PhasingHz Music Group

Ben was born on the 16th of February, 1986, in the city of Carlisle, England. His family were Christian and he spent his Sunday mornings at his family church and it wasn’t long before Ben put his faith in Jesus on a personal level. Musically, Ben didn’t really become too interested until he was about 13 - around the same time that he first heard Travis’s ‘The Man Who’ and also started playing drum kit. Ben’s passion for song writing wouldn’t develop until he picked up his mum’s rarely used, classical guitar at the age of 15 after watching episode four of the first series of the Office. ‘If Ricky Gervais can play one and make it sound decent, it can’t be that hard,' Ben reasoned.

Fortunately for Ben, his voice broke around the time his guitaring began, which meant he could sing with contented heart without seriously damaging his own self esteem or anyone else’s hearing. Singing and strumming then led to writing, and by sixteen Ben had jotted down a few basic tunes which he played to various family members, and then eventually to church members during meetings to much positive feed back. As his teenage years continued, with them came the many crushes on girls, musings on life, and general feelings of angst and confusion (though mainly just the crushes). Perfect creative ammunition to keep the young song writer busy lyrically along with tireless efforts to tweak and refine his melody making methods. By the time he was 17, Ben had been introduced to Duncan Sheik (the ‘music of’ anyway) and thus, found his yard stick. Hearing Sheik’s distinctive approach to writing alternative rock, Ben’s view on song writing changed overnight and from this point his own approach to writing shifted notably and became all the more energised. ‘To write like Sheik’ was the new and enduring priority.

Sheik led to Drake, Drake to Smith, Smith to Buckley and McRae. Ben continued to explore the masters of melody and song writing craft whilst giving himself and his acoustic guitar no rest in the tedious trial and error process of arriving at completed songs which he was at least ‘quite’ happy with. As his repertoire grew, Ben began playing at acoustic nights across the city, primarily at open mic sessions but it wasn’t long before he was being invited to play in various local haunts and getting his name on a few posters here and there. Ben continued in like manner up to and during his two years studying music at the Cumbria Institute of the Arts which led to more gigs and more local recognition, including playing as a support act at the leading local music venue in Carlisle.

Gigging became a regular occurrence and it wasn’t long before it became difficult to count the number of venues across the city and further afield where Ben strummed out his Music. From bars to clubs, churches to restaurants, picture houses to buses, gardens to bookshops - if he wasn’t busking the streets, he was probably sitting behind a microphone somewhere else. His studies allowed him a generous amount of studio time and freedom to produce his first professionally recorded Cd - ‘rooms’, a collection of ballads and alternative acoustic rock tunes in the vein of a hand-picked selection of musical influences. Ben launched the album at the first real venue he’d ever played at along with 3 of his fellow music students. The album’s first mini run of 150 sold out within the year via word of mouth. Ben graduated his BTEC course in music performance in 2006 with a Triple Distinction grade.