“It’s been almost four years since my last album,” Marco Benevento says, as he traces the origins of his forthcoming Big Crown debut, Glera. “However, I’ve been very productive since then. I finally finished my record and it’s coming out on a really dope record label. And I’m super excited about.”

Indeed, the New Jersey-bred, Woodstock, N.Y.-based keyboardist has been incredibly busy in recent years, both in and out of the studio. In addition to his work with Joe Russo’s Almost Dead, Benevento continues to perform under his own name as a solo piano act and with his trio, which is currently rounded out by bassist Karina Rykman and drummer Chris Corsico. He’s simultaneously expanded his inner circle to include producer/keyboardist Leon Michels and his cinematic soul outfit El Michels Affair, both joining the ensemble on the road for some choice shows and lending his services as a session musician for their collaborations with crossover acts like Clairo and Lady Wray. Elsewhere, he’s also recently worked with the likes of Leon Bridges, Kali Uchis, Kevin Morby and old pals The Barr Brothers, with whom he has been sitting in since The Slip days.

And that Venn diagram of interests and influences will be on full display at Benevento’s fifth annual Follow The Arrow festival, which will take place at Palenville, N.Y.’s Griffin House on Saturday, June 27. In addition to an expanded version of Benevento’s trio, the eclectic lineup will feature The Budos Band, Tortoise, Ghost Funk Orchestra, Thee Marloes and Cochemea, as well as DJ sets from El Michels Affair and Edan. As is now tradition, the keyboardist will also share the stage with the Benevento Family Band, which will find him recreating his homegrown Jersey Shore sing-alongs with a range of relatives. Moreover, the event will, once again, highlight “collaboration, improvisation and community,” three cornerstones of Benevento’s career.

As he prepares for the 2026 edition of Follow The Arrow, Benevento walked Relix through how he puts together the boutique event’s lineup each year, his fruitful friendship with Michels and why Bob Weir taught him and the rest of JRAD the value of just chilling. 

Let’s start by walking through your Follow The Arrow lineup. This year marks the fifth time you are hosting your own festival and a mix of new and old friends, as well as some heroes. How did you go about putting together the artist roster for the event?

Well, I started working with Joey Massa at Space Agency booking about three years ago and he just has an amazing lineup. It basically came about because I’ve been playing with El Michels Affair—Leon Michels and his band—and Joey books them. And so, between JRAD, [my work with] El Michels Affair and my band, I just thought it would be easiest if the booking agent who booked my band with Karina and Chris was on board with all that. So now we have a wonderful, busy calendar year with no conflicts because he knows what’s going on. I’ll get my JRAD schedule, send it to him and then we work around it and it’s copacetic and great.

And Joey books a bunch of the bands we have on the festival every year, like El Michels Affair, who is doing a DJ set this time. He also books Os Mutantes, who was actually on our festival when Mike Gordon played with us two years ago, and this year Joey booked Thee Marloes, another Big Crown band that I am really excited about. He knows a lot of other booking agents and some of the people on the lineup came through Joey and Space Agency, where he would recommend people who made sense for us. All the bands that he books are awesome and it’s a small agency, so he was a big help.

But even though all the bands we have are from different families and genres, I actually know a bunch of people from each of the bands personally. With Ghost Funk Orchestra, I’ve collaborated with Seth [Applebaum], the bandleader, on a bunch of recorded music, and we went on tour together with my trio, so that was a no-brainer. And I’ve known Cochemea since the early 2000s, when he played with Robert Walter’s 20^th Congress when Joe Russo was still in it. So we go way back, and he was actually my roommate in Brooklyn, N.Y. for a bunch of years when I lived there.

I’ve played with the Budos Band before and I’ve gotten to know Tommy [Brenneck], the guitar player, through El Michels Affair—we recorded at his studio out in LA. And Rich [Terrana], one of their percussion players, played with me on this Freddie Gibbs and Madlib gig we did. It’s funny how that works out, where there is this whole network of musicians and you find a bunch of different threads between so many different kinds of bands—like Cochemea has played with those guys forever as well.

So we had Budos Band, we had Ghost Funk Orchestra and we had Cochemea, and then we just needed one more sort of bigger name, and Joey recommended Tortoise. And I was like, “Bro, I’m so down. My 1999-musician-self is freaking out right now.” I love that record that they put out called Standards in the early 2000s. I remember hearing it and being like, “Who’s the drummer? Who’s the guitar player? What’s going on here?” And what’s funny is that, since then, I’ve actually had the chance to play with those people in different situations. I went out and recorded with John McEntire in Chicago about 10-plus years ago and a couple of tunes from that made it on my [2012] record, Tigerface, and then I went out and played at Yoshi’s in Oakland, Calif., like 15-plus years ago, and had Jeff Parker as a guest one night. I’ve met some of the other guys from Tortoise along the way as well, and it didn’t feel like that far of a stretch to see if they were around to do the fest. And when they confirmed, I was like, “Oh, man, this is one of the best lineups we’ve ever had.”

It’s so amazing how that works. I haven’t been in touch with Jeff Parker or John McEntire since we hung out, but I’m excited to reach out to them and connect with them before they come and see them at the fest. It’s our fifth year in a row doing this, so it was cool to make it a little extra special.

This is your second year hosting the festival at Griffin House in Palenville, N.Y. What drew you to that location?

We’re super excited. We have a good friend of mine that I met through the JRAD family—who runs Back Home Cannabis Co., this amazing cannabis store, and a bunch of different cannabis shops—helping out. He’s always wanted to be involved in music and festivals, and I’ve DJ’d events at his dispensary in Accord, N.Y. We just hit it off. He’s a really nice guy, and he has been super helpful with getting everything together. He’s basically our sponsor, and we moved it to Griffin House in Palenville, N.Y. from Arrowwood Farms in Accord, N.Y., because the owner is married to Simon Felice, one of the Felice brothers, who I’ve known for a long time. And Palenville is a lot closer to our house than Arrowwood. Griffin House is smaller and more intimate but also a little nicer and fancier and it felt like a fun little upgrade. It’s just a super chill, all-ages daytime festival with really good food.

Last year, we had this band Camp Saint Helene there,  they play very mellow, vibey music and it was so good to see everybody just chilling—lying on their blankets. When you think of summer music festivals, you sometimes picture a sea of people jumping and dancing all day, but this is the more chill side of that. Some of the music is meditative—especially Cochemea’s music, which is spiritual jazz—though it is still all over the place. Last year, one of our headliners was Say She She and they brought the party from 8:30-10 p.m. when it got dark.

You’ve mentioned El Michels Affair a few times already. Leon Michels has grown into one of your closest collaborators in recent years and has played a big part in getting your music out to new, receptive audiences. I know your friendship involves your families and your mutual love of tennis, but how did you first connect? 

It basically all started with Richard Swift and the connection I had with him. Richard Swift—sadly, RIP—and I linked together to make a record after I heard that Foxygen album that he made, We Are the 21^st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic. I freaked out and was blown away by the sound of everything and the looseness of it. I found out that he was a drummer and that he had produced it, but one of the things that sealed the deal for me is that my wife Katie’s sister, coincidentally, lived in the same town as him. So we would go there and I’d play solo piano shows at this little place called The Axe and Fiddle. And Richard would come and do sound for us. We had Andrew Barr [on drums] at that time in my band and if he was there, I’d be like, “Oh, man, can you get a drum for him to use?” And Richard would show up with the most amazing, vintage-sounding drum kit. It was incredible.

I was like, “Who’s this guy?” And then Rosie, Katie’s sister, was like, “You gotta meet. He’s a really cool dude. He was just on tour with Wilco and he knows James Mercer. He’s this amazing producer/multi-instrumentalist that lives in the middle of nowhere—Cottage Grove, Ore.”

He had all these killer connections to bands I absolutely loved—Foxygen, Wilco, The Shins, Danger Mouse. And then, after connecting with him, we went out there for about a week and made [my 2014] record with him, which I called Swift.

And then a couple of months after that, I got a call from Dan Auerbach, who was like, “I got your number from Richard Swift. We have a band called The Arcs, and Leon Michels has to miss the last week of the tour because he’s having a kid. Can you sub for three or four gigs?” And I was like, “Hell, fucking yeah I can!”

So I went out and met everybody on The Arcs tour. The people in the band were Homer Steinweiss, the [Dap-Kings] drummer that I’ve been playing a lot with lately, Nick Movshon, the [Daptone-associated] bass player and Richard. Leon was there for the crossover period, where I could sit in and rehearse and he could show me the songs.

All of a sudden, I was on a tour bus with all of those guys doing these shows [including Coachella] and what’s really funny is that I am normally a very outgoing, funny, goofy guy. I like to hang. So I wish some of my friends could have seen me on the tour bus with Dan Auerbach and all these cool guys. They’re five years younger than me, and there was almost a generational gap kind of thing. I was the quietest person on the bus and would be on Shazam the whole time going, “What songs are these? What music do these guys like? What is happening here? I’ve been in a bit of a bubble.”

Now, that bubble’s kind of big and I’ve been in this amazing music scene for so long, but when I met these musicians, I didn’t know one song they’d play during the hang on the bus. I was just completely intrigued and obsessed with wanting to know what was going on here. So on that tour, I learned a lot and took so many screenshots of songs and artists that I didn’t know, and Dan was actually a really great hang.

There was a night in New Orleans where Dr. John was maybe gonna sit in with us and I was freaking out. They got an upright piano and they were like, “Marco, go test the upright piano just in case Dr. John comes tonight.” It was like, “This is insane.”

So Leon and I met through that whole scene and when I was basically ready to make my record, Let It Slide, I thought it would be cool to work with him because Richard and Leon were tight, and I had just made a record with Richard. When I told Richard that, he was like, “Oh, man, I’ve always wanted you and Leon to hook up. You guys would make some really great music together.”

At this point, I didn’t really even know the guy; I had just subbed for him and met him for eight hours. But we linked up for the Let It Slide record that came out in 2019. When I went to Queens to record at Diamond Mine, his studio, and we got to know each other a little more, we realized we had kids that were the same age and that we both had an affinity for tennis. It was just one of those musical connections where we just went, “This is cool. We’ll probably do this again.”

Around then, he was also really eager to sell his Brooklyn apartment, and he wound up moving up here and he now lives 20 minutes from my house—our kids hung out a lot when he moved nearby, and we played tennis every week. In fact, we still play tennis every week and have for years.

We also both have home studios, so he’d come over and he’d be like, “Oh, I need you to play on a track,” so I would play a solo or something or some Rhodes and it would end up on a
Lady Wray song or a Clario song.

That’s when I realized, “Oh, this guy is a producer, this other role in music.” He’s an instrumentalist, performer and player, but he’s mainly a producer and he’s incredible at it. He started hiring me for stuff—we kind of joke about this saying, but it holds true. He’d say, “Just do your special-purpose thing.” Everybody in the El Michels Affair band has their own special purpose, which is both so obvious and so true. Homer has an incredible drum feel that nobody else has and it’s the same with the way Nick plays bass. And when you put it through Leon’s filter, it turns out to be this amazing thing.

That brings us to another point I wanted to touch on. Through your work with Leon, you have also ended up on some pretty prominent records in the hip-hop and pop spaces, which are new worlds for you.

Yeah, so for the last few years, I’ve been overdubbing on random people’s records. I played piano on the song “Ala Vida,” which is on Leon’s [2022] record Yeti Season,and I played on Adult Themes, the record before that.

Honestly, one of the biggest things that has happened over the last three years is that our house here in Woodstock is surrounded by these two outbuildings. One was a three-car garage that was unfinished and was just kind of used to store junk for years. And the other one was a small studio space in an old chicken coop that was my studio. But, recently, I turned the three-car garage into my studio, so it’s bigger. I have a couch—I have an area where we can hang out. I have a lot more space. So Leon’s been coming here a lot to record. His [2025] record 24 Hr Sports was basically all recorded here, and a lot of the Lady Wray stuff was done here—she came here to record the basics for her new record, but, of course, overdubbed and messed with it in other studios as well. And, now that I have a bigger, better spot to record, it’s even more fun.

I’ve also done a bunch of live gigs with Leon and El Michels Affair—we backed up Freddie Gibbs for a bunch of tours last year withMadlib. We played in London, and we did the Salt Shed in Chicago and sold out the Greek in L.A., which was awesome. It’s just fun to hang in another scene that’s just as fruitful and inspiring as the JRAD scene and our whole scene, which is also amazing and rich with history. This scene is the same, with so much history and all these stories about the songs and people knowing the dates of things and getting obsessed with stuff. It’s been really fun to become part of that.

It must be interesting to explore an entirely new scene at this point in your career—and both meet new collaborators and find connections to the world you have been part of for the last three decades. 

I love it. You play music your whole life. You get established—you drive your station wagon around, then you drive your van around, then you link up with people, and then maybe you’re on a tour bus and you really get it going and maybe you meet a lady or get married. I’m almost 50, so I felt like, “I’ve got my scene. I’ve got amazing fans, friends and musicians I play with all the time.” And then, all of a sudden, this whole new thing popped into my world that’s so inspiring and so helpful to my own musical path and career. So to have this additional thing get tossed into the mix is keeping me inspired and making me feel very creative all the time. I really love it and love that, somehow, I can do both. There’s enough days in the year where I can play Red Rocks with JRAD and then open up for Alabama Shakes in Queens with El Michels Affair or play the Greek with Freddie Gibbs.

Another cool thing is that the way those guys make their living is through songwriting, recording and publishing. And that’s a whole other universe than what I’m used to. Usually, I get in the van, I do my gig, I get 500 bucks, I come home and that’s how I make my money. These guys make a record, they get writing credit, and then they get a check in the mail. I’m like, “How does that work? You mean I don’t have to get in my van and bring the songs to people at the venue?  They could just listen to it?” So I’m learning a lot about that and how publishing/songwriting credits work. I got a songwriting credit on “Juna,” which is one of Clairo’s biggest hits. That song was actually written for Leon’s record, but she liked it so much that she took it from him and made it her own, so there’s this whole other life of music I’m learning about with all of these different elements.

Obviously, you know how close I am with Russo, right? So I’m telling him all this stuff and my nickname that my dad gave me when I was a little kid is Bunky. And if you’re my close friend, you can call me Bunky. So as I am telling all of this to Joe, he’s like, “You’re Hip-hop Bunky now!”    

Your work with Leon has also influenced your solo music. Your next album, Glera, is going to be released on Big Crown and the singles you recently dropped feel very in line with that world. Can you talk a bit about your latest batch of songs, starting with the singles?

The A side is a song called “Frizzante,” which is filled with horns and guitar. It’s an instrumental song and the side B is a song that I wrote and then sent to this Italian singer, Marianne Mirage. She sang in Italian and turned it into a whole other song and I was like, “Oh, baby, this is nice. I’ve never heard any of my songs like this before.”

I’ve been working on Glera, my new record that’s coming out in July, for the last three or four years. My main inspiration has been Italian movie score soundtracks—bands or composers that are involved in that world, like Alessandro Alessandroni and Piero Umiliani. They create really cool, almost library music. These bands of out Italy would write instrumental songs and make 20 songs a day that could then be used for these films.

It’s pretty easy to just do a deep dive into something these days but I got way into it with Spotify, just finding incredible music from that genre. I would go into my studio every afternoon while the kids were at school and try to write a song that sounded like a song that I really liked from an Italian movie.

And, basically, that’s how this whole thing started, just by being very inspired by instrumental, Italian music for films. I was introduced to these Italian composers I’d never heard of before, and I would even look for some of their records on vinyl. But I wouldn’t be able to find them online and would end up buying these rare CDs. Then I’d go into my car to listen to them because I don’t have a CD player in my house. [Laughs.]

I would just sit in my van, listen to a bunch of songs and then run inside and try to write something that sounded like that. I would start by playing the drums, and then I’d play bass and play piano and then add all of these things.

So I was filled with this new kind of inspiration from all that and then, at the same time, I’m obviously still hanging out with Leon all the time. He’s coming over and we’re writing music and I’d play him a song I was working on, and he’d be like, “Man, that shit sounds legit.” I also got my friend Katie Jacoby to play some strings and Ray [Mason] to play trombone and this trumpeter player Dave Guy [of The Roots and the Daptone family], who I have been doing gigs with, to play on it. Basically, I would send my songs to my friends to see if they could add stuff.

All of a sudden, I had all these demos that were sounding pretty good, almost not like demos and more like possibly finished tracks. I just played them for Leon, and he’s like, “What are you gonna do with these songs?” We were playing tennis when he asked me—we were between points and it was a close game and I was like, “I don’t know, maybe Big Crown 2026? What do you think?” And he was like, “Sure, man.” I was like, “What?” But he linked me up with his other friend who runs the label with him and we just hit it off instantly and it was a no-brainer. I’ve always loved their stuff, like The Shacks.

While some of your reference points here are new for you and many of your fans, in certain ways, this music feels like a return to some of the earliest music you released under your own name, which was more instrumental-based than the song-driven, vocal tracks you have been focusing on as of late.

Exactly, this is all instrumental music inspired by Italian films from the ’60s and ’70s. And going back to my earliest days and The Jazz Farmers and the Duo, it was all instrumental music and it’s nice to go back to that. I love to sing as well, and I have songs that I sing live with Karina and Chris—and Karina’s now singing with me, too! But when my band first started, I wasn’t singing, and I made three records of instrumental music. We just played instrumental music—it wasn’t until we had Karl [Annakalmia Traver] from Rubblebucket record with us that I discovered that my music could have vocals and it could sound cool, and then I started singing.

But I like going back to instrumental music because I love that type of music and more than half the songs on the new record are instrumental. And then I have guest singers on some other tracks. So I want to say that it is a departure record, but it’s really an arriving-back record. It’s like [Benevento’s 2008 debut] Invisible Baby but with lots of muscle.

Once you decided the direction you wanted to go in, what was the process like of putting this set of songs together?

There was a period of three or four years where I didn’t really release any new music, though I’ve been doing a lot of things, so I took my time with this and did it the right way. And then I filtered it through the people at Big Crown, so there’s that influence, and there’s Leon’s influence as well. Along the way, I’ve also figured out how to be a producer and how to be an engineer and how to make a record and put together songs.

Going back to me sitting in the car, listening to a CD of Italian instrumental music, I basically compiled 40-plus instrumental songs inspired by cinematic Italian music and I played it for the people at Big Crown and they were like, “Well, you need to write four more.” I was like, “Wait, I have 40 songs,” and they’re like, “You need more,” which was a good thing for them to say. That’s what needs to happen when you are figuring out what to make. 

Going back to the festival and your local Upstate New York community, you tried some of these tunes out at Woodstock, N.Y.’s Bearsville Theater with an expanded band recently. Who are some of the players that fleshed out the trio with Karina and Chris?

I just gotta say, we got one big Hudson Valley hug that night. There truly is magic in these mountains. Jenn Glickman is such a wonderful lady to be greeted by upon entering the venue. I had the amazing Sam Cohen come and play guitar and I hope he’s free to maybe do some other shows. I had Jay Collins, who plays in the Ramble Band, on saxophone and flute, and he sings really well, too. And then I had a trumpeter named Chris Payson, who is the trumpet player on the “Frizzante” 7-inch record I put out. Jay lives 10 minutes from me and both Chris and Sam live 20 minutes from me, so I thought it would be smart to rehearse with the local guys who are down to clown and learn the shit. And, hopefully, they will be free to go forward to play some shows when the record comes out.

I actually want to add another keyboard player too because, on the record, there are multiple keyboards on some of the songs—I thought it would be cool to maybe use Zach [Tenorio] from Taper’s Choice on a couple of gigs or something. We go way back so I already texted him, “Are you down to jam in the band?” And he said, “Hell, yeah!” So I’m excited to tour the record and play some big shows in some major cities with an expanded band because I’ve never done that. I’ve always had a trio. Obviously, as you know, the road is expensive, but I want to go for it. I’m like, “Hell, I don’t care, let’s go!”

Big Crown is also celebrating their 10-year anniversary this year, so there’s a lot of big shows coming up that will be announced shortly—we’ll play a lot of El Michels Affair’s music, my music, Homer’s music, Dave Guy’s music, Lady Wray’s music. It’ll be this whole group of musicians playing other people’s albums, essentially. And then, me, Karina and Chris will go on the road and play some shows and, hopefully, Sam, Chirs and Jay can join us as well.

It was so fun to play “Frizzante” live with horns—it just felt really good to play a handful of the new tunes with the expanded band. When I first played with Levon, I remember him telling me, “It ain’t a band without horns!” And now we got ‘em! We’ll be bringing this same band to Follow The Arrow this year. It feels really good to have a bigger sound live. I’ve been doing the trio for over 20 years now so it’s very exhilarating to hear my music with more intensity, color and volume.

Speaking of Bearsville, you have popped up at a few shows there recently, often as a surprise guest. I was hoping we could get your quick takes on three recent gigs at the venue that you participated in—The Barr Brothers’ recent date, the Bob Weir tribute and Mike Gordon’s tour kick off with his new solo band.

I’ve known Brad and Andrew since I was 18, so I feel like they are almost like brothers to me. We go way back to the mid-’90s Boston days and playing with them has always felt very natural. So, of course, being up on stage with them recently at the Bearsville Theater felt like a nice, cozy blanket around me. Their music is so beautiful, and to add a little accordion and stand up there next to Brad felt really special—almost like a little reunion.

The Bob Weir sing-along night was an amazing representation of how much people truly love live music up here, especially the Grateful Dead. To play in the lounge on the same floor as the audience is a treat. Just throwing a line out to some musical friends in the area and immediately hearing back about how stoked they were to come celebrate the life of Bob Weir was overwhelming—and hearing everyone sing to Bob’s music was so moving. The line was out the door, and folks couldn’t get enough. I was happy to be a part of that and I’m really glad Pete put that together at the last minute. 

Mike Gordon’s new band sounds so good. I texted Mike immediately after the show—actually, I think it was during the show—and said that everyone’s singing sounded so good. To hop up there next to Robert [Walter] felt really special, again, almost like a reunion. I haven’t seen him in a while and we actually sorta caught up—literally on stage while jamming. We were smiling and hugging, saying, “I’ll see you in New Orleans next.” I love that guy. Mike’s bass playing always surprises me. There’s never a dull moment and he’s always looking to connect musically. I also really love that guy.

Finally, to bring it all back home, you have shared the stage with Bob Weir a few times over the years when he sat in with JRAD. There’s the famous show where he literally sat in on a sofa at LOCKN’, a big Brooklyn Bowl gig for JRAD’s 10^th anniversary and a night on his home turf in the Bay Area. What were your takeaways from playing with Bob and the members of the Dead? 

The first person I played with from the original Grateful Dead was Phil and, obviously, that was a hook-up through Russo and Shapiro at the Capitol Theatre [in Port Chester, N.Y.]. It was mind-blowing and I love the Dead. I was beyond happy to be on stage and rehearsing with Phil and hearing that bass sound. Everything about it was like, “OK, I got a nice, big Grateful Dead fix there from Phil!” And then JRAD took off a little bit after that and then we wound up playing at the Fox Theater in Oakland [in 2016]. We were doing an acoustic set, which was really fun, and Bob came and hung out in with us in the green room and we met him. There was something different about meeting Bob than there was about Phil. Meeting Bob was like meeting your cool uncle where it’s like, “Hey, I know you!”

He was always thinking about something higher than the moment. I remember we got to the gig, we had the acoustic-set plans, and we were getting things together and [speeds up his voice] going like, “OK, at the endi we are going to do the ‘da da da,’ and this and that.” And as we were talking to him about all that, he would just say one remark. Anything that came out of his mouth, your heart rate slowed down, and it was like, “You’re right, man. It’s not up to us because it’s up to some other thing.” It was this beautiful San Francisco, Grateful Dead mind frame that I just wanted to be surrounded by. We’re these young Jersey kids playing aggressive Grateful Dead music, and he just reminded us, when we went up there to do the acoustic thing, to just chill.