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You Ben, how did you help be a part of Kerry's process in becoming comfortable with singing?

Good question.

Just pestering me.

I am Stephan Brackett.

I'm the host of Sounds on 29th.

It is my honor and privilege to announce this band, The Hip Snacks.

I got the chance to interview two of the band members earlier, and I got to tell you, like, you've seen bands before.

There's a lot of love, but on this stage you will see literal love letters going back and forth between these band members.

It is one of the most beautiful, romantic, sensual and ecstatic things that you can experience.

So when you want to see real love onstage between a group of people that are really putting it out there for you, get ready for the hit snacks.

MUSIC PLAYING You all starting together when?

Well, we got.

We're actually just got married about a month ago and.

Yeah.

But so we were together about five years before Cara let out that she could sing really well.

I had heard it once through the shower wall, but I had never had her in a band with me.

And I was touring with other projects and stuff.

And as soon as she wanted to sing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I still care about it.

You started singing.

You started singing even before that.

Right?

Yeah, I've been singing since I was little.

And church choir and school choirs and all that stuff.

So I was used to singing with a bunch of women and I was just scared to go off on my own.

Even though we had been singing live music since I was like, 15 years old, consistently, I would just see these ladies up on stage and I was like, Man, I want to do that so bad.

And I was just petrified, to be honest.

And it took five years of this dating and it was just everyday like, you should do it, you can do it.

And then one day in 2018, we just I just said, okay, I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it.

I finally got there and here we are.

So in that time you have now re-interpret yourself as an artist who could like front a band again there.

Yeah, I'm sorry on that, but.

But yeah, no, I'm, I'm much more comfortable now and it really helps to play with guys who are fun and supportive of and kind and it makes everything so much more enjoyable.

MUSIC PLAYING What brought you here and what have you found that's made the Colorado and Denver music seem like the right place for hip snacks?

Well, we're living in DC slash Bethesda for a very long time, and we had talked about Denver as a next place to move to.

I had visited a bunch of bands, been out here a bunch as well.

I have a lot of friends out here.

So COVID calmed down and we said, It's now or never, let's go do it.

And it was the best decision we've made.

Yeah, we just have such a good community out here.

Old friends, new friends you've made.

The music scene here is fantastic.

There's just so many bars and venues and places to see music to play.

There's just a lot more opportunity.

And the community has been extremely supportive and fun.

So yeah, it was a really good decision.

Yeah, I mean, moving, visiting out here and seeing just the caliber of musicians that are playing everywhere on like a weekday night here, it was just something that we couldn't access as often back home and just knowing that like the local jam sessions when we moved here, we were on Tennison and Local 46 was on Tennison about a half mile.

So every Tuesday night we were there watching and trying to get on stage, and it just really confirmed that moving here was like a cool town for musicians that wanted to work with musicians.

MUSIC PLAYING set list and I was just wonder if you could talk to us a little bit about what love you in the morning for where that came from.

Sure.

and which album was that on that?

That's on the first one.

So we we put out the debut album.

It's called What Lies Ahead, and it was came out in June, June 14th.

And that song is basically just like an ode to our relationship.

Kind of hard to put it into words beyond the song.

but it's like the unique story behind it is that it was really like the whole foundation of the song was just a tiny little part I had.

As the Bridge to another song showed it to Ricky when we were doing a session one day, and he's like, I think that could be like a own song.

And we built it out from there.

I had like a verse idea at a chorus idea.

He threw in a pre-chorus and we were off with like a really cool, like it's just got a good groove.

Like, it's like it flows well.

It seems to be getting received well, which is such like, you know, surprise and thrill for us.

Like, yeah, it was exciting too, because obviously that is a love song and we got to perform that at our wedding with the have snacks and it's very special and fun.

Yeah, MUSIC PLAYING scene or folks that have influenced you or have helped you on the way as musicians that you love to be able to take some time to be able to give them their flowers and give them a shout out?

Definitely.

You know, first.

I'll go first.

I am obsessed.

We are both obsessed with Tedeschi Trucks Band.

We have seen, I don't know, probably like 50 shows of theirs at this point, and obviously the influences from the Allman Brothers.

I got to see the Allman Brothers for the first time with Ben at my music festival in like 2014.

That just, you know, opened my eyes completely because I hadn't seen that caliber of musicianship.

And of course, the offshoot of that is test trucks.

And Susan's one of my my idols.

So that family of of bands is is important to me personally.

I mean I tell you more locally like we'd love to work with you know the magic beans guys are also fun.

It's really cool that we're playing here tonight while Casey is putting out his album on the other side tonight, yeah.

Anybody we can.

We love working with everybody.

We've been fortunate enough to, like, play with a few cool people like Daniella Cartier's band.

We played with her last year.

Yeah, it's.

It's a great scene.

Like anyone that wants to jam, we're really excited to MUSIC PLAYING If you enjoyed watching Sounds on 29, we hope you'll support BBC 12 to help bring you more fun grassroots local music programing.

Visit PBS 12 Dawgs Flash Program support and donate today.