haute_collection

Kawasaki Cam here.

i wanted to take a minute before all the japan whirlwind faded and publicly tell you about mr benn suede. you see, he does A LOT of things that hardly anyone sees or knows about and i think he deserves his flowers for all the work he did to make this tour possible.

when we started talking about touring in japan last year, i had a ‘“small kinda show” in mind. something more paired back…still great of course, but not too fancy since there’d be so many unknowns. but benn had other plans. he wanted our show to be streamlined, perfected and full of new material. he spent months prepping tracks, learning new programs, switching gear out, tweaking guitar tones, building automations, testing testing testing and more testing. i am not a tech nerd like him and eric, so i can’t possibly give you an accurate list of all those things…but i can tell you, it was a shit ton of work and the shows would have SUCKED without him. he pushed us to start rehearsing far earlier then i had ever started rehearsing for something; which was a huge blessing because we were actually able to have some fun performing instead of overthinking. he purchased gear we didn’t even know we needed and he (and eric) made our live rig as small and bad ass as a rig could be. on top of that, he still had to be all the other roles he plays in this duo (here’s a few, just so you have an idea):

-lead vocal. he had a lot of prep work to do on vocals and he was dedicated to the craft for months. vocal warm ups, learning new parts, adding techniques, etc.

-lead guitar. he had a million and a half parts to learn as most of our set was brand new material that is fricken hard to play (especially once we added singing over top of them)

-mr visionary. he is full of great ideas for our brand, music, visuals, etc and continued dreaming big even in the middle of tour prep. our work (finishing an album and vision for the rollout) didn’t stop just cause we were going on tour.

-fashion diva. i’m sure you’ve seen by now that i am not the only lover of great fits in this duo. benn usually has more of an opinion on whats right for us AND crazy cool ideas for how to level up our style.

-personal barista. benn makes my coffee better then i make my coffee, so even tho things were busy, there was an expectation for delicious coffee as often as possible and he crushed that expectation.

-graphic designer. every poster, single art and font of ours is made by benn. usually the idea comes from his brain AND he executes it beautifully.

there’s LOTS more he does for haute feels, but i think you get the point. he’s kinda the best and does a lot for this duo that most don’t see. i am proud to call him a team-mate and i am grateful to have such a creative and cool dude helping me to be better and push harder. if we win in this industry it will most definitely be because of him. give him a pat on the back when you see him next. or actually, a public shoutout would be even better.