Ben

Ben Matthews; drums.

Ben grew up in Southern Utah in a large family in which everyone was encouraged to sing and play musical instruments, including harmonica, violin, piano, guitar, flute, clarinet, etc. His mother was known for her beautiful soprano voice and also as a violinist in one of the local orchestras. His parents were also well-known for their endless patience and kindness; just imagine 9 children each playing some form of loud musical instrument at any given time!

Ben played pots and pans as a kid, his hands and feet at the dinner table, and the back of his unfortunate classmates' chairs long before ever touching a crappy old drum set in his middle school band days. It took a lot of discipline for him to play trombone and baritone when he knew the drum set in the closet was just gathering dust.

After a while it became too much so he ditched the brass instruments and pieced together the old blue Ludwig and started to play. He later joined a some high school buddies in a band called Wylt and they played and recorded music when they should have been studying Algebra. He ran into Tim Smith a short time later and was quickly introduced to the music of Dokken and got to jam with Tim. Ben then received his first real drum set, which was a gift from his parents. All these years later, he is still playing drums.

When he isn't making noise, he works in the Software Engineering and Information Technology fields.