silly stereotype that some folks might have and pulling the curtain back on it and saying actually once you come in you can see that it's quite a sophisticated and honorable pursuit and that bluegrass deserves its spot at the table with every other viable art form and genre and and so i think if people would hang with me long enough they would see that sometimes the reaction was that i was trying to make fun of somebody but i can't really make fun of somebody if if i am actually that material you know it's like i come from i come from rural east texas and i'm i'm making fun of caricatures of myself sure and then showing people that those caricatures shouldn't you shouldn't judge people by caricatures and even though some people might come from a certain culture they have something to offer and so it's kind of been funny to me that if some people got uh and if you did got upset at uh some of the silly things that i would do but they completely missed the point and and and this the the great honor and respect that i have for not only the genre but all those who have um built that genre and provide the foundation that that uh that i try to uh stand upon now i i and i would agree with everything you just said i i first of all some of the and people just have to go find them for themselves but when you do your characters when you you do bring an entertainment value to it i've got family in texas i'm from alabama i've lived in georgia i'm no stranger to just about you know i've lived in chicago i've i've traveled i've been around so many different types of people and you do meet some types of people that sometimes you would say there's a stereotype for for different things but and i know that stereotypes are over generalized but having said that when you would do your your characters and and these are kind of for the people who aren't familiar with what we're talking about he does these skits and and he uses them as a teaching tool and and i find it to be very entertaining i find it to be very heartwarming and i certainly don't find them to be mean or malicious or or degrading or anything like that and and then you and you you connect that with such a high level of skill and and proficiency that um i i think it just it's probably one of the reasons why i ended up becoming a gold pig member well i ended up kind of following along with what you were doing and and i you know and i i'm i'm on the banjo hangout for uh forums and i'm and i read stuff and i think that the reviews there have been overwhelmingly positive but every once in a while you get somebody that's like well you know that's the big one is that well that that's just taking banjo to a place and it's just not like that anymore it's it's it's banjo is this sophisticated thing now and and and you know what i mean you know what what that attitude that that i guess what they're saying but the moment that you have to actually say that proves that you're not that way right you so i'm saying like the the art should speak for itself and the art does speak for itself and i'm not ashamed of it i'm so confident in what the banjo is and how good this music is that i can even be self-deprecating and know that after the laughs are through the art form and the instrument and the music is going to stand on its own i don't have to tell people how good it is right um i don't have you know i don't have to defend it it's going to defend itself um so so i think that's i think that once you have to try to start making excuses for how something isn't what people think it is then now i think you've lost um and and i think that the folks that would that would think those detrimental things or deprecative uh uh that's not a word but you know it can be a word it can be a word i guess but negative things about bluegrass they they haven't explored it and they are believing some kind of caricature and um you know people might say that i'm trying to propagate that but i'm not at all i'm i'm actually and i have thousands of emails to prove this hooking people into um drawing them into this art form and then showing them that there's substance there when they may be believing some kind of false stereotype and if you want me to prove it i can show you that my number one and number two most uh student dense geographical areas in the country you know where they are it's not alabama it's not north carolina new york it's not the c it's new york and it's los angeles i believe it that's where my number one and number two student bases are i know there's a lot of people there but the point is this that it's people being drawn into this music that aren't exposed to this music and they're loving it and you know what they're going to be fans of this music for their whole life and so i'm really not out to uh to market to folks that grew up with this music they don't need me a lot of times anyway you know um but i am out to grow this genre i'm i am out to to spread the good news of of bluegrass and banjo and a guitar and mandolin and and get new lovers on the roster and uh and i think that my approach to that does that does that very thing um and you know we have those testimonials to prove it i think that's the coolest thing just about about my job is introducing it to new folks i never hear about it i i think that you you touched on something there i i i've noticed uh as soon as you said that i was like i bet it's new york i bet he's going to say new york i can't help but wonder uh and and you and i kind of talked about this before we went online tonight about you know with everything that's going on in the world you know there's just a lot of you know just a lot of awful things and i don't need to get into that everybody all you got to do is turn on the news and music has been a way for uh you know musicians as a release but it's also been there for an audience to you know for to to be soothed uh for hope uh things like that and i can't help but wonder when you have some of these larger metropolitan areas that aren't known for you know any given style and they come across something like you know you know bluegrass or folk or roots or uh you know americana there's an honesty about it um i'm i'm a fan of many different kinds of music you can just go back on this show and i've you know electronic musicians and rock musicians and i'm a fan of it all but there is something just honest and organic about two or three people with you know non-amplified instruments making uh i don't know music great music in their living room on their porch you know what i mean is that is that you think that your music speaks to people like that sure uh what's inherent in bluegrass and americana and folk is community um and you know that's where this music was born it was born on front porches and it was born in um in you know sharecropper circles and uh so that's what's you know some of the lyrics and so many of the attitudes of the songs are around that community and um and so it it fosters community whenever you play it um so bluegrass is not a solo sport um and that's one of the reasons why i love my site so much is that i'm able to offer some kind of community to folks who are not around others that play this you know i have lots of soldiers on my site that are stationed all over the world and um and a lot of foreigners you know that uh that you know if you're if you're if you're a banjo player in magdala you know israel you're probably not gonna have another banjo player on your street you know but i've been able to through the site being able to unite uh bluegrasses in entire regions you know through the community of the site not i mean that's just the coolest thing in the world to me you've actually am i am i mistaken did i have i seen some posts of you playing i don't know if they're on missions or foreign travel like you're playing with people out of the country and you've sent some yeah i've been able to take your banjo all over the world and sometimes that's on mission trips and sometimes that's on like to to israel i've been several times in israel and leading trips over there just tourists you know biblical tour trips and uh because i i teach at my church as well and pastor and uh but i have all these students over there and we get together we have a big jam up in galilee israel and it's the coolest thing ever i've taken my banter to to mexico and south america and cuba and india and i i that's one of my favorite things as well is to see the reaction of these different cultures to a sound that they've never heard before from an instrument that often has tonal qualities and rhythmic qualities in common with what they love and what they're natively accustomed to sure no and and some of the pictures that you've shown the looks on the the faces of the people around you everybody seems very very happy and that's one of the things you know when i when i uh i i'd talk to you a little bit about this i woke up one one morning and told my wife i just looked over at her and said yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna play the banjo and she was just like she didn't know what we're doing no she's like yeah this was not this was not in the in the prenup you know and so um but what i what i have found you know playing electric guitar and i play acoustic guitar but i play it like a an electric guitar player plays an acoustic guitar just kind of basic chords but one thing i really love about banjo and i play claw hammer style is it is just it it covers a lot of ground emotionally i mean it's not just all drive and speed there's you know melody melodic banjo there's atmosphere there's um you know people that know how to pull back and and keep it you know minimal when the you know let other players take leap take the lead for a while it's a very dynamic instrument and i don't think people who who aren't around it give give it its due give give it credit for what it can do the range that it can cover um yeah that's interesting um it is quite a ride genre and um you know that has all of your um like you said all of your emotions that can be captured in in songs you know within that genre and under that umbrella and if you know if you're looking for it you can find it in bluegrass and old-time music um because it's the music of the people again it's not a manufactured sound it's grown that music has grown out of true emotion so it's it's not just engineered music that's trying to draw emotion it's real emotion that's produced music that when played again produces more emotion no and that's real it is real i think you know i look on you know the the interwebs and i see a lot of 20-somethings out there killing it on the banjo i mean they're just killing it claw hammer scrugg style i i see you know you know nine ten years old 12 years old fifteens early twenties and i really feel like they're taking it somewhere like they are taking it to the next oh yeah the next place whatever that might be yeah i try not to watch too many of these young pickers or i'll just get depressed [Laughter] they're so good you're not lying that's that's harder when you're my age and you see some nine-year-old on letterman playing you know you know scruggs like like he was a little scruggs himself and you know yeah yeah you smile and you say all the right things but inside you're like at the same time it's been such an honor of mine to be maybe a small small part of their journey as well i was involved in august i was uh featured on the cover of the banjo newsletter which is just a dream come true uh to be featured in that publication and that the guy that interview me is one of my favorite players nowadays he actually is just a recipient of the steve martin banjo award matthew davis just a prodigy and uh you know it's so humbling because he told me he used my videos to get started you know and and i'm like seriously like my silly videos and you know helped inspire didn't totally inspire but helped inspire and helped bring along these this kiddo that lives in murfreesboro tennessee that's already is and will be a world renowned musician that's pretty doggone cool uh that's that's the power of the internet and uh the good stuff that comes out of youtube and and other platforms no i i think it's i think that's awesome i want to play another another tune here this is you with your sisters this is an older song i believe let me see if i can do this without without messing this up this is a great a great great song and you guys are just awesome on this so here let's let's take a listen let me know you tell me [Music] these bills can change [Music] yeah that's that's good stuff um thanks man that's one the girls wrote they're they're great songwriters well you're a great musician in fact so let's tell me tell me this how in the heck did you did the entomologist to be end up playing with taylor swift that's yeah how did that come about let me let me you actually sent some pictures here let me uh okay let me let me put some of those up while you're telling this story this is this is this is awesome sure well so i i left south plains college in 2004 to move to nashville for a couple different reasons i wanted to try to make it the music business but also the the gal that i had started dating out at southwest college had moved to nashville to finish her education at belmont university so i was chasing her as well um but you know i moved there and i had just a couple contacts in town and uh met some folks nashville is a surprisingly small community of musicians and which is good if you go out there and hustle it's not good if you uh if you don't have a do a good job sure but um but i found myself just really within a year uh playing for a new uh artist on a major record label doing the radio tour we had just a ball and it turns out his manager also managed um american idol finalist josh grayson and so they needed a piano player for a weekend so i went out and did that and that drummer with josh grayson went on to to play you know be band leader for taylor swift and and so that's kind of how things in nashville happen very rarely do you get gigs in nashville from actual auditions um you you get gigs by just doing a good job and and knowing folks and so when i got the call for taylor um she only had one single out and i was not a fan i'll just be really honest i kind of joked with my wife i was like there's no way in the world i'd play this song for a living and i was playing that song for a living a few weeks later but uh you know i i got the call and and uh i honestly you know i was playing for craig morgan at the time he was a grand opera member and really talented guy and a fun gig and i thought nah i don't want to go to work for some 16 year old gal who's going to have a mom down the road all the time what am i getting myself into and then he said the band leader said the magic words that every texan musician wants to hear he said uh well we're we've got the opening spot for the george strait tour and i thought well there you go so you know i was from texas and i grew up on george strait and and that was just a dream come true so i went actually to play for taylor to be able to tour with george strait and just see what that's all about i honestly i didn't have any idea that taylor you know would would become what she would become i didn't know how long i would be there and it was a an intense ride because over the course of the next two and a half years she went from a brand new artist that had one single out when i began to uh whenever i quit and walked away from that to sign the publishing deal she was the number one selling artist in the world to surpass you too um so i saw that in a little over two years wow and that was that was the experience that very very few people get to have and for that i'm very thankful i learned a whole lot well i think you you you earned it i mean i i definitely would say like like like when i watch you play when i see what you've what you've taught um and when i see that you you know when you when you come up with these arrangements um there's again i know that you you like i said you trained you you you got it down when and you learned the theory but i'm i just i again i just can't help but feel that this comes from someplace that there's there's something extra above there that that that i could have gone through the same training i wouldn't have come out like what you've done i don't think i have that the heart that you have when it comes to this oh well i i mean i i want to say thank you to that but i also want to say that whatever that is that you're talking about i'm not responsible for that so i can't take any credit um i i didn't wake up one day and say i want to have the gifts that i have those are those are a gift in and of themselves and we're all gifted differently and you know we're just supposed to be responsible stewards of those gifts and that's what i try to do uh but make no mistake about it i am nowhere in near the top tier of of pickers and singers in this incredible town of nashville and there were um many many dozens if not hundreds of people ready to step in and do my job for taylor just as good as i could have uh that's just the way this town is it's just like just like when you're watching an nfl game and a running back or a quarterback gets hurt and very often the the the second string guy will come in and throw like a 80 girl or 80 yard bomb or make some incredible run you're like they got a second string well yeah he's still a pro you know right he's amazing and and that's that's how nashville is uh you know i tell people literally your server here at an olive garden is could be a better musician than you are you know just have it hasn't caught maybe the breaks that you have and so i've been in the right place at the right time and just i had much favor and grace poured out over me and um and you know i've tried to remain humble in that knowing that um you know just knowing how what the competition is out there and i've just i've tried to make myself as marketable as possible and that's that's what i tell folks that have moved to town and whenever i have an opportunity sometimes i'll i've guessed lectured at belmont and various uh institutions uh people that want to come to town and do things like i've done and i and i'll just i believe in being honest i said you're not going to move to nashville and be the number one guy right now you're you're not going to move here and be one of the best guitar players in town you're just you're just not i mean that i and i don't want to hey i don't want to crush people's dreams but i also don't want to puff them up you know right now you know you can you can go into a high school football team and and if you if you tell them y'all could y'all could be all pro you know hall of famers one day no that's not true i mean maybe there would be one but one out of a million you know and it literally but here's what can happen you know and this is this is the good news that i give them you're not going to be able to go there and be the best there's always going to be somebody better than you but you can be the best that you can be and you can work harder than other people and those things will make up for talent differences often and i'm a i'm the living proof of that so what i tell folks is make yourselves as marketable and as diverse as you can so um pick up that mandolin learn a few chords learn how to strum it learn how to sing harmony learn how to do whatever can i i got my uh commercial driver's license i i drove buses part-time for artists and would save them money done you know i want my goal as a musician was i want to do so much for this artist that they can't fire me because they would have to hire two extra people to fill right no that's good i would hustle merch after the shows i mean i've i've literally slung thousands of taylor swift t-shirts after shows but well i wanted to help the organization i was part of norway's action i wanted to help taylor but at the same time i wanted to make myself very valuable and and that's uh i just tell you that because it would be disingenuous for me to sit back and say i'm so talented i got the job with with the number one selling artist in the world no i was in the right place at the right time i could play these songs as they needed to be played just like hundreds of other people here in town and i worked my butt off to be as diverse as i could and i showed up to bus call on time and i didn't jack around in rehearsals and that's how you get a job in national and that's how you keep it so yeah i just want to be really honest about that because i think ultimately that's encouraging for people out there i think so because you don't have to be the best at what you do but you gotta just work hard maximize your own talents and try to bring a different mix of talents and skills to the town no matter if you're talking national music or if you're talking um construction job or engineering or medical job or whatever bring a set of skills and talents to that job that uh that other people are going to have a hard time matching you on and making yourself valuable making yourself marketable and and uh and worth something and uh and you'll work well i think i think you hit on it i mean tenacity is in an industry town especially i mean is you you just have to have it like you said um what i was touring briefly uh in a band based out of chicago it wasn't so much chicago but we would play in l.a a lot and la is just i mean same way and you know and there's always you know we we would show up as a band and okay we're here to you know take some names and kick some butt and be just absolutely humbled by the other bands that we would play with in fact we made some really good friends that we that i'm still friends with um and just to see that oh look at there's some there's some talent here there's some creativity and there's people that are here that are very tenacious and and willing to to do what they need to do um i saw that a lot with bands too bands that would work together as a group and say okay what are we going to do as a group to survive and and to market ourselves and to get out there and what are we going to go without and people think about musicians as having that life well that life may often mean you know waiting tables working late having multiple jobs you know going without a lot of things so no i i i think i think you're absolutely right but you took it past that and you started teaching and but now you've also opened up a store a brick and mortar store so now that's not just online that's tell me about that right yeah sure um so it made sense for me being in the instruction business to try to also sell things that people needed and wanted to be able to play and learn i just simply didn't have the bandwidth or the expertise the retail expertise to do that but i had the desire and uh some seed money to try to get that started and so i was introduced to uh through a crazy series of events to the guy who is now my right-hand man his store manager uh jake stogdale and jake uh he's good at lots of things whole lots of things but he's also really good at managing retail and particularly this niche of of acoustic and bluegrass instruments and supplies and accessories i sound like hank hill um and and so he was he was looking for a new opportunity and i was looking for somebody that could make it happen and so we started banjo ben's general store um about three years ago and it just it exploded because you know we carried the the best you know the the most uh desirable uh gear that was the best for the money but also just how we treated people we just we didn't care about profit we still don't ultimately care about the bottom line is it's about treating people the way that we want to be treated right and um and we often lose money because we do that but you know it's important long term to treat people like that and that's i think a reason why we've been successful and so now we're up to to five full-time folks out there at the general store it's in missouri because that's where jake and his team lives and it's also the center of the country that makes uh makes for the fastest shipping and so we've primarily been online the last three years um but we need more space we need more uh warehouse space and so we found a building that would work for that but also had a wonderful showroom so we bought that and we've remodeled that uh and we've did a soft opening a few weeks ago uh they're just west of branson missouri okay and we'll do a big big grand opening around uh black friday and uh it's just it's a cool place it's a cool place just to go and hang out and sit around and pick and tell stories and got a coke machine and we sell pocket knives and moon pies and um it's just i i wanted i wanted to be a place where people wanted to be well that's i i think that is really cool and i i like the idea you know it's it's hard i'm fortunate that in the town where i live we have a really good music store um and and it's one of the kind that i've actually seen come up on the on the forums yeah there's this place in kansas and yeah that's where i live and and they're really good but that it's it's there needs to be more and i think you're feeling a very real need here's another thing that's not very smart for me as a store owner but i say it anyway if you have a music store in your hometown go support them like buy stuff from them right uh not from amazon not from a guitar center online and not from banjo band online uh i i believe in supporting small business especially these music store owners in these towns and you know there's plenty of other business to go around for folks like me and that's one of the reasons why i started it just like with lessons i'm bringing a service to people who don't have access to it right that's what i want to do with my general store it's to bring quality goods and quality service and setup and all those things to people who who don't have access a lot of people have music stores in their town but they're not blue gray at bluegrass areas and so that that guy at that music store even though they're really nice they might not know anything about setting up a banjo but we do so we're able to offer that kind of service even even virtually and through the mail you know um but i'm a big fan of the mom and pops and i even you know i'm a dealer i've got strings piled up around here everywhere and i still stop by shiloh music and mount juliet and buy stuff at retail prices from them that i could get on my own website and order for cheaper um because i want those guys to survive right and and i think that that's important for community you know um and and i'm a free market guy i hope amazon continues to do well too but i want the other guys to to be fairly treated and and uh and i want to i want to help people do that too well it's not it's nice when you walk into a store and they know who you are and sure they've been working with you for a while and and and and they know what you're about and they you know and they kind of know what you're looking for and they'll keep an eye out for hey you know that kind of thing and call you up hey that i can't believe that we got one of these that just came in the other day this guy had dropped one off used and you know that kind of thing and so that that yeah i worked at the music store um and it's it was nice knowing my customers so um i hear you on that um all right this is a weird segue here are you are you a pilot is that i i am yeah i don't fly professionally or anything but you you have your your ppl or private pilots uh license how long have you been flying uh 10 years yeah i actually got when i came off the road with taylor i had some time at home for the first time ever uh or since i moved to nashville and it was a dream of mine and so that's when i got my my license and um i don't get to fly as much as i want to but it's it's a passion uh of mine for sure they're there i know i know what that flight is i can tell by the shirt my wife and i are flying down to tuscaloosa alabama and we watched my texas a m aggies beat the hell out of the crimson tide um in their undefeated season uh there's my check ride oh is that your check right that that was your sfa uh instruct inspector instructor uh give me my final sign off was that your i flew that airplane home by myself as a licensed pilot so is that your plane do you have your own plan no i really i know i've rented that one yeah yeah i don't sell that many lessons i'm [Laughter] well yeah i actually i was a in a in a band in tuscaloosa for a while i actually went to tucson for a year yeah um okay so uh great town for music oh my gosh oh yeah yeah a great music town they used to call it little athens um back in the back in the day when you know rem was was out of athens and all that kind of stuff and that was kind of sound that was going on um well ben i i i just want to say thank you for your time um this has been a lot of fun for me and i appreciate you sitting down with me and just just chatting about stuff um you know check in with me in a year maybe i would love to have you back and talk about more stuff i could do this all night but i know you are a busy man you've got you've got a family you've got kids you've got a store you've got lessons you've got holy cow i think you're one of these people that need the day to be 28 hours and not 24. nice i have a great team you know that's i did a whole lot of it on my own for a long time and i've been able to grow the team steadily and so i have team members here in nashville and and folks there in missouri that allow me to begin to have a life again because it was pretty pretty crazy there for a while um so i'm thankful for the growth yeah and hopefully in in a year we'll have new fun stuff to talk about yeah no doubt well ben i want to say good night um uh god bless you and your family and just uh keep doing what you do and i appreciate you and uh uh just again have a good night and thanks so much okay we'll see you next time have a good one bye guys bye wow that was awesome um he's so inspiring to me that he he he's he's that rare mix of of talent um being upbeat driven um and with these accomplishments and it's just been uh neat watching him grow um you know each of these shows i i try to look for a message within the um you know the interview and i think tonight was something that ben said you know about tenacity about you know don't go into a situation you know thinking you're gonna be the best because you know statistically speakings unless you're that one person you're not gonna be the best and so the odds aren't really in your favor but that doesn't mean you can't work hard and do something with the skill set that you have and that you worked so hard to get and that you won't walk away with a sense of accomplishment and um you know pride and and and that you that you set out to do what you wanted to do so i i just i i think that's really awesome um i am going to kind of fade out tonight with uh just uh some of uh ben's music this is just a little couple of things that he uh sent and so i'm just gonna play this and uh i look forward to seeing you guys soon um you guys have a good night and uh see you again in a few weeks [Music] do [Music] you

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Id: eTNCgR3mtdI

Length: 67min 45sec (4065 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 21 2020