User:Buffalobenford/sandbox

BIO FOR PRODUCER BENFORD STANDLEY
Benford Standley has worked with the following over the years as a producer:

Clint Eastwood, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Hoyt Axton Willie Nelson, Bacon Brothers w/ Kevin Bacon, Ken Kragen, Dave Somerville (Diamonds), Les Paul, Taylor Swift Ramblin Jack Elliott, Leon Russell, David Amram, Luke Perry, Joe Ely, Gary Busey, Robert Earl Keen, Buckminster Fuller, Laura Huxley, Bobby Carradine, Miranda Lambert, Jack Ingram, Michael Martin Murphy, Buddy Red Bow, The Lost Gonzos, Roger McGuinn (The Byrds), Floyd Westerman, Eddie Dean, Junior Brown, Bob Wills TX Playboys, Jack Tempchin, New Riders of Purple Sage, Chris Montez, Rosie Flores, John York (The Byrds), Jerry Jeff Walker, Riders in The Sky, Jack Tempchin, John Andrew Parks, Buck Page Riders Purple Sage, Spencer Davis, Billy Swan, Kacey Musgrave, Aaron Neville, Max Gail, Freebo--(Bass, Bonnie Raitt), Gary P. Nunn, Jeffery Steele, Greg Harris (Flying Burrito Bros), Carloyn Hester, B.W. Stevenson, Ronnie Mack, Megan Linsey, Kenny Lee Lewis, Bob Wills, Jr., Eddie Dean, and many more... Benford has produced wild west shows, rodeos, the World Chile Cook-off in Terlingua, TX, several 3-day music festivals, seven 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. 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 for one person to remember. 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. He's presently in Post Production on a documentary about the life and music of Jimmie Rodgers, AKA"The man that started it all", also known as "The Father of Country Music," with interviews with Les Paul, Aaron, Neville, Kris Kristofferson, Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, and many greats in music and music history. Benford and Merle Haggard are narrating the documentary. JimmieRodgersSaga.com Standley is doing the rough edit on an online series that began working with the Eric Clapton Camp, that grew to be a project with Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Les Paul, Haggard, Jackson Browne known as The Pioneer Troubadours. He worked for 12 years with Merle Haggard and produced a trailer for Haggard's documentary movie, filed a two-month tour 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 is now writing a book on those years working with Haggard. 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. 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 four decades of work for children and youth at the site StudioClub.com/Colorado.htm He is also working on an autobiography book MEANWHILE BACK AT THE BUFFALO RANCH on his 5 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. Benford 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. Then in 1994 while working with Willie Nelson on Farm Aid, as co-producer of the shortwave 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 bandwagon that day on the bus with Willie Nelson, Computer Bob, Kris Kristofferson, Neil Young and others... He created a side Internetwork company called 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. 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 through 2009 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.

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. They were the 2nd longest webcast ever produced, following Willie Nelson's Farm Aid.

Benford produced the first Digital Film Festival of its kind in 2008, the PasoDigitalFilmFestival.com, and one each year for the next 5 years. He then produced the first Digital Media Festival in Silicon Valley in 2013, the DigitalMediaFestival.com. He streamed the Malibu Film Festival online 1999 to 2003. His Digital Festivals have had the likes of 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.