Ben Harold & The Rising

Ben Harold & the Rising started out as Ben Harold’s solo project, sparked by a recording session for his solo record Solace in a friend of Harold’s studio. But the singer-songwriter, who has been writing since the minute he picked up guitar at 15-years-old, knew he couldn’t do it alone—convening with fellow Wisconsin musicians looking to start a band and Harold quitting his day job to pursue it full-time.

Harold’s upbringing in northern Wisconsin was on a small, blue-collar island called Washington Island. Sandwiched between Wisconsin and Michigan, the island is solely traveled to via ferry and mainly by tourists, leading Harold and his mother, brother, and two sisters to be isolated, and spending most of his teenage years playing chords–his dream of making music only being just that.

After relocating to the west side of Wisconsin, near Minnesota, and then back to Milwaukee, Harold worked several jobs in the industry and put together a few bands—but it was nothing like the feeling of making music himself, reminiscing on his upbringing where he was raised by a single mother who encouraged him to sing and play, influenced by bands like Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers and Dave Matthews Band.

“I purposely went into this record store, had the money I saved up, walked to the cassette rack, picked up the album Wildflowers by Tom Petty, and just threw that in my Walkman and listened to it every single day,” says Harold. “The bug had me, but I can't pinpoint exactly when or why it all happened. I think it just infused itself into me within a second and I heard different sounds and realized that you could communicate this way, you can create this way, you can rock this way. It was very much like a voice calling out in the canyon, and I just had to follow it.”

Fast forward to 2018 and the bug is still buzzing, writing 7 songs a day before the first recording session for his Solace turning an EP project into a full LP, an album that Harold describes as closer to his true self than anything he wrote prior—emotive Roots/Americana rock that tells a story. Ben Harold is now joined by The Rising: members Ken Zabler on guitar, Carl Crumbliss on bass, Dan Kolesari on keyboards, and Joe Howard on the drums. 

“Because of that inspiration, this little project of just putting down a few songs, turned into a deep desire to make a full-length album, I really want it to be true to me, I really want it to be genuine, and, if anything, the starting point of where I'm headed. And that's what the solo album became. And the drummer that played on that solo album is now in my band. We've been playing together in other projects for like six years, mostly cover things, but things really opened up creatively with this original music. And then I slowly just met and started inviting in these other musicians/friends that I knew, and it just became a band organically because I just knew that they would all get along great and be good friends.”

Their debut record These Days is the result of Harold’s months of song crafting that led to its lead single “Just A Ghost” a tribute to his mother and her story, describing choosing to raise her four children as a single parent over becoming a musician.

“‘Just A Ghost’ is the first thing I really started working on for that album. It was a song, sort of a tribute to my mom. It was her story of being a musician and giving that up, raising four kids on her own so that we could have a good life. And the idea was that if I did something like that, if I gave up this part of me, it'd be like becoming a ghost of who I was. It’s not the end of her story, but it was such an important part. And I wanted to write narratively and to focus on singular points and moments in time, and that was the first thing that came to me.”

The rest of These Days continues to tell stories that Harold had encountered by happenstance, taken by the experiences that friends and strangers have shared with him and emulating that into his music. Think of the working man’s blues that Bruce Springsteen belts about, but in the vein of mid-western roots rock with ‘90s grunge and contemporary influence. 

“I feel like there's a responsibility there, so it wasn't really like 'I'm going to go find people and talk to them and then I'm gonna write a song.' It was more like, 'I'm going to go back into the archives of my mind and remember the people I encountered and the stories that affected me from listening to them. So, the inspiration for sure was the people that I got to meet,” explains Harold. “And then the other side of it, which still blows my mind, is when people come up to me and tell me things like my music heals them. I can't wrap my mind around that. And I'm certainly not under the assumption that my music is going to affect people in certain ways. But it's kind of nice because it's almost like being re-convinced that it is making a difference every time somebody says something like that to me and I hope that that never goes away. That's the beautiful side effect of it all, there’s a real magic to it.”

These days, The Rising are playing venues and fests throughout the Midwest but are looking to bust open the tour flood gates. Harold wants his sound to go wide, for its relevance to people’s lives and struggles, and the group’s upbeat performance—a performance that the audience will find powerful and unique. Harold says the group has two albums worth of songs in the vault for when they begin recording their next album in the fall. 

“It's a second family. And it's maybe a little cliche, because you hear that all the time, but it totally is. It's like the family aspect of it is sort of the part that I've had to lean on the last year, certainly. It makes a difference and I think it comes through when we perform live. People see that we enjoy playing together; we're smiling, we're joking, we're not letting each other off the hook when we make mistakes--and nobody hears that, but they can see us having fun and enjoying it. And then we invite everyone who's there to join in on all that fun and emotion when we get to the deeper parts of the set. And I think it makes a big difference; it's not fake, it's genuine when you see us on the stage.”

Ben Harold & The Rising has shared the stage with established artists Phillip-Michael Scales, Andrew Leahey & The Homestead, Mike Mains & The Branches, the Cordovas, and Guster. The band has headlined at West Bend Wisconsin's Historic Bend Theatre, Appleton Wisconsin's Mile of Music Festival, the beloved Chill on the Hill Music Series and has opened for headliners at Summerfest. Their music has been featured on TV and radio across Wisconsin and have amassed a thousand plus followers on social media. Ben has played pre-game for the Milwaukee Bucks, Brewers, and for the Ryder Cup in Kohler, WI.