Ben Kweller

sings, makes and performs music. Over the years, people have called him an indie-rocker, anti-folkie, balladeer, pop-rocker, crazy sum-bitch, alt-rocker, among other things. According to Ben himself, he writes a lot of songs, they're all very different but they're all the same too. He’s been a musical artist his whole life, even when he worked at the skating rink in 5th grade and heard Nirvana for the first time, he was making music. He is married to a girl named Lizzy, the love of his life, and they have two sweet boys.

Ben was born in San Francisco in 1981. In 1982, his family relocated to Emory, TX where his father, Howard Kweller, became the town's first doctor. In 1986, the Kwellers moved to the larger Texas town of Greenville.  Howard taught Ben how to play the drums when he was seven years old. For the next year, they would play together almost every night after Howard got home from work. Howard sang and played guitar while Ben played the drums. When Kweller turned eight, someone showed him how to play “Heart and Soul” on the piano and the youngster immediately began to create his own songs using the same chords. By the time he was nine, he had a dozen original compositions under his belt.  In 1993, Kweller became friends with a local musician, drummer John Kent, and formed the band Radish with bassist Ryan Green.

After 6 years as a member of Radish, at age 19, Kweller moved with his then girlfriend, Liz Smith, to New York, where he began his solo career. He played acoustic shows and self-released four EP’s, comprising some of the unreleased Radish Discount Fireworks 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. Dando invited Kweller on tour with him. Jeff Tweedy, Juliana Hatfield and Guster also noticed Kweller and took him on tour with them.

In March 2002, Sha Sha, Kweller's first solo studio LP, was released. Ben has since released 5 solo albums and, “toured nonstop all over this planet, performing for the coolest fucking fans in the world."