Ben and Nate
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Ben and Nate

Band Alternative Rock

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"Grist Mill Cafe 1/7/05"

"A cello resonated and growled a haunting song, reaching out, grabbing attention, while the guitar came slipping in as their players sang--a quartet, really, of voices. Cello droning, guitar flouncing, picking, tapping on a big stringed wooden body wrought by college vacationers Ben Katzen and Nate Ochiltree." - New Jersey Herald


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

Originally hailing from Sparta, New Jersey, Ben Katzen and Nate Ochiltree met in their junior year of high school and began experimenting with music for guitar and cello in their senior year. The partnership led to the subsequent formation of a more conventionally-orchestrated ensemble (guitar and cello with bass and drums), with which Katzen and Ochiltree gigged for a short while under the name Wash. After the band's performances brought limited success and bleak prospects for the future, Ben and Nate broke off from Wash and began performing as a duo. The two found inspiration in the rock, funk and jazz stylings of artists such as Beck, Ween, Wild Cherry, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Medeski, Martin and Wood. Ben and Nate also draw upon classical music, such as the Bach cello suites and the etudes of David Popper, for influence. With their primary aim being to produce a mature sound that is unusual but still can reach out to anybody with any sort of musical preference, they write most of their music by playing with a variety of pleasant-sounding licks and piecing them together in a fashion that is intended to draw the listener’s attention and still maintain the unique, unearthly quality of an experimental rock band.