Benford has produced wild west shows, rodeos, the World Chile Cook-off in Terlingua, TX, several 3-day
music festivals, 5
years of a digital
film festivals, an arts
and craft festival on the strip in Vegas, and concerts in a Vegas casinos, concerts
in Guatemala, Central
America, and 5 states in the U.S. Helped produce a record in
the Honduras. Benford
produced
one of the most
important symposiums in the nation for runaway and missing children, hundreds of concerts, plus
many
other events &
shows, and too many club dates including a country night every Monday night for
3 months at the famous
Whisky A GoGo.
He has
co-produced several record projects, including the
Official State Ballad of Montana, and 2 award winning music
videos
that were dedicated to runaway
and missing children, a subject he has written two books on. He's
produced and
co produced
many benefits for children and youth, and written major legislation for
kids and help establish the Runaway
Hotline in Austin, Texas, a Nation Wide program to help runaway kids in America that is
still in operation today..
This 9/19 and through the
rest of this year and next two years he will be releasing and
marketing his long awaited multi-
media presentation of the
Jimmie Rodgers Saga documentary that has been close to a life's
work, a film released
based on Jimmie Rodgers
He's presently working with
Merle Haggard and Bob Dylan on a documentary DVD, Concert and TV
Show about the
life
of "The man that started it all", also known as "The Father of Country
Music," with interviews with Willie Nelson,
Les Paul, Aaron Neville, Kris Kristofferson,
Toby Keith, and many greats in music and music history.
JimmieRodgersSaga.com
Standley is doing the rough edit
on a online series that began working with the Eric Clapton Camp. That grew to a project
with Ramblin' Jack
Elliott, Les Paul, Haggard, Jackson Browne and other great called
PioneerTroubadours.com, he
has just produced a trailer for Haggard's documentary movie, working very close
with Haggard on the project, and helping
Haggard find, log and upgrade his
personal archives for eight months, two of which were on the road with Bob Dylan and
Merle Haggard, where he was the only video and digital camera
allowed on the tour. His work and friendship with Merle
Haggard for some years, and introducing Haggard
to Les Paul and Bob Dylan were highlights of his long career.
He's finishing a ten year writing project on the state and fate of children
in the U.S. during the last quarter
of a century.
See more on his 4 decades of work for
children and youth at
StudioClub.com/Colorado.htm
He is also working on a
autobiography
book MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH on his 4+ decades in the entertainment business, and putting
his book FROM ARMADILLOS TO MASTODONS, a book about the Tonkawa Indians of the Texas Hill Country
online.
Most important he is writing
a book about his 12 years as a friend and partner with Merle Haggard
working on three
movies and several other
projects.
Benford's
history in the entertainment business goes back to 1967, when he started
a band while he was in
college in the
West Texas town of Alpine, where he went to ride bulls and rodeo. Playing drums in a country
western rock 'n roll band in
the
sixties was
a great beginning for a career that spans these past 4 decades.
Because of his business studies
in college
and being raised by a banker, he went to producing and management
in 1970, after he moved
to Austin, Texas about the
time the "progressive country" music scene was
started, that gave birth to
Jerry Jeff Walker, Michael Martin Murphy and
the "Armadillo cosmic gonzo
cowboy" scene. Then Willie Nelson
moved to town, taking the lead in creating the "Outlaw"
sound. Through
these years Benford was right
in the middle of this "happening," and producing many of the cutting edge
concerts in Austin, TX.
After a number of years working as a
psychology intern in a number of mental hospitals, backwards, surgery wards, study
programs working
with autistic children, and a year of politics writing legislation and working with the U.S. Justice
Dept.,
CIA, FBI, Texas Rangers, Texas Senate and House Sub Committees on Human Resources concerning
the state and fate
of children, including work with FBI's Most Wanted John Walsh and many others in
youth care in the United States.
Following this time in his
life he left the country for near ten years, living and traveling
every country in Central and South
American, some of Europe, and extensively Mexico with his central goal
studying how other countries treat and care for
their children and youth, visiting every Aztec, Mayan
and Incan ruin on earth, and escaping with his copy of Whole Earth
Catalogue, what he had seen
and experienced as a youth growing up in the sixties and early seventies in the good ole us
of A while
also attending 3 universities and getting hours equivalent to a BA in Economics and Psychology and 30 hours
in Masters studies in Psychology.
Standley began to study
"multimedia" in 1993, while negotiating a million dollar CD-Rom deal with
IBM. He was turned on
to the
world of multimedia by Native American producer Dan Jones while Dan was working with
Kevin Costner, and while
working
with Willie Nelson on Farm Aid 1994, as co-producer of the short wave radio broadcast of Farm Aid, he began to
tinker with this new Super
Informational Highway.. He saw the future and got on board the cyberspace
band wagon
that
day on the bus with Willie Nelson, Computer Bob, Kris Kristofferson, Neil Young and
others...West Multimedia
In 1995, he produced one
of the very first live video/audio Internet cybercast. The webcast
was from the world famous
Troubadour
in Hollywood. On the lineup were some classic LA acts including, John York from the Byrds, Greg Harris of
the Flying Burrito Brothers, Buck Page, founding
member of the Riders of the Purple
Sage, producer Sid Smith (Circus
of
the Stars,
Bob Hope's Christmas Specials
for ten years, Miss Universe Pageants) was playing the cardboard box and
some other LA top acts.
In 97, while living back in Austin, Tx, he produced a live Internet cybercast
of Willie Nelson and
Friends
playing for the 100 year birthday of Jimmie Rodgers ( Father of Country
Music). The cybercast was
produced in
concert with Sony/Columbia Online and he produced the
show on a Bob Dylan website. The
show was a Yahoo "Pick of
the Week," and a pick by CitySearch.com,
was so successful that the
Sony server system crashed in San Francisco.
WestMultimedia
In 1998, Benford returned to LA to launch his new project the
StudioClub.com A
Virtual Entertainment InterNetwork on
the
World Wide Web. The site was launched on June 22, 1998, with a taped
show produced on May 26, 1998. The
site
is still online lasting the wild ride of the Internet's first decade.
In 2006 and 09 the site was seeing an average of
one
million visitors per month, with no advertising or marketing budget to speak of. Using the
StudioClub.com as his web
based
platform, Standley has produced hundreds of shows over the past 13 years,
including webcasting the taped
audio
and pictures and text of the weekly Ronnie Mack Barn dance, which
was from a honky-tonk at the
corner of Hollywood
and Vine, the most famous street corner in the world,
every Tuesday night for a year.
WestMultimedia
In February of
1999, he produced
a 5 hour live audio-video webcast of the First American in the Arts Awards
Ceremony,
which went off
without a hitch and was broadcast via YAHOO! In 2000 his company again produced the First American
In the Arts Awards
show with his partners at Yahoo.com
broadcast and Mark Cuban and company in Dallas, TX
WestMultimedia
During much of early 2000 he
worked to manage StudioClub.com
and his documentary projects. He is also producing
a project Kicking Up Dust a online
music history museum documenting and tell the history of the entertainment
business in the
United States. He has met with the National Endowment of the Arts on this project in Washington, DC.
The website is being prepared for a Fall 2013 launch, and is tied to the
PioneerTroubadours.com
project
He is working on the 7th Annual
PasoDigitalFilmFestival.com, and in Silicon Valley the
DigitalMediaFestival.com
and he posted the Malibu Film
Festival online for 4 years. Both of his film festival has top position for "digital" festivals
on all major search engines.
From Clint Eastwood to Kevin Bacon, Academy Award Editor Joel Cox, Johnny
Rivers,
Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Luke
Perry, Kathleen Quinlan, director Mick Jackson, We Are the World creator Ken Kragen, Gary
Busey, Francisco Quinn,
Bobbie Carradine, and many other greats in music and film have attended his Digital Festivals.
His personal website is at
BenfordStandley.com
Webcast Production
History and Pictures