A Wild Frontier

Exposed Vocals: So tell us your story. Where did you grow up? What made you decide to become an artist?My name is Ben Grant and I sing and play guitar for AWF. I grew up north of Atlanta and I've always loved music, and songwriting! I started writing songs as a teenager and my favorite band was Weezer, so I was writing a lot of upbeat and fun melodic songs. I didn't know much about songwriting or what I wanted to do at the time, but I knew I loved it and that's when my journey started.
Exposed Vocals: Since everyone was a start-up once, can you give any smaller or local bands or artists looking to get gigs and airplay some tips?The best advice that I could give is to just always keep moving and to get to know yourself and be content and confident in that. Put in the work day by day, hour by hour, and eventually you'll have something to show for yourself. Balance is also important, extremely important! Don't let bad reviews or the lack of interest get you too down that it distracts you from your passion, and at the same time, you can't get too high from good reviews or a lot of sudden interest, that too can be a distraction and ultimately to burn out. Slow and steady wins the race.
Exposed Vocals: Do you ever make mistakes during performances? How do you handle that?Definitely. The hardest thing for me is lyrics.. and yes I'm writing the songs, but I have tons of songs from various projects, so sometimes I'll we word things live. I've learned most people are only going to notice if you let it show, so just keep it moving and most folks won't be distracted by most mistakes.
Exposed Vocals: Do you tour? Anything interesting happen on tour that you think our readers would enjoy hearing about?AWF isn't currently touring, but in my former band, The Status, we toured for four years and have tons of interesting and crazy moments from the road. Once we were in upstate NY traveling through the night and pulled over to get gas. After we had pumped the gas and went inside to pay the fire alarm started going off and the built in extinguishers at the pumps starting spraying this white substance to put out a potential fire. So all we could see was a cloud of white and assumed we were all about to be blown up to pieces, being at a gas station, supposedly on fire.. Thankfully, we eventually found out someone had triggered this untimely prank and there was no fire at all. Crazy and scary moment in the middle of the night that I'll never forget!
Exposed Vocals: Any planned studio upgrades? What are you working with now?I love recording and songwriting, it's my favorite part of the process. I'm always looking to upgrade my studio set up and in the last year have purchase several items from Universal Audio, including their apollo interface, which is just AMAZING, as well as one of their tube preamps. Can't say enough about their gear, it's all so good.
Exposed Vocals: How do you find ways to promote your music? What works best for you?That's something that is constantly changing, but connecting with people is the age old method that will never go out of style. People like to connect with people. The platforms are faster and easier to do that now, but at the end of the day you have to have meaningful and honest content and connection. At the same time, because the landscape is constantly changing and evolving, I'm always having to learn and figure out how to introduce people to our music without oversaturating folks with the same information. I think this too has a lot to do with balance and consistency.
Exposed Vocals: If you could perform anywhere and with any artists (Dead or Alive) where and who would it be with? Why?Growing up in Atlanta and having performed most of it's clubs and venues, I still haven't played at the Tabernacle and that's by far my favorite venue to see artists in. So I would say, opening up for Weezer at the tabernacle would be pretty incredible!
Exposed Vocals: So, what’s next? Any new upcoming projects that you want to talk about?We just released our first record, "Make It Count" in April 2017, so we are playing some shows locally and just trying to get the word about it. However, we've already begun the demo process for our follow up record and hope to have it recorded by the end of the summer. Our goal and vision with AWF is to release a lot of music as often as possible, ideally at least once a year, as long as the songs and passion are there of course.
Exposed Vocals: If you weren’t making music, what would you be doing?I do lots besides making music! I'm a full time videographer for a company in GA and also a husband and father of three kids, so I stay very busy, but absolutely love every second of it. Life is sweet.
Exposed Vocals: What should fans look forward to in the next year or so?A lot of new music! We'll be releasing some acoustic versions from "Make It Count" later this year, as well as tracking for our follow up record which should be out sometime in the first half of 2018. Hope you'll stay tuned!
Exposed Vocals: Any Shout-outs?Thanks to Exposed Vocals for doing what they do, and helping artists get connected with more people, truly! - Exposted Vocals