INTERVIEW: BENNY DRAWBARS

THE ORGANIST FOR THE NHL’S SEATTLE KRAKEN

A few months ago, a hockey organist started popping up on my Instagram explore page. This was not a regular-ass hockey organist. No, reader, this organist was thinking a bit outside of the penalty box. This organist was playing everything from “Never Meant” by American Football to “Hustlin’” by Rick Ross to “Immaterial” by the late, great SOPHIE. This organist had a name: Benny Drawbars. 

For the past two seasons, Benny (real name: Ben Wolly) has been holding it down on the keys for the Seattle Kraken, a new team with only three seasons under their belt. The Kraken are a team that descends a giant neon tentacle from their home arena rafters before every game starts. They come from the land of Kurt and Eddie and Jimmy… And Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie. So it’s not a surprise that they tapped a rocker to handle the arena's Hammond duties. 

But rock is really only the tip of the iceberg for my man Benny. I called him up, and we had a chat about all things organs, emo, and hockey—and the crossover between the three, and so much more. For you people who want to understand what this sports music shit is all about... Class is in session.

So you grew up around Chicago, right? 

Yeah.

How did you get into the organ in the first place? 

Well, I started playing piano when I was five, and my dad's always been into jazz and blues, he and I would go to concerts all the time, particularly up at a community college in DuPage, they had a really good blues music series. Hammond organ features in all that stuff, and I really got interested in all sorts of keyboards, but particularly in the Hammond organ. And that was probably in middle school or high school. I went to school for engineering, but decided about halfway through that I didn't think I wanted an engineering desk job. I wanted to figure out if there’s a way that I could build instruments, and do that for a living. Through a series of accidental encounters, I ended up after college working for a pipe organ builder out in Washington, really keeping that same focus on organs of a different sort. It’s been a slow progression over 25 years or so, just falling in love with the music at a young age, and sticking with it, and finding new avenues to get involved with it.

Is this job in Seattle, is this your first time playing sports organ, for lack of better words on my part?

This is my first time as an arena organist. All throughout school, I've been in athletic bands, so I started playing at the football games when I was in eighth grade on the drumline, and then all through college I played, then after I moved out here, the major league soccer team has a marching band, and so I was in the drumline for that. So definitely I was familiar with the role that music plays at sporting events. But this is the first time that I was in the position where it's like, Alright, when the organ goes, you're on your own.

How did you land this job? 

I moved to Seattle in 2015. In 2019, the organist for the Chicago Cubs had retired. There were a bunch of news articles about Gary Pressy, who I think he'd worked there for over 20 years, he had done thousands of Cubs games and hadn't missed one. And a bunch of my friends who were still living in Chicago, they were like, It’s a bummer you're not still in Chicago because wouldn't this be a cool job you could have, and I had to agree with them, like, yeah I can't think of a much better job than getting paid to watch sports and play music. So that was just floating around the back of my head. 

Fast forward to when Seattle announced they’re getting a hockey team in, I think, summer of 2020, they put out a press release, and in the press release, they said, One of the aspects of our in-game presentation is that we're going to have a live organist. And I was like, Oh, I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I know I'm gonna get that job. Because, like I said, it's been floating around the back of my head for years. And here's an opportunity that’s presented itself, I gotta figure it out. I was looking at all the press releases and trying to figure out who would be the right person to try and talk to, someone who's in the right spot. I was looking at people on LinkedIn and trying to send messages, and that ended up not going anywhere. That first season, they had already stumbled on Rod Masters, who was in the movie Slap Shot back in the 70s. 

Wow.

But by the time the second season rolled around, they needed somebody else, and it was kind of a freak occurrence that I was hanging out with a friend who introduced me to someone that worked for the team. They said, “Hey, I know exactly who you need to talk to, send me an email.” So that kicked off the job interview process, and they must have liked what they heard and saw, and here I am now.

So you spent a fair amount of time trying to find the proper channels… 

Yeah, and as is always the case in music, when you least expect it you just run into the right person and that's kind of that last five percent. Pretty wild that it ended up working out, you know? 

How do you prepare for a game? Could you walk me through your game day? 

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I’ll mention, too, that a lot of baseball teams and hockey teams all across the country, even a couple basketball teams, have organists or people playing other sorts of keyboards. So I kind of went into this with a couple people in mind where I knew, Oh, I really like the way that they're approaching how they’re using an organ in an arena or stadium, and that's how I want to approach this job. So I specifically wanted to emulate guys like Josh Kantor who plays for the Boston Red Sox, or Jeremy Boyer, who plays for the St. Louis Blues and the St. Louis Cardinals.

I know Josh in particular was one of the first organists that I really started following and paying attention to, and his approach is a pretty unique in that—well, it's not totally unique, a lot of people do similar stuff—he makes a point to try and never repeat songs over the course of a season and also he’s big into taking requests. I think actually almost all of his setlist comes from requests from people that are in attendance at the game. And Jeremy Boyer does a bunch of stuff—he'll do a lot of ‘90s hip-hop stuff, and especially some of the requests that Josh would take are, you know, sometimes they're a little bit off the beaten path. 

From my perspective, I always find that interesting, because you have an idea when you walk into a sporting event, like, Oh, there's gonna be an organ, it's gonna be a little old-timey. But I really liked what they were doing to kind of subvert some of those expectations. So going into that, it was kind of my approach. I feel bad just mentioning the two of them because there's a ton of folks, and it's definitely not new ground, you know, I walk in the footsteps of those who've gone before me, for sure. So, I knew I wanted to try and build a pretty diverse set list, stuff that's gonna be not what you'd expect, and I also wanted to make sure the fans had a way to interact. Just from the perspective of stepping into a job that I've never done before that is ultimately about making sure that the fans have the best time, I wanted to make sure I was gonna be able to get feedback and make sure that stuff was landing.

With some of these organists that you modeled yourself after a bit, how would you study them? 

They both have very highly visible social media. You know, if you're not at a game, it’s not always obvious that a team has an organist, or you might not know what it is they're doing if it doesn't get highlighted on a broadcast, unless you're in the building. So it's been really nice that people in this job have taken to letting people who aren't in the building in on some of that experience by sharing on social media. I was following Josh years before Seattle had even announced the hockey team. It keeps the profession and this tradition alive for younger generations. People my parents age grew up like, yeah, you went to the ballgame you heard the organ. And it's been nice to see the accessibility of that experience for the next generation of sports fans continue on through people showcasing what they're doing on social media.

Around what time do you get to the arena on a game day? 

I'll usually get there at like 1 p.m., and then our game presentation staff—I play organ, we have a music director who does any recorded music for all the other puck drops; most of the those stoppage whistles over the course of the game will come from our DJ; we have two in-arena hosts who, when there's a timeout or intermission, they'll do little games throughout the arena; we have a PA announcer. So there's actually a pretty big team. And there's also behind the scenes people that don’t show up on camera. So there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes to make all of that kind of interstitial activity run smoothly. So, we’ll have a meeting, go through the script for the game, which includes all of the PA announcements, all those games done during the intermission timeout. 

Once that meeting is done, I plug in my gear, and for the most part, I'm usually not involved in much of the rehearsal, but I'll use that time to figure out what I'm gonna play for the game that day. So generally, a couple days beforehand I’ll use Spotify to get all my music I need to figure out in one spot. So I'll start building playlists of what it is that I want to try and play at this game, and sometimes it's dictated by what team you're playing. It’s been a tradition among sports organists to try and implement some clever wordplay in what they're doing. It is something that fans will look out for and appreciate if you can pull it off. You know, like, we're gonna play the San Jose Sharks—Seattle Kraken, a mythical water beast, so under the sea from The Little Mermaid is going to be a good choice for a match up against The Sharks.

So, once I've got my organ all plugged in, I'll sit down with my headphones and I'll figure out all the songs that got on that playlist. I try and build it to have around 20 or 25 songs available. Generally, I'll probably only get to about 12 or 15 of them, but hockey is a fast-paced game, and a lot can change depending on how the whistles are going, so I want to make sure I have options. We get a dinner break later in the afternoon and then doors open and then you just kind of wait around until the game starts. 

Yeah.

And that whole time for the most part, I'm still going through, practicing, keeping stuff fresh. The way I’m patched into the system is I got my organ, which is two manuals and a pedal board, and I've also got a sample pad, with drum sounds, claps, that kind of stuff. All that goes into a mixer, and I have a button, so I can control it—it doesn't have to go all through our sound booth. For the most part during the game, even if I'm not live through the arena, I'm still going through and playing, and a lot of people will come up to me and ask like, Hey I've noticed your fingers are moving all the time even when there's no sound coming out, what’s the deal with that? It’s because most of the songs I learned a couple hours before, and it's also pretty cold in a hockey arena, and if you're sitting there for a while without playing, your fingers start to get a little cold and it's harder to play.

I've also noticed you play a good amount of emo and pop punk music. 

Yeah. 

What's your background in that genre? 

I really started getting big into emo and pop punk music in late high school and college. And particularly being from the Midwest, there's a lot of that going on. Even specifically like Midwest emo. So I went to the University of Illinois, and there’s a band called American Football. “Never Meant” has turned into a meme song, but they recorded the music video for that in a house in Urbana, and when I was in the marching band, there was a year that was the house all the trombone players lived in. Fall Out Boy is from the suburbs of Chicago, one of my friends in college, he went to their high school. By the virtue of growing up around there, you're kind of around it, because it was a big scene. 

And in choosing what songs to play and how that's represented in my set list, I'm very fortunate that the people who are above me in our in-game presentation have kind of given me a pretty long leash. It’s not a micromanaged setlist, I've got a lot of creative license to choose what I think will go over well. The first season I did it, I listened to a wide variety of music, and I tried to incorporate stuff from all sorts of genres, so that whoever's in the building, there's gonna be something they're gonna know. But also, in following Jeremy Boyer and Josh Cantor, all the other folks that do this, I know from a fan perspective, I really get a kick out of when you hear stuff you wouldn't necessarily expect to hear. So that's kind of where some of that emo and pop punk stuff comes from. 

After an opponent's goal, it's like, yeah, “Never Meant” is a sad, really emo song, that's kind of a good one to play. Even if you play something that would be a kind of obscure song—like, if this is for no one else but me and everyone else is just thinking, Oh, that's nice organ music, that's great—I would be shocked if there's not at least someone who knows what it is. And so, particularly this year, I think I leaned into some of the pop punk stuff a little bit more. There are two guys that run a podcast called Bardown Breakdown, that's basically like a pop punk and hockey intersection podcast. They'll interview a lot of people that are in pop punk or emo bands, and you realize, like, Oh, there's a big overlap in these two fanbases. And so, that's one of those things where it's been nice to have social media, and you kind of get a little bit of feedback from what's hitting and what's resonating with people, what they're into. You realize there are things where it's like, Oh, these things that aren't necessarily mainstream, at least not necessarily anymore, but there's a big overlap between people who are very passionate about both. 

For sure.

But at the same time, I'll still make sure that I'm playing Smokey Robinson tunes, or trying to learn some country songs, just to make sure that whoever is there is gonna hear something on the organ that they're really into. 

And you use the sample pads, too, to help you maybe play more rap or dance-based styles. 

There's this rich tradition of the organ and sports, and as everything evolves and as the music changes, having a sample pad and being able to do some Snoop Dogg track, and have a beat behind it, makes it a little more authentic to that style of music, while still kind of bridging the gap with the tradition that's been laid before—these decades and decades of having organ music and sports.

Is there a sports theme that has persevered throughout the decades that you still find fun to play? Or is that not really a part of what you do? Like, is your setlist pretty modernized now? 

I think it's one of those things where there are other people that lean into that more, but that's not necessarily my approach to it. Which, I mean, some people could probably say that they would prefer it to be a little more traditional in some respects, but I guess that's not part of my approach, and maybe you could make the argument that it should be, but. 

No, I think that's interesting. You're trying to build maybe a new tradition. You have your own style, which I think is cool.

It’s kind of an interesting thing, across different people who do this for different teams. Even each team has its own identity and even the music programs have their own flair to it. Like Las Vegas, I haven't been down there, but they started a similar kind of new team. I think a lot of their in-game music, at least last I heard, they do a lot of EDM, which isn't necessarily what other arenas will do. You know, we definitely have a lot of grunge in our playlist. The goal song is a Nirvana song. So each team has their kind of identity and even within that, I think I learned from the Bardown Breakdown guys that New Jersey has hardcore shows on their pavilion, so they'll have mosh pits. 

And there’s some stuff that will prevail throughout. I think Josh Gondelman, a comedian that I really like, made some comment about, you know, the most exciting part of a sports DJ's job must be deciding when’s the right time to play “Sandstorm.” There is stuff like that, and that's even a kind of a newer thing. But it’s like, yeah, you go to a baseball game, you go to a football game, you go to a hockey game, and you're probably gonna hear it at some point. It’s a song everyone knows that gets the people going. But outside of some of those staples, each team can talk about their identity, and each organist also kind of does the same thing. 

So I'm doing what I'm doing. I think I’m probably heavier on the emo, pop punk stuff than some other folks probably are. Like, I know Paul Cartier can play for the Islanders, the chicken dance is a big thing at Islanders games. So there are other teams that have more of a traditional program, like Buffalo, from what I've heard from some of their radio broadcasts, it might have a little more of that classic feel. But it all depends on how each team wants to use their organ, and I think I’m lucky that it's a new team and I got in relatively early. I'm appreciative that they've let me carve out what I want the organ to sound like at Kraken games.

(Photo by Erik Sandvik)