Four Bellmore musicians united to take their music to the next level, taking their talent all the way to Hollywood. King Kaye, once the title of an individual artist, is now a five-man-band and one of Long Island’s rising stars.
The four Bellmore members are vocalist Ben Kaye, bassist Matthew Kreuder, drummer Nick Tiongson with Matthew Marzilliano on the keyboard. The fifth member, Ray Bergin, plays the guitar. The band is composed of close friends, most of which go all the way back to elementary school and earlier.
The band travelled across the country to perform at the Viper Room in Hollywood on March 13.
Ben Kaye, 26, started spinning records at 9 years old when he was given a DJ set from a family friend. Since then, he has been fascinated by music and pursued ambitious artistic projects that inspire and innovate. Following his initial success as an independent artist, Kaye was driven to share the art form with his closest friends.
“I got all my best friends from childhood — I wouldn’t have wanted anybody else to be my band,” he said. “For a while I was performing solo, doing my own thing and with electronic music. Something came over me… even though I work in a recording studio and I have all these incredible instrumentalists, I also think my best friends are too… We didn’t even have to like practice to tap into the energy.
“I feel like a part of me was performing solo out of a place of fear,” he continued. “Being able to trust my best friends, how well they received it and adapted an art that’s so personal to me has really opened my eyes to the beauty of collaboration… I hope this is something that we continue doing forever.”
The band performed at the Berlin dive bar in New York City on Feb. 11, where a fateful encounter would send them across the country a month later.
“The turnout was so incredible,” Kaye said. “We actually got an offer to perform at the Viper Room in Hollywood, like, the most famous venue in California. And when I told all the guys that we were like little boys again, jumping up, getting excited.”
Johnson has played music with friends since high school, including membership in other bands, with King Kaye reaching the highest.
“Ben’s trying to really do something with this music, so that’s what drew me in,” he said.
The style of King Kaye’s music is consistent with other works under the artist name.
“You get a wide mix of things, but you can say it’s that techno sound that makes you want to dance, but also has some trippy sounds in it, and we kind of took that music and converted it into something that we can play live at a club or a bar,” Johnson said.
Performing at the Viper Room was an incredible achievement; Johnson keeps a broad perspective, remembering how the story began.
“Me and my buddies, even though we’ve been playing music together since high school, we kind of went our separate ways in college and whatnot,” he explained. “Covid brought us back together. We said let’s set up in the garage and see what we make… Now we’re traveling to California to play gigs.
“If you’re reading this and you have a thought like, hey, I strum guitar, I sing, or I want to get into it… You never know what can happen if you don’t put yourself out there,” he said.
Inside the studio, the band members’ practice sessions combine the clear pursuit of goals with trust and intuition.
“It’s not always easy to get five dudes together, but we find a day,” Marzilliano said. “We get together and we get our set list, and then we talk, what do we want to work on? We go through each song multiple times until we’re like, okay, we feel real good about that. Even if there’s some more tweaking we got to do next week, we get back to it.”
For more information about King Kaye and upcoming releases, visit KingKaye.com.
