All the Juice on Ben Stevens

No one typifies the work-hard, play-hard lifestyle of a BC student like Ben Stevens, the lead singer of the on-campus band Juice.

After auditioning extensively for The Voice after high school, Ben came to Boston College looking for other creative, musical students such as himself.

The junior has spent the past three years balancing his finance and information systems courses, as well as singing for the acapella group, The Bostonians. His greatest commitment, however, has been Juice — who will soon release their first professionally produced album, funded by an Indigogo campaign.

The Tab sat down with the music minor to discuss his experience on The Voice, run-ins with fangirls, and balancing gigs with a challenging course load.

Tell me about Juice. How did the band form? 

Juice is an on-campus band which has become a bigger and bigger part of my life as my time at BC has continued.

We formed my freshman year. I came late to school because I was on The Voice my freshman year for the first semester.  I just came to school with a convoluted experience with Hollywood, so I came thinking “I’m going see if I can find other musicians on campus.”

I was randomly assigned housing and right across the hall there was Miles and Dan who are now the guitar player and the drummer of the band. They were just there and I walked in introducing myself and I saw they had guitars and a drum set in their room.

Then, I wanted to audition for BC Idol, so I asked Miles and Dan if they knew of anyone who could play piano because I didn’t want to sing to a back track. They gave me Chris’s number who is now the keyboard player in the band. We ended up performing and then we ended up winning, which was crazy. At BC Idol, I met Christian and Kamau who are now also a part of the band.

And so it was really just sheer coincidence and good fortune. I always view it as one door closed for me and another one opened so was crazy. Then we practiced and then we kind of skyrocketed from there.

Have you opened for anyone you were particularly excited about?

We opened for Hoodie Allen, Ludacris, and Joseph Vincent. Andy Grammer in Robsham last year was crazy. We are pretty much a house band at the Middle East which is pretty much our favorite place to play because we get a lot of BC kids who just want to go out on Thursdays and listen to good music.

Do you have any crazy fans on campus or fangirls?

I definitely have people who come to me and say, “You did really well last night like oh my gosh I’m coming to your next performance” – I just have no idea who they are. There’s one chick who comes to every one of our shows, I have no idea who she is and she was just one of the other bands’ fans we poached. What’s good about her is she’s really into the music and she really appreciates what we’re doing which is really cool and really rewarding. Shoutout to Rebecca.

Tell me about your experience on The Voice.

It started off in the fall portion in my senior year of high school. Then I spent like my entire summer and a portion of my freshman [first] semester there doing interviews and getting some vocal coaching.

They ended up dividing all of the contestants into four different days for being televised for the blind audition and I happened to be on the last day. I was already backstage ready to go perform and they were like “Oh, sorry, all of the coaches have already filled their spots, you have to go home.”

I was just heartbroken. [The show] said, “This is the most talented season ever, we’re so sorry” and so I had to come to BC. What a shame.

Would you consider ever doing anything like it again?

At this point I don’t want to be any more behind in my academic career. But yeah. It was nuts. I loved it. It was an amazing experience. I made so many friends because we were literally spending day in and day out together. We were literally sequestered in the hotel so we couldn’t even leave.

Would you consider your focus on academics or performing and how much do you plan on incorporating your performances in your future?

I like to consider myself like a dual tracker, so putting most of my effort in academics. But whenever I have a waking moment I’m always thinking music, what can I do to be better, to write better music. I’m also a music minor, so I can kind of wiggle some fun into my schedule.

I would like to say post-grad music would be my focal point, but then again you never know. It’s not easy, it’s a hard industry to break into, which is why I’m dual tracking just in case.

How do you balance your life at BC with your schoolwork, performances, then going out on the weekends too?

I’m realizing now increasingly how I have to make a pretty routine schedule which involves going to class, going to the gym, then going home. Whatever time I have between then and my rehearsal or practice I am in the library, then rehearsal, then in the library again.

And going out, you know, it’s a must. It’s a must for Friday and Saturday. Thursdays it depends. I have to gauge how much work I have and if we have band practice from 11pm to 2am, I don’t go out because it’s a priority too, but we love being social and we love playing shows.

Do you have any shows coming up?

We’re playing at a brewery in Somerville [this weekend] and some festival like an hour away, but nothing feasible for our friends to go to. Hopefully we’re having another Middle East show mid-October which we want to sell out and get everyone to come to.