All Over Albany

Interesting in 2009: the B3nson folks

One of the best things about working on AOA is that we've get the chance to meet a lot of interesting people. We'll be highlighting a handful of them between now and the start of 2010.

The past year was a great one for local music, thanks in large part to the B3nson folks.

The local music collective turned out a bunch of good albums this year, lined up a series of fun shows, gained some national attention and just generally made the Capital Region sound a heck of a lot more interesting.

We recently emailed Alex Muro, from Sgt Dunbar and the Hobo Banned, a few questions and he bounced back answers:

What do you think prompted the surge of great music from the B3nson folks this year?

We released 12 records (and one tape) this year. And just looking at the list, a large portion of them came from people participating in the RPM challenge, which is where you challenge yourself to make an entire record (10 tracks or 30 minutes) in the month of February. It has become something of a b3nson tradition since We are Jeneric started doing it two years ago when they made one of the first records officially released by the label, Hansel and Gretel.

The other part of it is that we have a variety of people who have the capability and the skill to record projects for cheap to free (and it usually ends up being closer to free), so it's easy for everyone involved to make recordings of their songs.

Lastly, but not leastly, is because we have lots of people who love to make music involved in the collective and we all sort of egg each other on and help each other out which has made the creative process really fun and created an environment where people feel encouraged to pursue whatever musical ideas they happen to stumble upon (hence the massive list of bands attributed to a less massive list of people).

Why form the collective? What does that do for the bands?

We call it a collective mostly because its the best word for describing what we are up to.

On one hand, all the bands are independent and have successes in proportion to their individual efforts. But on the other hand, everyone has benefited from a mutual sharing of various skill sets and work loads and promotional efforts.

There is also a sort of cross pollination of musical ideas and musicians across different projects which has occured naturally and certianly lends to the collective feeling.

Also while we certainly aren't a label in the traditional sense, it definitely seems like people take you more seriously if you are associated with a brand of sorts and hopefully as we grow the newer bands will benefit from the association with more established bands and the "b3nson sound."

What's coming up in 2010?

There will definitely be new full length releases from Sgt Dunbar & the Hobo Banned and Beware! the Other Head of Science, which have both been in the works for months now. I also know that the Scientific Maps and Pinguinos have new records that are in various states of completion which will probably see the light of day in 2010. There is also a high probability of an even larger number of RMP Challenge releases this year, although I can't predict exactly who will put them out.

Sgt Dunbar will be returning to the road again in March for another tour to SXSW this year as they have just recieved word that they have been accepted into the festival for the second year in a row. This year Beware! and possibly a few other b3nson bands may also be headed down to Austin for the festival and there is talk of organizing an unofficial B3nson Showcase at some unsuspecting Austin coffee shop.

It's hard to predict what else we will be up to, but it will probably include putting on lots of shows in Albany, forming new bands, putting out fun and silly and awesome records, making it easier to buy things from our website, going on more tours, taking over the world and/or eating lots of broccoli now that the neighbor killed all the woodchucks.

This interview has been lightly edited.

photo: Rich Orris