Today we’d like to introduce you to Ben Buck.
Ben Buck was exposed to live music early on in his life. Growing up in Austin as the son of record store owners, he was immersed in the sounds of artists like Howlin Wolf, Screaming Jay Hawkins and Sun Ra. His father, Mike Buck, had played drums originally with The Fabulous Thunderbirds, alongside Jimmie Vaughn (brother of Stevie Ray Vaughn) and the Texas Tornados.
Being submerged early on in music gave Buck an ear for music, exposed him to the blueprint to many styles of music, and helped him expand a deeper understanding of how music evolves and expands upon elements derived from Blues and Jazz.
He became involved in the hip hop scene at an early age through his involvement in the Austin Mic Exchange open mic night at Spider House Ballroom. He would frequent venues such as Flamingo Cantina, The Mohawk and Empire Control Room, performing during the night and going to high school during the day.
Becoming a regular at AMX exposed Ben to the local music scene, He gigs heavily in Texas and has performed close to 120 times from August 2018-August 2019, working hard to cement himself as the hardest working musician in Texas Hip Hop. By 21, he had played ACL Music Festival, SXSW and Sound on Sound Fest. He had performed on stage with Ghostface Killah of Wu Tang Clan, Chris Rivers (son of late rapper Big Pun) and rising star All Flows Reach Out. Recently off his 2nd national tour spanning 24 dates in a month, he has worked to release his debut studio LP “KILROY”.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a mostly smooth road for me, I feel but with any endeavor, there have been plenty of ups and downs. One of the big struggles in my music career was getting my home studio robbed in 2018, all of my music equipment was stolen from my home and when I returned almost everything, including my laptop, drum machines, keyboards and DJ equipment, was missing without a trace.
Not having access to my music equipment and instruments limited me to use what I had left and explore the edges of the limitations of using my body and mind as an instrument. This entailed me spending more time beatboxing, working on my vocal range and expanding on what had gotten me to fall in love with hip hop in the first place.
I saw this as an opportunity to work harder on writing lyrics, expanding my beatboxing routines and studying more into the elements of the art form that had inspired me in the first place. It was really an eye opening moment for me that helped me realize that limitations can shape and refine your creativity, similar to how early hip hop was birthed out of necessity, with the restriction of most early hip hop musicians did not necessarily have means to buy equipment and have to re-adapt the things in their environment.
For example, Grandmaster Flash finding speakers on the curb and finding ways to hook his families record players though them, eventually inventing the cross fader, or Doug E Fresh finding ways to make percussive noises using only his vocals for lack of having a drum kit.
We’d love to hear more about your music.
I am a rapper, master of ceremonies, beatboxer, DJ and producer. I work my hardest to represent as many of the elements of hip hop that I can. I’m proud that I am able to be, for the most part, self sustaining as an artist. Locally I am known for performing regularly all around Texas and hosting hip hop shows. I specialize in shows and keeping the crowd engaged throughout the performance. I feel that at a lot of shows I have seen in my career, artists rarely talk or interact with their audience and more or less just rap or perform at them instead of rapping to them. I work hard to curate a unique experience and give the audience all the energy I would expect from live music.
In the other creative fields that I don’t practice regularly, I have a great team behind me. My sister Billie Buck is an award winning graphic design artist who specializes in poster making and screen printing. She has helped me tremendously in helping develop a strong stylistic image for my brand. She has designed almost everything for me, including show posters, tee shirts and my album artwork for me.
Also, on the visual side of things, I have a few other friends that help me in the field of graphic design and visuals. David Freid has helped capture thousands of images of the local hip hop scene in Austin, Texas and has directed and filmed many music videos and show recaps for me. He has also helped me launch my new label, “Speaker Bump Productions” alongside Julian Guevera. We are getting into show promotions and have also started up a small cassette tape label for local artists.
What were you like growing up?
I was definitely a hyperactive kid. Always trying to make classmates laugh and get a reaction from friends. I would make up songs and change the lyrics to my own from older songs I had heard from my family or the radio. I would constantly be making noises and beatboxing around the house and would skip class often to beatbox in the staircase to hear the better acoustics. I would get in trouble often for being hyper in class and would often get written up for different schemes I had come up with on campus.
At home, my family instilled creativity very early on for me. My mom is bilingual and had taught English at Austin Community College for over 25 years. She helped me fall in love with language from a young age and showed me how a language is heavily connected back to its roots in Latin. This helped me gain a deeper appreciation of hip hop and lyricism from a young age and have a deeper understanding of what was going on around me. She also played in punk bands as a kid, which further inspired me to pursue music.
My father is a long time veteran of the Texas music scene playing drums for the majority of his life. He has played alongside such artists as Jimmie Vaughn (brother of Stevie Ray Vaughn) in The Fabulous Thunderbirds and The Texas Tornadoes with Doug Sahm and Flaco Jimenez. He has worked at Antones Records since 1987 and is now the owner of the store alongside his wife Eve Monsees and Forrest Coppack. He inspired me rhythmically when I would sit on his lap as a kid and play his drum set. He would take me to his gigs since before I can even remember all around Austin. When I started performing as a young adult, I had already felt very comfortable in bars and venues.
Growing Up inside Antones Record store and being surrounded by old and new music sparked my imagination as a kid and opened my ears up to non-traditional music that was expected of kids my age. I fell in love with artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Sun Ra and the 13th Floor Elevators.
Contact Info:
- Address: 2928 Guadalupe Street 78705
- Phone: 5129171837
- Email: benbuckbeatbox@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/benbuckbeatbox/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/benbuckbeatbox/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BenBuckBeatBox
Image Credit:
Wyatt Ell, David Freid
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