Ditch the Van Bike Tour

Meet Katie Benson. She’s the brains behind this operation. She routes all our rides, advances the shows, coordinates will local advocacy groups, pedals the merch to and at the show, handles the accounting, and even books some the shows. This woman does it all.

Katie and I met in LA in April of 2009 when I was opening for Vienna Teng. Katie had been working in the music industry for a while (a side job while finishing up law school) and knew some of the musicians traveling with Vienna. So, we all ended up in a big hang after the show and I mentioned the bike tour to Bonnaroo. To make a long story short, she followed up with me about a week later and decided to come on the tour and invited her brother, Marty Benson, to come along and film this floundering cellist.

We both were pretty inspired by this style of touring and decided to pursue it more. Katie’s knack for sniffing out community oriented events and her ability to pull people together creates a incredible amount of momentum. She’s balancing the jobs of nearly a whole production team at a record label. I’m really lucky to get to work with her but she’s worked with some other talented artists in her time.

In her time working Surfdog Records she worked with artists such as Brian Setzer, Tea Leaf Green, and Dan Hicks. She has spent time on the road as a tour manager for Chop Shop recording artist Anya Marina, myself, and the Appalachian Voices Tour with Daniel Martin Moore and Jim James. She also runs her own production company, Fits Productions.

Find out more about her work at: www.iftheshoe.com