Paul Szmal: Good morning 750 FLX Morning. We're down to our final few weeks of the Vista Concert Series, but we've got Tank Bennett with Taylor Maid. They're playing tomorrow night. I think there were two more shows after that. The Vista, Seneca Lake Resorts at Samson State Park. Tank, good morning.
Tink Bennett: Good morning sir, how are you? I'm doing well. We're happy to have you here. It's been a big year for Taylor Maid. You've got an old member back as a new member. You've got a CD out Collaborations, and you're touring everywhere and anywhere. So tell us about 2024 for Taylor Maid.
Tink Bennett: Well 2024 has been really a very busy year with the success of Collaborations being nominated for Country Album of the Year for the Syracuse Sammy Awards. And the great news is we're making great progress on CD number six that should be coming out here in December. So not only are we really working hard on the tour and doing the dates, but we're also working out a brand new CD to come out late this year.
Paul Szmal: What's the repertoire? Any particular type or genre of country that you focus on?
Tink Bennett: We really do perform a lot of today's country hits, but also requests from the audience. And we do mix in a good dab of classic rock as well to keep everybody dancing and hopping and their energy going.
Paul Szmal: So Cortland is home base for you?
Tink Bennett: Cortland, New York, yeah. We have members from all over though. Our keyboard player is from Haines City, Florida. He flies up every week on Wednesday to his brother in Maryland, and then he goes with us on our tour dates for all the weekends from Wednesday to Sunday, and then he flies back. So he's a busy guy. Our drummer's from Vestal, and the rest of us are around the Cortland area.
Paul Szmal: And I mean you've been touring all over, not just the Finger Lakes, but all over New York, Pennsylvania, and you'll go anyplace.
Tink Bennett: Yeah, we even did a couple weeks in Florida this spring with our sponsor Gator Box Coolers down in Melbourne, Florida. A lot of fun.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, put in a plug, not very many bands have a corporate sponsor, so tell us about Gator Box Coolers.
Tink Bennett: Gator Box Coolers is a company started by a couple guys in Melbourne, Florida, who really wanted to provide a more cost-effective alternative to, say, a Yeti cooler. And these guys really hit the mark, because you put ice in this cooler, it'll last you a week, and it's about 40% of the cost of some of the other brands. So it's been a very successful partnership for us.
Paul Szmal: The website for TaylorMade is Taylor, that's T-A-I-L-O-R, TaylorMade91.com. Find them on Facebook at Taylor-Made. I mean, you guys have a lot of fun. Looking at all these pictures from all the gigs, I mean, you've got a real fun band going.
Tink Bennett: It's a blast, and I'm just blessed with a great bunch of musicians and a fantastic crew that makes it roll. And, you know, we'll ride that wave as long as we can, and, you know, we have a real infectious energy on stage, and when you're having a great time, the people coming to the show have a great time as well.
Paul Szmal: Now, you can tell a musician's really into it when they have all these side projects. You've got a couple of side gigs going yourself, don't you?
Tink Bennett: I do. I do a solo show every now and again here around home when the band's not playing, and then I have a duo called the Shenanigan Brothers with another great area guitarist, Mark Ryan, and we do duos as well when the band isn't playing. So we keep ourselves pretty busy.
Paul Szmal: Now, I think, is this your second time at the Vista this year?
Tink Bennett: Yeah, we did a country show with a band called Triggerfinger who opened for us a couple Sundays ago, and, boy, we're looking forward to this Friday because the weather forecast is looking great, and it might be one of our last chances to play outdoors this year.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, I mean, you know, the lake, and you got the mini golf course there now. By the way, the food truck this week is Fast & Fusion. If you go to SenecaLakeResorts.com, click on the Vista link, you'll see all these great food trucks are there. And, I mean, the crowds have been spectacular this year for the shows.
Tink Bennett: Exactly, and, you know, they're just awesome folks to host events. They take great care of us, and they take great care of the customers that come, and it's just a beautiful venue, one of the nicest venues we get to play at.
Paul Szmal: So tell us about this new CD, Collaborations.
Tink Bennett: Our Collaborations CD, really, what I wanted to do is, in the Cortland, Ithaca area, from Ronnie Dio in the past, right up just full of fantastic musicians, and we've all played over the years, but I've never really did projects with some of the better musicians in the area. So I reached out to some of them and asked them to collaborate with me on some songs, and so we ended up with eight songs that, each one I collaborated with a different musician to write and produce and come out with the CD, and then we were lucky enough to be nominated by the Syracuse Sammies for Album of the Year.
Paul Szmal: So I've asked a couple of the artists we've had this year who write their own stuff about the process. How do you get that germ of an idea that becomes a song?
Tink Bennett: Wow, really from life. I mean, the best songs, in my opinion, are songs that you pull right from your own experiences, and they translate to coming out and, you know, putting your emotions down on paper and on recording, with today's technology. Our last three studios, I have a finished studio in my house, and I do all the recording, all the mixing. The only thing we bring outside help in is the mastering, and we have Barncastle Studios with Lonnie Park, who's a Grammy Award-winning producer, and he helps us with the final mix and the final editing of all the songs, and away we go.
Paul Szmal: I saw you had a shout-out on Facebook to your live sound engineer. Who's that?
Tink Bennett: Ryan Newton is his name. He's out of Syracuse. He's been with us about two and a half years now, doing a fantastic job.
Paul Szmal: So after the Vista, what do you have scheduled coming up in the next few weeks?
Tink Bennett: Saturday night, after the Vista, we play at Tioga Downs Casino down in Nichols, New York, and then we take a well-deserved week off, and the following week, it's another project I have called the Crown City Rockers, and that's with Mark Ryan and a couple other folks, and once a year, we do a 70s and 80s arena classic rock show that's just a ton of fun, and that's at the McGraw Box Company in McGraw, New York, near Cortland, and you can get tickets just by going to, typing in, Crown City Rockers Show on Eventbrite. It's a ticketing site.
Paul Szmal: Wow. You can get tickets to that show. They're only ten bucks a ticket.
Tink Bennett: So what do you do to keep it fun? On one of those nights, you're tired, and it's been a long week, and maybe the crowd's not as responsive as you hope. What do you do to keep it fun and to dig down for some energy?
Tink Bennett: Well, sometimes we'll just start doing a request night. Hey, come on up with requests, whoever's there. We do have a great philosophy in the band. We're going to give you the same show for 20 people that we give for a thousand people, and it does get admittedly harder with 20 people, but it's an internal thing with every musician that plays in the band. We draw from that, and we're just going to have a great time, and we know if we do have a great time, then whoever's there is going to have a great time as well. That's the key.
Paul Szmal: All right, Tink Bennett's been our guest. Taylor Maid playing at the Vista tomorrow night from 6 to 9. I think there are two more shows after that. Like you said, forecast is looking good, so go out to the Vista and check out the food truck and have a good time. Tink, thanks for your time. We appreciate it.
Tink Bennett: And thank you for giving me a call. Hope to see you at the show.
