I'm Ben Lofton for.

I'm Ben Lofton in the family.

Write songs, play guitar and sing for the group.

It's tough for me to describe it because I think of it as just the singer songwriter version of the songs that I write.

And then it comes into a big full circle with the band.

Once it kind of hits the practice room, it changes.

So then it could become more folky, more funky, more beachy.

So it's I almost don't really know how each song is going to turn out at the time that I'm writing it, and won't know until after we play with it a few times in the rehearsal room and then again later on the stage.

So as far as, like describing the sound overall, I'd probably say it's a mix of regional, regionally influenced folk singer songwriter and maybe a little bit of reggae, a little bit of funk.

Well, writing songs kind of started early on, but writing songs for the band.

Kind of started happening in high school.

Yeah.

I started writing songs in high school that were not good.

But, you know, as the after you get, do you get enough songs under your belt, you start to kind of listen back to them and say, hey, I could have done this better, could have done that better, and they grow and take a new life.

And then you put them on the shelf and you write a whole another, better one.

And that's kind of where this project has come out of, I'd say I've been writing songs forever, but writing for the intention of of this band with horns, with organs, keyboards and everything that's probably been in the last ten years that I really started to think about writing in a bigger format than just me writing with an acoustic guitar.

it kind of changed over the years, you know, I got a little bit of the blues influence or, you know, early on when I was really fixated on electric guitar.

But then, you know, as I kind of got more into songwriting, I really fell back in love with the acoustic guitar, and that was, you know, everything from Jack Johnson to, Jimmy Buffett and, you know, John Mayer and Dave Matthews is a lot of times someone that we get kind of compared to.

I would say it's a similar sound, especially having horns and organs and just a lot of dynamic things happening on stage.

So I would definitely say those three are probably really big ones, but, you know, I've always loved the R&B soul side of things.

You know, Marvin Gaye, D'Angelo who just passed away and he was a big influence on a lot of later stuff that we've written.

Tonight is Marcus is the original oldest member.

And then from there you've got, Brian, the trombone player has been with us for a long time as well.

And then Bo was the next to join.

And that was probably about 2019 when he just started playing with us.

And then, chicken came on board about a year and a half, two years ago.

And then Reed is the newest member on saxophone.

So he just moved to town probably about a year ago, and once we heard him playing around, we were like, that guy.

We like him.

We want we want to snag him.

So that.

So that name came about around the time frame that we really started to play after high school, probably 2015, 16, give or take.

And that was really kind of out of the necessity of needing to come up with a name besides something as boring as Ben Loftin Band.

So that was the rest of the family, all the rest of the family, the rest of the band all kind of coming together and saying, this at this time we had all been playing together, for years now.

So we were we considered ourselves a family at this point.

We spent 4 or 5 days a week with each other, all day, all night, and, then that was kind of the name that that followed suit.

From there.

Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, anywhere you stream stuff now it is, it's available our website Ben Lofton music.com as, links to all of that, as well as a full, you know, playlist option to be able to just play what we have streamed.

I've always been an adrenaline junkie.

I love doing anything that gets my heart rate racing.

And, there's a certain level of calm that comes once your heart's pumping and then that adrenaline kicks in.

And that same feeling happens when you're on stage.

There's just nothing like the, the rush and the tranquility that you get when everything on stage, all of these moving parts synchronize and they just you close your eyes.

And it's kind of the same feeling and songwriting where you just open the gates up and you no longer doing really anything, or at least it doesn't feel like you're doing anything.

You're just kind of letting everything flow through you.

And it's, some people talk about it and refer to it as a flow state.

And that that's a feeling that I don't know that a lot of people get to experience in life.

And it's something that I definitely recommend everybody look for and find something they love doing