http://www.benkweller.com/

What do you tell your grandma when you decide you want to be a rockstar? How do you explain to your mom that you'd rather rock behind a guitar than waste behind a desk? Can you swallow the disappointment when they pat you on the head and say "that's nice, honey..." If only there was some sort of handbook or guide -- maybe something like Your Guide to Being a Rockstar. Chapter One: Ways of Explaining the Significance of Your New Occupation. Option #1: Bust out your meanest air guitar, pause, then simply say, "I write songs and sing them." Option #2: Take the suave approach, "yeah, I'm a recording artist for the Island Def Jam music group, a division of Universal." Option #3: Just be cool and say, "me? I'm a musician… yeah."

Those are the words taken straight from the mouth of one Ben Kweller, and it's definitely working for him. He can practice in his living room without getting the threatening "Benjamin Lev Kweller, will you turn that music down!" His grandma "Bubbie" frequently offers her basement and never misses a party. Surrounded by music throughout his childhood in small town Greenville, Texas, naturally he picked up an instrument -- the piano. The song "Heart and Soul" triggered the musician in Kweller. "Okay, what if I play the first key, the second one, go straight to the third then back to the second key and then the fourth one, like 1-3-2-4 instead of 1-2-3-4? I did and it sounded completely different … After that, I started writing words modeled after the girls and love in Beatles songs … I was seven years old and hardly knew what a girl was but figured this is what you sing about when you write songs."

On his 12th birthday, he got his very first electric guitar. In 1993, he started the punk band Radish and became local faves in the Dallas music scene. Radish spent some time in the spotlight, recorded an EP and LP, signed a major label deal, toured the world, scored a top 40 hit in the UK and even shared lunch with Madonna. 1999 came and the band fizzled driving Kweller to pursue a solo career.

Kweller moved to NYC where he came to embrace and draw inspiration from the anti-folk scene. Song after song poured from the end of his pen. Gigs started rolling in and Kweller snagged opening spots for Evan Dando, Juliana Hatfield, Jeff Tweedy and Guster. A jaunt through Brooklyn brought him even more gigs supporting Creeper Lagoon, the Eels and Dashboard Confessional. In 2000, he released Freak Out Ben Kweller featuring the Vanilla Ice parody "BK Baby." The next year he signed on with ATO Records to release his 5-track debut E.P. Phone Home and shortly thereafter his first full-length solo album, Sha Sha, featuring the track "Wasted and Ready." His friend Annabelle Hall said it best, "[he is] sing-along / power pop and anti-folk sprinkled with toy keyboards, Texas and love." Kweller is the new kid on the block who's five-foot-nothing but couldn't be bigger.

-Amy Schaefer