In just one week at South By Southwest (SXSW), the world-renowned interactive, music and film conference held in Austin, Texas, six artists will be paired up and tasked with a herculean feat: to create a fully realized song, from concept to fully produced recording, in just one day. The collaborative challenge is based on the popular web series SongCraft Presents, produced by Dubway Studios in New York City, and will be presented in partnership with Acoustic Café, an independent syndicated radio network program, and Taylor Guitars, a leading manufacturer of acoustic and electric guitars.
The premise of SongCraft Presents Dubway Days is to bring together two artists, unknown to each other, to write a song in one three-hour session. From developing the concept and lyrics to its actual composition and arrangement to performance, the pressure is on to make not a good song, but a great song. A video team will be with the artists every step of the way to document the trials, missteps, successes, and eventually, the magic that lives in a great song. Dubway Studios producer and engineer Mike Crehore and artist Ben Arthur will be on hand to help foster the song development, while Acoustic Café’s Rob Reinhart will interview the artists as the process unfolds. Taylor Guitars will provide a selection of its popular acoustic-electric guitar models, including its new Grand Orchestra guitar, to offer sonic inspiration to the songwriters as they pursue their task.
All sessions at SXSW will be held in a secret location and filmed and recorded to air on Acoustic Café radio and on the websites of SongCraft Presents, Acoustic Café, and Taylor Guitars in the month of April. To view the most recent sessions of SongCraft Presents, visit www.songcraft.us and to find out more about Acoustic Café please visit www.Acafe.com.
About Acoustic Café
Acoustic Café is a two-hour weekly radio show, and an independent media production of RDR Radio, LLC. Each week, Acoustic Cafe brings listeners around the world upcoming and established songwriters in all genres, who play live in the studio and discuss their recent work. The program is produced and hosted by Rob Reinhart, who started the show in 1995, and is carried by 90 commercial and noncommercial radio stations in North America, Voice Of America worldwide, and through numerous outlets on the Internet. www.acafe.com
About Ben Arthur
Ben Arthur’s new release, If You Look for My Heart, is an interrelated concept album and novel pairing. Sharing title, themes, and characters, the album and the book are densely interrelated, yet independent works. Guest appearances by Aesop Rock and Rachael Yamagata on the album are echoed in the narrative of the book.
Ben has released five previous albums and one novel, performed many times on national television and the internationally syndicated radio program Acoustic Café, and has shared the stage with artists including Dave Matthews, Tori Amos, Bruce Hornsby, Shawn Colvin, Toots and the Maytals, and Sophie B Hawkins. Ben has licensed his songs to ABC, CBS, Showtime, and PBS, and has had three half hour specials devoted to his work on Sirius XM radio.
Since 2011 Ben has hosted and co-produced the video series SongCraft Presents, in which he writes and records a song with a featured artist over the course of a day. Guests so far have included John Wesley Harding, Ollabelle, Vienna Teng, Tracy Bonham, and Latin film star and two-time Grammy-nominee Ximena.
Live performances, interviews, fan-made videos, and covers of Ben’s songs by other artists can be found online at YouTube, Facebook, iLike, LastFM, etc. On Pandora Ben’s songs log more than 20,000 plays per month.
For additional information, please visit www.benarthur.com
