BentBeat’s New “Studio B” Showcases Portland as a Music City

Portland-based BentBeat Productions unveils their new “Studio B” hub as a welcoming place for Portland area artists to create audio recordings on par with the major studios and record labels.

Portland, OR, October 11, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Seattle, Los Angeles, Nashville, and New Orleans have all long been known for their bustling and stylized musical personalities.  Now, Portland-based music label BentBeat Productions announced their newest “Studio B” recording studio to serve the greater Rose City’s community of artists.

“Portland has been known for its thriving independent music scene for the better part of a decade,” Dave Beatty, co-founder of BentBeat, said. “Our goal was to help address the needs of local creators to write, record, and have internationally available, broadcast-quality material.”

Dave Beatty started BentBeat Productions in 2011 in a modest, single-room studio to create the soundtrack to the Portland-filmed independent movie “Country Girl.”  Since then, they have worked with scores of musicians releasing a dozen albums and hundreds of singles.  Located in North Wilsonville, BentBeat’s newest production hub can accommodate individual artists as well as full bands.  “Our artists come from all over the Northwest, and we wanted to have a central location with easy access to Interstate 5 and nearby hotels,” explained Beatty. 

BentBeat works ad hoc projects and signed artists such as Americana artist Dustin Rose in Gresham, Blues-based Jesse Lee Falls in Astoria, and Praise and Worship Pastor Mike Brandow in Eugene/Springfield. They focus on artist and commercial audio development.

“We have had the great opportunity to work with artists as far away as Josh Hoke in Indiana but also as close as Music Pastors like Chris Voigt in Keizer and Kate White in  Vancouver,” said Beatty.  “We have been fortunate to work with such talented artists.  It makes our job rather easy.”

“BentBeat’s success and that of our artists shows that despite reports of the music industry being in turmoil, the public is still eager to experience fresh and innovative music,” Beatty continued. “With the recent passing of the Music Modernization Act in the house and senate, we see a new and exciting trend of professional artists and musicians being compensated.”

BentBeat is both currently accepting applications for their roster and continues ongoing work with bands and individuals on smaller projects.  For more information or to make an appointment, email info@bentbeat.com or call 503.489.8275

About BentBeat Productions: BentBeat is based in Portland, Oregon. BBP’s focus is on partnering with musicians to produce, record, and release high quality broadcast-level music through streaming services, social media and traditional distribution. BentBeat’s artists are available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music and all major music sites. Please join in supporting musicians.

Contact:
BentBeat Productions
Dave Beatty
503.489.8275
info@bentbeat.com
http://www.bentbeat.com/

Mike Brandow Releases Praise and Worship Album, "Redeemed"

Mike Brandow releases his first full-length Praise and Worship album, "Redeemed," with Portland-Based BentBeat Productions – available now on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and all major music sites.

Portland, OR, July 25, 2018 --(PR.com)-- BentBeat Productions announced today that Mike Brandow (mikebrandow.com) released his first full-length Praise and Worship album, “Redeemed.” Northwest-based Brandow has been a worship pastor for 17 years, and leading worship for over 23 years. He is currently based at East Side Baptist Church in Springfield, Oregon.

“Redeemed” is Mike’s first collaboration with Portland-based BentBeat Productions.  Brandow first came to the attention of producer Dave Beatty in 2016 through a songwriting workshop. “Mike’s music stood out head and shoulders among the submissions we saw that year,” said Beatty.  “We knew immediately upon listening to his work that he had something special.” 

The first song that caught the producer’s attention, “At the Cross,” became the featured acoustic track on the album.  During the studio recording, the team captured raw footage of the session. The result became a video edited and released this week on YouTube, coinciding with the release of the album.

“With ‘Redeemed’ we wanted to do call back to the days of album format releases, unlike what most digital listeners are consuming today,” said Beatty of the project. “Music audiences can easily pick and choose which tracks they want to play. While people can still enjoy downloads of individual songs with this album, we wanted to create an experience to hear the album from beginning to end. This album starts out amping up with ‘Ready’ and takes a journey through music and message all the way to ‘Great and Mighty’ as the final track.”

Along with being the album’s opening song, ‘Ready’ has another first for Brandow: His entire family participated in a single recording. His wife, Lisa, is featured as a vocalist, and his son Jayce participated in a choir that joins the two to finish the track. “It was really great to have my family join me.”  Brandow also added, “I want this album to be more than simply Christian music people listen to. I want it to be interactive and engaging. I want people to sing.”

Ahead of the album’s release, singles ‘Amazing Grace (Your Grace Alone)’ and ‘Forever Redeemer’ were made available on music streaming sites. “We were very humbled how people responded to his modern take on the old hymn and equally happy with the upbeat approach of ‘Forever Redeemer,’” Beatty said of the preview songs.

Each track features Brandow on vocals and guitars, with Lisa joining him as a vocalist on three of them.  “It was really wonderful to see how everyone came together to make this album,” said Beatty. “Mike and Lisa have been making music together for years, and having that chemistry added something really special to this project.” 

Local musicians from Oregon and Southwest Washington were also called upon to give specific tracks their own individual tonal palettes. “‘In Your Presence’ and ‘Endlessly’ come to mind as two extremely special songs because of the beautiful strings and piano that were added to each,” commented Beatty. “The multiple collaborations throughout this album really create an incredible listening experience from beginning to end.”

Brandow will be taking the stage at the Rock the Church Northwest Music Festival on Saturday.  The festival is free to attend and runs Friday and Saturday July 27-28, 2018 at Willis Tucker Amphitheater at 6705 Puget Park Drive, Snohomish, Washington.  More event info is available at rockthechurchnw.com 

About BentBeat Productions: BentBeat is based in Portland, Oregon. BBP’s focus is on partnering with musicians to produce, record, and release high quality broadcast-level music through streaming services, social media and traditional distribution. BentBeat’s artists are available on Amazon, Spotify, Apple Music and all major music sites. Please join in supporting musicians.

Contact:
BentBeat Productions
Dave Beatty
503.489.8275
info@bentbeat.com
http://www.bentbeat.com/

Rock The Church Northwest Festival to Include Songwriting Contest

BentBeat Productions will be co-sponsoring a songwriting contest with Rock The Church at the Northwest Music Festival music festival in Snohomish, WA on July 27-28, 2018.

Snohomish, WA, June 25, 2018 --(PR.com)-- BentBeat Productions announced today that they will be co-sponsoring a songwriting contest with Rock The Church at the Northwest (rockthechurchnw.com) Music Festival music festival in Snohomish, WA on July 27-28, 2018.

The competition runs the length of the event and will accept both recordings of songs and songs recorded onsite at the summer concert festival. Headed up by Worship Leader and BentBeat co-owner, Dave Beatty, entries will be evaluated and optionally critiqued by the team.

"The songwriting contest is a great way to encourage new creativity in Christian Music," Beatty sated. "We look forward to hearing the performers at Rock The Church and meeting aspiring artists at the event as well."

Submissions to the contest at the BentBeat booth will begin at the opening of the festival on Friday, July 27th and run through Saturday the 28th. Lyric pages are encouraged to accompany the music. The winner's song will be professionally recorded and released free of charge. There is no cost to enter the contest, however, some writers may elect to pay a $5 "critique" fee for a song evaluation by industry experts.

"We believe that there is a great Northwest music story to be told," Beatty said about local talent. "Artists should not have to travel to Los Angeles or Nashville to get access to broadcast quality production and publishing."

About BentBeat Productions: Founded in 2011 by Dave Beatty, BentBeat produces and records independent musicians with ties to the Northwest. Based in Wilsonville, Oregon, BentBeat has crafted hundreds of projects and currently produces, records and also represents artists as a recording label.

About Rock The Church Northwest: A nonprofit organization based in Snohomish County, WA, whose mission, since 2013, has been to inspire a variety of talented artists to freely express themselves outside the confines of traditional worship formats and denominational exclusivity. With a grassroots approach and an abundance of prayer and volunteer support, Rock the Church Northwest has become a powerful festival of the worship arts in the Pacific Northwest.

Contact:
BentBeat Productions
Dave Beatty
503.489.8275
info@bentbeat.com
http://www.bentbeat.com/

Eggs, Bunnies and Chocolate, Oh My!

Hello, music lovers.  We thought it would be great to give everyone an "Easter Egg" sneak-peak of Mike Brandow's upcoming album this spring.  This single is a variation on the old hymn, "Amazing Grace" with Mike's personal refrain on it ("Your Grace Alone").

If you have a music subscription, it's available on Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify, Amazon or you can hear it on YouTube for free right here:

Have a great Easter, everyone!

BentBeat Productions
info@bentbeat.com

GRAMMYs 2018: 60th Birthday in Manhattan

So here we are again! It’s that time of year, it’s GRAMMY TIME.  This year we’re headed to New York for Music’s Biggest Night, and this year we couldn’t be more excited because this year we have a dog in the fight, that’s right: this year we got to peruse the list of nominees and VOTE!  Yup, we got a new fancy status as a voting member and we exercised our power. 

Boy howdy, did we ever.

So, this year, instead of giving you our predictions on who will win what (which, let’s be honest, were never very accurate anyway), we’ll give you a rundown of a few works we voted for.  Here’s the categories we feel most strongly about, in no particular order:

Record of the Year:

This is a production award, which made this category a bit of a runaway. We hand this honor to “Despacito.”  Hey, we have no idea what he’s singing about, but we figure any producer deserves a Grammy if they can make Justin Bieber sound 1. Like he’s bilingual, 2. Good.

...or 3. "Un hombre afortunado para estar con Selena Gomez"

Album of the Year: 

There’s a soft spot for this one, and it belongs to “Awaken My Love” by Childish Gambino.  You can’t beat the creativity on this project, from beginning to end it will captivate you.

Song of the Year:

This is a songwriting award, remember- we’re giving this to “Issues” because, well, we like pizzicato. (Yes, we know that probably wasn’t “written” but we’re going with it anyway.)

Best New Artist:

And since we’re there, we’re going to go ahead and give this one to Julia Michaels too.  Truth: Julia wins our vote because we did some random sampling of all of the submissions.  Out of 25 chosen samples, hers was the only collection that never landed on lyrics that included the N word.  Just trying to keep it classy over here at BentBeat…you’re welcome.

Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media:

Oo! Oo! Speaking of “you’re welcome,” we strongly and emphatically put “Moana” in this winner’s spot.  (We’ll go on record as saying we don’t think it will win.)  Here’s why: this is a tight race between “Moana” and “La La Land.” We give “Moana” our vote because while “La La Land” has some good music, it’s basically just a recording of a Broadway musical. We give full credit to the engineers and performers for the necessary manipulations to make that a good album. However, the Moana vocalists were sought out for purposes of authenticity (Opetaia Foa'i, Jermaine Clements) and talent (maybe we concede the exception of The Rock here), and the resulting recordings are, frankly, quite good.  

"Hey... wait...  Well, actually you make a fine point."

Arrangement, Instrumental and Vocals:

Here’s where we’ll give “La La Land” it’s due and vote for “Another Day of Sun.” Although the irony of being able to award Seth MacFarlane a Grammy for “I Like Myself” was not lost on us, we decided to go with the deserved winner here and not the punch line.

Pop Vocal Album:

“Evolve” from Imagine Dragons wins our vote.  See the note above regarding creativity in the Childish Gambino section.  Oh, hey, Grammy coordinators: can we officially request a duet here? We’re drooling at the possibility.

Pop Duo/Group: 

Here’s some PDX hometown love: we give our vote to Portugal. The Man and “Feel It Still.” It’s fun, guys.

Pictured here after losing a bet with a promoter

Country Duo/Group:

We love Zac Brown.  Have we ever mentioned that we love Zac Brown? Zac can have this one for “My Old Man.”

Country Song:

We give this one to “Drinking Problem” by Midland.  Anyone who can write an entire song based on a pun (and make it work) deserves an award.

Country Album:

“From a Room, Volume 1” by Chris Stapleton.  Let’s be honest.  With all of the country crossover happening today, don’t we really all just want to listen to this?  A bunch of amazing dudes sitting in a studio for a jam?  This was so refreshing and wonderful to listen to.

Country Solo:

Speaking of country crossover, Miranda Lambert gets this one for “Tin Man” purely for clinging to her country roots and making a brilliant song out of them.  Thanks for keeping the country in country music, Miranda.

Rock Performance:

We don’t have a lot of words to say about this except that there was NO WAY ON EARTH that this vote wasn’t going to “The Promise” by Chris Cornell.  We’re not crying, you’re crying.

Pop Solo:

And, while we’re busy not crying, we’ll just slide in our vote for Ke$ha and “Praying” here.  Okay, this vote isn’t a slide, it’s probably our most vehement vote of the whole bunch.  There’s a lot to say about this particular recording, but maybe another time and another place.  Excuse me while I go out and get some waterproof mascara. 

Video of the Year:

We gotta end this on a more chipper note.  Our extremely emphatic vote goes to “Makeba” by Jain. If you haven’t seen this video yet, stop reading this long-winded post and go watch it.  Right now.  In fact, you can find it here:

And that’s our votes! Sure we voted in more categories, but those are the ones we feel strongest about.  What do you think?  Did we pick the right winners?  Do we need a drinking game for the ones we got right/wrong?  We’re open to suggestions of course.  

The chaos awaits

The 60th Annual Grammys Awards are Sunday, January 28 at 4:30pm PST on CBS, and we’re ready for the countdown to begin!  Follow us all weekend on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook where we’ll be sharing our New York adventures and red carpet action on Music’s Biggest Night.  

We’ll see you there!

The BentBeat Team
bentbeat.com
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