Nashville indie-rock trio Ben Sparaco and The New Effect have announced a national spring tour, including headlining shows and support slots for G. Love & Special Sauce.
Ben Sparaco grew up as a fixture in the Florida music scene during his teenage years. Now based out of Nashville, the twenty-year-old has blossomed into a guitarist to be reckoned with, creating quite the name for himself in the southern rock scene and beyond. In addition to briefly touring with Butch Trucks & The Freight Train Band—the late Allman Brothers Band drummer’s solo project—Sparaco has collaborated with members of Dead & Company, Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Warren Haynes Band, and more. Ben Sparaco’s debut solo album, Wooden, was released last January, and was produced by Ross Holmes (fiddle/mandolin for Bruce Hornsby, Warren Haynes, Mumford & Sons) and features guitarist Luther Dickinson of Mississippi All-Stars.
Beyond spending much of his time on the road, Sparaco has been honing both his songwriting and vocal chops. When he discovered Berklee-educated drummer Anthony Quirk and bassist Adam Discipio, the three musicians formed Ben Sparaco And the New Effect. After playing together frequently onstage, the three took to East Nashville studio The Bomb Shelter to record their strong debut EP, Greetings, from Ben Sparaco And The New Effect, which you can listen to here.
Ben Sparaco and The New Effect will hit the road on their 26-date tour with the inaugural show Friday, March 1 in Boulder, CO at Fox Theatre as direct support for G. Love & Special Sauce. An additional six dates in the tour’s coast-to-coast itinerary will accompany G. Love & Special Sauce while the others will be headlining engagements.
“When we’re opening for G. Love we’ll be doing 45-minute sets which is short for us”, says Sparaco in a press release. “Those shows will be all about making the best impression we can in a relatively short time. We’ll probably stick to a similar setlist with pre-determined transitions whereas our headline shows will be a little more improvisational and have more setlist variation.”
The tour will make additional stops in Denver, Aspen, Nashville, Athens, Richmond, Washington D.C., New York City, Asbury Park, Indianapolis, Asheville, and many others before wrapping in Alpharetta, GA at Matilda’s on Saturday, June 1st.
“Some of these shows are our first theater shows ever which is super exciting for us and we get to go to some of our favorite places on this tour; Colorado, New York City, etc.,” adds Sparaco. “We’ll be stepping it up a notch for these bigger audiences by incorporating a lot of new sounds into our set that we’ve never had in our music before.”
To wrap the band’s 2018 year, they released their latest single, “Scared of The Dark”, which you can listen to below.
Ben Sparaco And The New Effect – “Scared of the Dark”
“I’m playing a lot less lead guitar on this song than I normally would,” says Sparaco. “It’s funny that it worked out that way because the song is about my younger self and a lot of the insecurities that came with growing up and trying to be a musician. When I was younger, I was all about being a guitar player. As I’ve grown up, I’ve become more focused on songs. This song really shows where I’m at right now with my songwriting, while referencing a past version of myself the whole time.”
Ben Sparaco and The New Effect are also putting the final touches on their debut full-length album which is expected to be released in the fall (all details TBA). For more information and to purchase tickets to the upcoming tour, click here.
The post Ben Sparaco And The New Effect Announce Spring Tour, Dates With G. Love & Special Sauce appeared first on L4LM.
