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"Ben Kweller (born in San Francisco, June 16, 1981) is an American rock musician. Ben Kweller was raised in Greenville, Texas, and was exposed to music at a very young age by his father Howie. He began playing drums at age 7, and then took up guitar and piano. He met another young local musician, John Kent, who played drums, and the two formed a band, which they named Radish. Radish played locally in and around Greenville and recorded two independent releases, Dizzy and Hello.
At age 19, Ben Kweller moved to New York with his girlfriend Liz Smith, where he began his solo career. He played acoustic shows and self-released four EPs, comprising some of the unreleased Radish recordings and other songs recorded in his apartment on a laptop computer. It was one of these EPs, Freak Out, It's Ben Kweller, that caught the attention of Evan Dando of The Lemonheads, and Dando invited Kweller out on tour with him, playing across America and Europe. In 2001 Ben Kweller signed to ATO Records, and released a 5-track EP entitled EP Phone Home. In March of 2002, Sha Sha, Kweller's first solo studio LP was released. Sha Sha included the very radio-friendly and popular single 'Wasted & Ready'. The title track reconciles his past career efforts with Radish and the difficulty of finding an identity as a 20 year-old artist beginning a musical career for the second time. The record kept many of the familiar sounds of Nirvana, but also worked in other pop music influences such as Weezer and Ben Folds. The album grew in popularity with a grassroot effort with his website and a promotion group called TeamBK, which promoted via word-of-mouth advertising. To support the release of the album and EP, he put together a live band, initially comprising Josh Lattanzi on bass, Fred Eltringham on drums, and Mike Stroud on guitar and keyboards.
In 2003, Kweller toured Australia with Ben Folds and Ben Lee as The Bens. The trio produced an eponymous EP. In an interview on Oct. 14th Ben hinted that The Bens may do another album. On My Way (2004) saw a whole new side of Kweller, the writing showed a more mature and subudued sound well beyond Kweller's 23 years. The album was recorded 'live' - there were limited overdubs and no use of headphones. After the release of On My Way, Kweller embarked on more touring playing to his largest audiences ever, including a US tour co-headlining with Death Cab for Cutie. By this point, the lineup of his live band had changed to include John Kent on drums and Jason Roberts on guitar and keyboards, after Mike Stroud left to concentrate on his own band Ratatat and Fred Eltringham left to play drums in The Wallflowers."
[reproduced or excerpted from the Wikipedia article "Ben Kweller" and its use is thus licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License]
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