
Big Something is the perfect example of the modern jam band. The six-piece unit out of North Carolina are high level purveyors of modern jams multi-genre methodology. Within one set you can hear influences of rock, jazz, reggae and electronica produced beautifully by the use of electronic woodwind instruments, synth and the deployment of big grooves, searing guitar work and soaring vocals. It’s an awesome audio experience that if you have not partaken in … you need to change your life.
We caught up with Ben Vinograd, the drummer of Big Something, to discuss the band’s plans for new music, switching up keyboardists, their annual Big What? festival, and their big Northeast run of concerts. The band performs in New Jersey on Tuesday July 15 at Bird & Betty’s in Beach Haven (on Long Beach Island) and Wednesday July 16 at The Wellmont Art Plaza Outdoor Concert Series in Montclair.
Big Something had a change in keyboards this summer. Can you talk about how its been acclimating a new member during the summer run, especially since your one long-time keyboardist is now going to law school.
If you trace back further our original member Josh Kagel was our first keyboard player. He retired from touring because he had a kid and wanted to be at home more with his family. After he stepped back we had Julian Sizemore, who was the one that went to law school, and Ross Bogan from Charleston. They were our two-headed monster because Julian had his law school stuff, and Ross was in Doom Flamingo and has his own side project called Wolf Mask. So neither of them could fully commit to an entire schedule. And so we’re like, ‘ Cool, you just do as many gigs as you can do, Ross and then, Julian, you do what you can, and we’ll just kind of fill in the gaps.’ As it went on, Ross’ project, Doom Flamingo, took a step back, so he had more time to open up, to commit to our project full time. We thought, with Julian transitioning into law school this was great because Ross’ schedule opened up. Now we can keep it consistent with [Ross]. Ross found a buddy in Charleston named Nolan, who’s actually on the road with us right now that he got up to speed. So there are still going to be a few shows every once in a while that Ross will have booking issues with so hopefully, Nolan will be that guy that can step in and fill the role well while he’s out. But it seems like Ross is gonna be the guy moving forward for a little while.
You guys are starting a fairly big run in the Northeast. Tell us about the crowds for the Northeast and how they react for you as opposed to your home audience in the Carolinas.
[We’re a] North Carolina band; I gotta make it clear because North Carolina is the best one. We love it up here. I have a ton of family in New England and Massachusetts. We are from the South so we don’t get up here as often as we’d like to, and so there is a small but pretty fierce fan base of people that will travel all around New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Jersey, to come see us. We just want to make sure that we feed off of that energy, and then just try to keep building it, and setting the tone for something to come back to.
Your last album came out in 2023. The obvious question is, when is new music coming? And if you have new music are you road testing it right now?
We just took a bunch of time this winter and went into the studio in two separate places. We went out to Denver and had some studio time there and then we were in Charleston, South Carolina, and did about two weeks of recording there. We did a huge batch of concepts and demos. Some of them are fully sussed out songs that are pretty much ready to go. Some of them need a bridge. Some of them need lyrics. There’s probably about 15 to 17 of those that we have ready to own and sharpen and put out. We don’t have an exact timeline on when this will be released. We don’t have an exact idea of how they will be released, either. With the music industry being the way it is, we’re thinking we could just release four songs at a time in a batch. We also could release them single by single a month apart. We could put together a full album and artwork like we’ve been doing … we’re kind of suckers for full length albums and concepts and storylines. There are a bunch of songs and ideas there, but we just don’t know exactly when we’re going to take them out and tie them together.
How do you feel about the music for this album, or maybe we just call it a group of songs. How do you feel it stands out from everything else?
I think in a way it’s going to be a transitional album. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way like that it’s a placeholder, and we’re just kind of figuring it out more in that. There are a couple songs that we’re trying to finalize that we recorded in Minnesota, at Pachyderm during the sessions for our last album. So those will have Doug [Marshall] our original bass player and Josh [Cable] on it. So there’s a couple of songs we’re trying to finalize with our original lineup, as it used to be and then the new batch of songs when we were in Denver where Julian was on those sessions on keyboard. Then when we were in Charleston, Ross was on those sessions. It’ll be interesting to see the cohesiveness of all of the songs coming together, but I’m excited for it.
Are you testing these out on your Northeast run?
We have not road tested any of them, which is rare. We used to write, and then immediately go out and just play the songs live. But now that we have such a wide catalog of music already out there, we can be a little more precious about crafting the song and making sure we get it right in the studio.
It used to be that thing where we’d write a song and then the song would grow on the road. One night in a certain city we’d open the jam up a little more, and that would establish a new section and then we would go and record it. Whereas now we’ve got 12 different versions of one song from the Denver Sessions, from the Charleston sessions and from us in our practice and rehearsal spaces. We’re going to get them ready before we put them out to the live shows.
One question I’m asking every band this summer is about live arrangements. When you’ve recorded a song, do you specifically go out of your way to rearrange songs for the live performance because you can’t or don’t want to recreate the song live or do you just let it happen on the night and see where things take you?
We try not to do stuff in the studio that we can’t replicate live. With six of us on stage and the kind of gear that we have there’s not much that we can’t pull off. It’s not like a high wire act of, ‘How are we gonna make this work on a stage after we spent all this time in the studio.’ So we’re lucky in that regard.
But, I would say that process also varies early on when we were first kind of committing improvising and opening things up. We’re on this jam band scene so let’s see what we can do. Nick [MacDaniels] would just pick a song at random on our setlist and put a star next to it because we were going to open this one up. We don’t know where we’re going to open it up, but this was the song that breathes tonight. So whether it was “Julia Brown” or “A Song for Us” it’d be like “After the 1st verse or after the second chorus, let’s explore the space and see where it goes.” So we did that for a little while which is really cool. That was more in the era of our original lineup. Now with the addition of the new keyboard players and Matt [Laird] our new bass player — these guys are really, really adept improvisers. They all play out a ton and have a very open mindset towards meeting the moment musically and being comfortable figuring it out on the spot. So as of the last couple of years we’ve really made a point to commit to improvising and creating moments on stage.
Can you take me inside of being behind the kit and finding your way into an improvised jam? How do you know when it’s coming and how to react?
I hate to say it like this, but it varies moment by moment. I think the main thing that we found is you have to be as present as possible in that musical moment. [For example] I’ve built a certain rhythm, and I think this beat would lead the jam off well, or Matt has a bass line. But … generally it’s just letting it breathe for a second. you know. Let’s keep the groove and the tempo where it was, and then just give it space. We weren’t good at giving improvisation its proper space. You have to give it 8, 12, 16, or 24 bars to let the song breathe for itself. You know whether it’s Ross plunking down a finger on a key, and the melody hits in a certain way, and that carries us to a theme in our heads that we can follow. Or, something pops into my head, and a rhythm manifests that I think would transition well out of the space we came out of. It’s all about just being present and letting it come to you and not try to overly steer the ship in a direction that other people might not be connected to. It has to move as an organism.
It’s like over kneading bread — too much handling and it’s ruined.
Exactly. Then it becomes like a denser thing. When you do that it cuts a line through the music as opposed to giving it a big big cloud of space to operate in.
Outside of the tour, you’ve also got The Big What? coming up. It’s your festival that you put on and it’s hitting 10 years. What’s one band you want to tell people not to sleep on?
There’s a band called Jimkata. That’s been around forever. They’re from New York. They’ve been around for such a long time, and they’re such a good band, and they’re such good people, and they’ve toured really hard. Then taken extended breaks and then have gotten back to touring.It’s this ebb and flow of they’re here, and then they’re taking a little break. They’ve always been one of those bands from the very early days when we started playing with them where I’m like, “How are they not just the biggest band in the world right now?” Their songs are so good, and they’re such fun guys to hang out with and on stage. I just really love their music.I would encourage anyone who hasn’t seen them, especially down South, to really pay attention to the Jimkata set.
It’s the 10th year of the show. You have all these people coming out to the middle of the woods to hear something that you created like. Does that never stop being cool?
Yeah, it blows my mind every year we do it. It’s a ton of work, and it’s exhausting … but it’s just such a rewarding thing every single time we do it. My family has started coming down. My mom and my sister are doing art and ceramic bending, and got to fully experience everything that goes into it as people that were working it as well this time. It’s unreal how much has to happen and that we don’t think is going to happen … and it always ends up working out because it’s just groups of awesome like minded people that are willing to put in the effort to make something beautiful happen.
You’ve been in this band for over 10 years and it has been such a huge part of your life. What do you love about Big Something that keeps you coming back to it every day and dedicating such a big part of your life to it?
You know, at 15 years of this, as our influences change in our music styles and even the people that we’ve become can fit in our band. We’re not a metal band and so we don’t need to write metal songs, because our metal crowd is expecting metal songs. There’s nothing to take away from metal music — I love metal music, but it’s hard to get tired of something that can be anything. So I think, in that regard, that keeps me coming back.
Also everyone in this band is just a very good person. It’s something where we really stress the importance of all wives, girlfriends, families are welcome. It has to be something where everyone is involved. It’s not just the people in the band that have to be comfortable and happy and feel good. We’re leaving our wives and our homes, and our pets and they need to have some stock in it too, and feel good about the people that are in that van, and the people that are associated with us from management to roadies to whoever. So that’s a big part of it. The quality of people in this band makes it very easy to feel good about where I am regardless of what the venue is, what the ticket sales are. I love the people I’m playing music with, and that is pretty awesome.
And the final one. What are 5 things that you were stoked about for this band? The rest of 2025. And if we have to dip in a little bit to 26.
1. Certainly the music we’re recording and writing and How do we put that out?
2. The new members gelling and coming into their own and the confidence and fun that comes with.
3. The Big What?
4. We brought on a new member of our management team. Beau Gunn, he’s a Wilmington guy. He runs The Penguin down there. I’m very excited for him to get a full year under his belt and see how our operation works. He’s a great guy. He’s loved our band forever. He’s super smart and driven and creative. I’m very excited to see how that all works. I’m trying to think of something else, don’t want to double down on something I’ve already said.
Or give away the date of something you can’t announce yet?
We are taking a slower schedule in the fall and haven’t seen what 2026 is gonna look like yet. So I guess that would be the fifth thing. We’re a little older, and we’re a little more road seasoned. It might not be prudent for us to go play 200 shows a year and break our backs. So, figuring out what our pace of play will be in the next year and the opportunities and creativity that can come out of that with a little more rest on our bones. I think we can be more creative, and produce more content and music, and have more energy behind it. So I think that would. That would be a good thing.