Ben Prestage

I've just seen one of the handful of best musicians I've ever seen. Be prepared for a lot of superlatives.

It was a total surprise. He looked pretty good on paper, but I was completely unprepared. Ben Prestage (see also this link) is a one-man band (how boring sounding) who plays delta blues (which I like a lot, but find a little one-dimensional).

Whoops!! We saw him at the wonderful Luna Star Cafe, which must have the best beer menu in the world (they even have many of the beers on the menu).

Well, this guy's delta blues were great, and multi-dimensional, to say the least. Sort of Mississippi John Hurt meets the Holy Modal Rounders meets I-don't-know. He's a fabulous blues guitarist and singer.

The truly remarkable part is the one-man-band thing. You'd figure that this would be like a checker-playing dog: Yeah, pretty amazing, but I beat him 4 out of 5 games. But here's the thing. While he's a star-quality blues guitarist, he is really good at every single instrument, playing simultaneously:

Lead Guitar
Bass Guitar (on the one or two lowest strings, depending on the guitar)
Snare (with two foot-pedal mallets--left toes)
Bass Drum (with one foot pedal--right toes)
Hi-Hat Cymbals (foot pedal controlled--left heel)
Blues Harp (I think it was in A)
Voice

Of course, he does the traditional series-of-solos introduction to the band number (and on bass, from Central Florida, BEN PRESTAGE).

His guitars, and he has a whole range of them stacked up behind him, are mostly hand-made cigar-box guitars (the bodies are cigar boxes). He also has traditional guitars, and plays banjo and fiddle, that we saw. He spends a lot of time with a bunch of amps, getting it all balanced. I guess he plays roadie, too.

The best way to check out his music is to listen to the 4 songs on his MySpace Page. Especially the last 3. Also, a YouTube search turns up about 62 videos (but the sound is never good). You can get some sense watching The Giver (but go to his MySpace page to listen to the same song and hear how good he is):