Artist Spotlight: Kal Benion

This week's artist feature is one of the most talented, energetic and hard-working guitarists in the valley of the sun, Kal Benion. Kal is the lead guitarist of The Color 8, a six-piece band with an affinity for tweaking different genres and styles of music that is so uniquely theirs. You may find The Color 8 on Roosevelt St. in downtown Phoenix every First Friday, when the whole valley comes together for the purpose of sharing each other's talents and inspiration. You may also find them on a nationwide tour with Tempe's own Futuristic, playing to sold out venues across the country. Either way, if you catch these guys anywhere, you won't forget them.

Kal took the time to talk with us about balancing the difficult task of keeping such a large band with such a wide array of styles and sounds all together on the same page.

Meshing so many different styles of music is a difficult feat, not only in terms of the music itself, but also in reaching a agreement between different personalities… Can you tell us about a time where the band hit a wall and how you overcame it? Whether that be with the music or your relationships with

one another, how does such an eclectic, creative force continuously reach new heights?

"Well there was a time where  it was hard to get everyone together cuz at one point it was like 7 of us In the band and it was really hard to agree on what shows to do and other band decisions. Everyone had different schedules and on top of that everybody had a lot of ideas and at times it could get overwhelming, but we would just create a band group chat and that helped a lot and if we had a show where everyone couldn’t make it like the singer or piano, we would just switch things around and make it work. A lot of the members in the band our multi talented and play other instruments so sometimes our saxophone player (Ashton) will rap on songs or I’ll rap on songs, or even our drummer (Emmett) will get off the drums and sing while I get on drums. So we always try to stay  adaptable to our situations and keep our band going with the motto that it’s ok to be different and try new because that’s what life is about!

"That’s what’s living is about - not making any new actions is the same as being dead, to be living is to have a reason to do something and do it!!"

Kal and The Color 8 will be performing at The Pressroom in downtown Phoenix this Friday night, June 1st for Full Moon Festival. They will be joined by other artists such as DeLa Preme, Sunset Voodoo, Andy Warpigs, Stoneypie and many more.

Follow The Color 8 on Spotify, Instagram and Facebook for updates on new music and upcoming shows!

Thank you for reading.

RIVIR.