Ben Heller | ben@ampeatermusic.com
Ben conceived of Ampeater with Nate Greenberg in the Fall of 2008, when he realized that the phrase “I work in music” sounds a lot better in bars than “I’m a Beowulf scholar.” He currently works at Serious Business Records in Soho, NYC and does freelance web development on the side. You can view his portfolio at Spruce.it.

Nate Greenberg | nate@ampeatermusic.com
After realizing that his own chances of becoming a rock star were relatively slim, Nate teamed up with long term partner in crime Ben Heller to create a website capable of catapulting artists from obscurity to fame. Nate currently resides in South Korea where he is a professor at Far East University and a freelance writer. By night, he rocks the clubs of Seoul with his jazzy folk band, July Miles, where he hopes they’ll have better luck making it big than they did in New York. Until then, Nate plans to live vicariously through each artist featured on Ampeater.

Ben Lasman | lasman@ampeatermusic.com
Ben Lasman has written about music for CMJ, The New York Press and BOMB Magazine, and is the former editor of Yale’s Volume Magazine. He plays guitars, computers, bass, drums, trombone, and sings in a variety of bands, some real, others imagined, and DJs under the names Luftmau5, Pissing Crystals, Dirty RCA, King Fay Kong Raye and the Artist Currently Known as Dad. Currenty a senior at Yale, he is writing a novel about micronations and lives in a house with a big basement.

Gabe Birnbaum | gabe@ampeatermusic.com
Gabe Birnbaum is the former art, film and television editor of the Copenhagen Post; an IAJE award-winning composer; an internationally acclaimed songwriter under the nom de plume Boy Without God; and definitely doesn’t live in his parents’ house. He enjoys bourbon whiskey, the songs of Leonard Cohen, the writings of Julio Cortazar, and singing pop songs about drug-induced visions of his own death.

Jake Brunner | jake@ampeatermusic.com
Jake is a writer and musician living in Philadelphia. He lives in a time cube.

Nick Kelly | nick@ampeatermusic.com
Nick is known as a relentless – and annoying – promoter of music he likes and that other people should like too. So when he saw an opportunity to promote bands to more than just his doll set, he jumped at the opportunity. A native of Brookline, MA Nick has made the journey slightly downward in the alphabet to Brooklyn, NY, but swears he prefers the sweet sounds of bar mitzvah music to anything coming out of the Burg.

Rick Andrews | rick@ampeatermusic.com
Rick spent his formative musical years in church basements and VFW’s going to sweaty shows by himself, and in Nate’s room recording strange noises on his laptop. He spends his days now in a windowless building in New York “furthering his education” by increasing it’s length by 33%. He marvels at the fact that he’s met and hung out with people who are younger than his AOL screen name, and thinks it’s strange that he knows some newborns with facebook profiles. He believes deeply that great music will always be liked if the listener approaches it enough times. So, why does he like to such strange music? Because he made himself do it.

Steve Glauber | steve@ampeatermusic.com
Steve is 23 years old and is currently enduring the awkward post-collegiate phase of adult(ish)hood—where the superstars in each professional sport are now younger than him and black olives start to taste alright. He likes all the same bands you do, but only their early stuff. Steve lives in Astoria, Queens where he gets on the train that goes to Manhattan. As a boy, Steve watched a group of 8th graders play Silverchair’s “Tomorrow” at his older sister’s junior high talent show, which thrust him along on this path of Rock n’ Roll fascination—the one he follows to this day.

Mike Gutierrez | mike@ampeatermusic.com
Mike grew up in the Northeast, listening to Madonna, Sonic Youth and De La Soul. When not studying philosophy, he fiddles with unfinished novels, finishes short stories, and contributes fiction and music coverage to various mags, blogs and reviews, including QRO, Ampeater, and Gigantic Sequins. The run on sentence is his guilty pleasure.

John Ganiard | john@ampeatermusic.com
John will shortly hold a bachelor of arts degree in philosophy. He will then hopefully go back to school to write some more things (not philosophy). John has written previously for Foxy Digitalis, school, and his own personal edification. John lives in Saint Louis and likes black metal, Michigan football (still), bad beer, and half-heartedly compiling found sound.

Kaylea Nelson | kaylea@ampeatermusic.com
Kaylea’s a graduate student (gasp!) in astrophysics (GASP!) who does this mostly so she can tell people about it during conferences and give them the illusion that she does something else with her life other than stargaze. She puts up the daily posts and fixes Nick’s horrible horrible spelling mistakes. Seriously, he writes like a child. Anyways, Kaylea lives in New Haven with her manperson (see Heller, Ben above) and is probably your best point of contact if you see something fu*ked up on the site.

Rashid Galadanci | rashid@ampeatermusic.com
Rashid Galadanci would like to say that he makes his living as the 8-string guitar player in his band, Black Science Theory. In reality, he’s an Organization and Strategy Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, D.C. and dabbles in music and web-design.