Photo by Andrew Sarta
Interview by Jordan Kirkland: Live & Listen
Ever since the inception of Live & Listen just four years ago, our primary focus has been to create a valuable platform for up-and-coming bands to reach new listeners. After publishing countless random interviews, we launched a regular series simply titled 'Bands You Should Know'. After an extended hiatus, we've decided to revive this interview series, and that begins today with Nashville's Ben Sparaco & The New Effect. See below for the band's official bio, which is followed by our complete interview.
Ben Sparaco and The New Effect formed in 2017 when Florida-born singer, songwriter, and guitarist began playing with drummer Anthony Quirk and bassist Adam Discipio. Now based in the flourishing musical oasis of Nashville, TN, Ben and the band have maintained a massive touring schedule, cutting their teeth playing coast to coast in clubs and festivals.
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Sparaco spent his teen years playing with Florida’s Crazy Fingers, and making a name for himself in the jam band scene of the southeast, playing with members of the Allman Brothers Band, Dead and Company, Tedeschi Trucks Band, and more before he had even turned 20. This included a touring stint in late Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks’ band. After recording his 2016 release “Bring the Jubilee EP” with a Florida-based group of musicians, he moved to Nashville. There, he amassed a group of some of Nashville’s finest to record his debut solo record “Wooden” with producer Ross Holmes (Mumford and Sons, Bruce Hornsby, Warren Haynes), which also featured a guest appearance from Luther Dickinson.
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After finalizing The New Effect’s powerful lineup with Berklee College of Music graduates Quirk and Discipio, Sparaco’s songwriting started drifting from his southern rock roots, showing indie rock and pop influences, evident on their new EP “Greetings, from Ben Sparaco and The New Effect,” available now.
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You recently relocated to Nashville, where Ben Sparaco and The New Effect has really begun to flourish. Tell me a little bit about this project and how it came to life.
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Ben: I moved here in 2015 to go to school but dropped out in the spring of 2016. Once I put out my first record, Wooden, I needed to find a Nashville-based group of guys to tour with, instead of using guys from Florida, where I started. I found our drummer Anthony Quirk in a Facebook group for musicians, and he introduced me to our bassist Adam Discipio, who he met at Berklee. He flew to Florida to meet us on tour last year and has had the gig ever since. It’s been really nice to play with guys my age and really become a collaborative band, instead of just using hired guns.
Your musical roots and general background are an interesting as anyone's. You spent much of your teen years playing with Crazy Fingers, South Florida's premier Grateful Dead tribute act. How did this experience come about, and what type of influence did the Grateful Dead have on you as a musician?
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Ben: I grew up loving the more improvisational side of rock music, like the Allman Brothers, Band of Gypsys, Live Cream, and stuff like that. I didn’t have much knowledge of the Dead when I started playing with Crazy Fingers at 17, but they knew I could understand the improvisation, even when I was basically learning songs on stage. That really trained my ear, but I got really into the Dead in the beginning of 2017. Since then, I’ve been obsessed. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter have affected me as a musician as much as anybody.
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I've read that you had the opportunity to play with members of The Allman Brothers Band, Dead & Company, and Tedeschi Trucks all before you turned 20. Can you elaborate on these collaborations?
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Ben: I grew up in South Florida playing at a venue called The Funky Biscuit in Boca Raton a lot. It is basically the main club for good music in that area, and I was really lucky to sit in with great people there as a kid and keep those connections. My first solo band, The Ben Sparaco Band, opened for Butch Trucks, and I ended up doing a tour with him. That led to playing with Jaimoe, Oteil Burbridge, Luther Dickinson, and a bunch of others. Beyond that, just being in the right place at the right time with a guitar has paid off a lot.
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You've obviously been focusing on your own original music in recent years. In January of 2017, you released your debut solo album 'Wooden'. How long had this material been in the works? What did this recording experience mean to you?
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Ben: I wrote two of those songs in high school, probably when I was 16. The rest were written during a four month break from touring in 2016. I made that album pretty soon after dropping out of college, and it was a weird, kind of lonely time for me. It’s sort of an emptying out of songs that needed to come out to make way for new ones. It was also my first experience really being a musician in Nashville, and it couldn’t have been a better way to do it. We had so many incredible players on that record. It felt good to make a more acoustic, less guitar-heavy record.
I'm sure there is much focus now on touring, playing new markets, and hitting as many festivals as possible. As a young band, what is The New Effect's strategy towards balancing out the calendar?
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Ben: We spent the last year and a half touring the entire country twice, hitting every new market we could. It was so much fun, and we learned so much, but after almost four months straight on the road earlier this year, we finally started to feel it. We’re ramping up to get back into tour mode and do it a little smarter this time around, but we’re also preparing for our first full length recording. I feel like I’ve finally figured out how to write songs that sound like me, and they’re much different than anything I have done before. We’ll hopefully spend a good chunk of time working on this record.
What can fans expect from you guys as you round out 2018 and start looking towards 2019. Is there anything that has the band particularly excited?
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Ben: Towards the end of 2018, we'll be spent doing a couple regional runs through the southeast and east coast. We also have a few really cool support slots in the works that we can’t say anything about yet. Then we’re shooting for a record release in the spring of 2019.
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Stream Ben Sparaco & The New Effect's latest release on Spotify here:
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