Welcome to New Orleans Musicians Consulting. NOMC founder Jeff Beninato, is a producer, musician, nonprofit founder and native of New Orleans who has worked in the music industry for over 40 years. He currently produces for the San Francisco-based label Three Cranes Productions. In the 10 years post-Katrina, Jeff has founded a music nonprofit, served as a guide to documentary film crews and fans of New Orleans music. Contact him HERE.
Projects:
Founded New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund
Jackson Squared
Love is Love for It Gets Better
Micah McKee and Little Maker
ReDefine 8/29 for Furnish Our Neighbors
Produced:
Little Queenie Live Album – Q Ball
Curated ReDefine 8/29 Download
Love is Love
Twangorama
Micah McKee and Little Maker
Jeff’s musical roots run deep. As a bass prodigy from the 9th Ward, he grew up working as a studio musician and playing bass on Bourbon Street. In his early career he performed in a band with Fats Domino’s sons Antoine Domino, Jr. and Toby Domino. From the ’80s to the ’90s he played bass with the dB’s as the band toured with R.E.M, Squeeze and other indie rock groups. The dB’s trajectory is described in Peter Holsapple’s essay in Rolling Stone’s History of Rock and Roll anthology: “The dB’s – What Happened?” The band is also featured in the CBGB’s book. Post-dB’s, Jeff was in The Fate Brothers with John Thomas Griffith of Cowboy Mouth, and the duo performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
Jeff has since toured Europe with New Orleans blues guitarist Bryan Lee, and played standards throughout the French Quarter after returning to New Orleans 5 years post-Katrina. His producing credits include Little Queenie’s live CD, New Orleans guitar collective Twangorama, co-producing Fate Brothers Skyline and writing and producing Love is Love for the It Gets Better anti-bullying site. Most recently, he has produced Micah McKee and Little Maker’s CD at Blue Velvet Studio. He curated and compiled a ReDefine 8/29 benefit digital download which received a 4 star review in Rolling Stone with tracks including Dr. John, R.E.M., The Kaiser Chiefs, Edwin McCain, Ian Hunter, The Subdudes, Johnny Sansone, Craig Klein, James Andrews and more. His post-Katrina efforts included founding and running the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund with his wife, writer and Huffington Post contributor Karen. Friends in music Wilco, R.E.M., Dr. John and the Subdudes helped the charity raise funds to distribute instruments and grants to displaced New Orleans musicians post-Katrina.
In 2008, Jeff worked on the ReDefine 8/29 Project’s Furnish Our Neighbors which distributed 10 floors worth of furniture from the Astor Crowne Plaza for $8 and $29. For the It Gets Better anti-bullying site, he wrote and produced Love is Love, with a YouTube video from Simon Blake. Jeff has been interviewed about New Orleans music by The Economist, The New York Times, Reuters the BBC and other print, radio and television news outlets.
For Micah McKee’s production the reviews were strong: The CD earned a thumbs up from NOLA.com reviewer Alison Fensterstock who called Patrons of the Saint: ” … a collection of passionate, joyful and crafty underground pop tunes that is, not for nothing, very much in keeping with what seem to be current national trends in that arena.
There are full, jazzy and lushly arranged parts for violin, organ and horns; hints of late ’60’s-style country-pop; a bit of the sort of subtle references to African jazz-pop that bands like GIVERS and Vampire Weekend make more overtly, and a sunny, Beatle-ish psychedelia that makes the sound swirl, but never get too freaky. (Indeed, the unabashed Beatles fan McKee slyly quotes the White Album track “Honey Pie” straightaway, in the album opener “Strangers Again”; the wistful, sad-romantic “Glendive” owes plenty to John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy.”) The gently ecstatic “We Won The War” sounds like something you’ve heard already, in a hip indie film or a television commercial that’s licensed it specifically in order to sound more credibly hip, and indie.
Released in February 2013, “Patrons of the Saint,” shouldn’t be mistaken for an appeal to a national audience, at least not just that. Its production is tighter and more clean than any of McKee’s many other bands’ offerings, but that’s likely due to the hand of producer Jeff Beninato, the former bassist, late in the band’s career, for the tight ’80’s power-pop outfit the dBs.”
Contact jeff@nomc.info for further information on producing and/or New Orleans music.