MOORE: Fayetteville based band Mildenhall is one of the selected artists for the 2025 Arkansas Tiny Desk Contest, an annual concert in little Rock and celebration of musicians all around the state. Ozarks at largest. Sophia Nourani recently sat down with members Tommy Benke, Jacob Arnold, and Andrew Cerra for a KUAF live session in the Innovation Lab at the Fayetteville Public Library. There they discussed how the group came together and their inspiration for their recent debut album, To and Fro. First, this is “Boomerang” by Mildenhall.
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NOURANI: You describe yourself as a retro progressive indie rock band. Can you describe how that that sound works?
BENKE: Well, I guess so. A lot of like reviews that we've gotten of the singles that we've released for the upcoming album said it's got a nice retro sound. We just kind of stole that word. Then, we're making indie rock music. But I don't know, I feel like we're doing a little bit more. So, Jacob thought of like, “oh, let's just add progressive in there.”
ARNOLD: Yeah. Because it's also not completely retro. There's also a lot of new elements, especially with the production value of the of the upcoming album. It definitely still sounds new.
NOURANI: Part of the reason why we're here is that you guys are the favorites of the Arkansas Tiny Desk contest. Congratulations.
ARNOLD: Thank you.
NOURANI: Tell me a little bit about the song and the video that you submitted for that specific contest. You started with the NPR National Tiny Desk and then eventually heard about Arkansas. Tell me about how that went.
BENKE: I guess- do you want to explain how we met Bryan?
ARNOLD: Yeah. So, I am really good friends with some other people in the local music scene that used to be, way back in the day, in a band called Surf du Soleil. Scott Love was the person that I was talking to about this. He said that Surf recorded a record with Bryan Burkhart years ago, and that they were really happy with the results. So, we met up with Bryan and toured his studio and ended up recording our album with him. When it came time to submit for The Tiny Desk, he let us use his studio to film our Tiny Desk video submission.
BENCKE: He also mixed and mastered the audio for specifically the Tiny Desk submission.
NORUANI: That's exciting. So, mixed in a little bit with the album that you guys were working on around the same time.
BENKE: We recorded the album and I think the submission deadline was February. I think we had just gotten the final Masters back, like the week that we recorded the for the Tiny Desk concert. I'm interning with him at that studio. So, we had already been messing around with lighting setups for videos. It was a perfect opportunity to try out a video there.
NOURANI: That's great. Tell me a bit about the song that you chose for that video?
ARNOLD: It's called “Short Section” or “Short Section (Tall).” It’s probably our most, fusion influenced song that we have so far. I don't know about the other parts, but the drumming, it's one of the more complex drumming songs that we have.
NOURANI: Well, that's very cool. Is that part of the reason why you why you chose it?
ARNOLD: No, we just thought that it kind of fit the vibe of Tiny Desk. I don't know.
NOURANI: Okay. I could see that.
BENKE: Also, it's a little different than the rest of the songs. On the album, I really only play keys as a main melodic instrument rather than just kind of like a texture, on two of the songs. I was playing keys on that.
ARNOLD: Beautiful Fender Rhodes.
CERRA: I remember writing my part for that. We were in my garage like three and a half years ago, and I was like, wait, there's something there that's so cool. I just, like, hashed it out over like twenty or thirty minutes. I was like, “Ah there it is!”
BENCKE: You figured it all out, all right there. And it was an open garage or there was a broken window, and it was like thirty degrees outside, so it was cold.
NOURANI: Oh, that's so cool.
CERRA: Had to get it done.
ARNOLD: I also remember we were in the studio one day and we were kind of unhappy with the lyrics, so rewrote the lyrics to that song together.
NOURANI: In the studio.
CERRA: Yeah, that definitely made it much better, because before that you were just kind of like saying anything and everything.
BENKE: Honestly, I would just mumble lyrics because I had an idea but then. It's also the oldest song on the record. I think I started writing it in 2018.
NOURANI: Oh, wow.
BENCKE: I think I finalized on the lyrics the day I went and recorded the vocals.
NOURANI: So, I've heard similar stories to that. It just takes years for it to stew and then something happens and you’re like “wait, yes!”
BENCKE: Yes, you need a deadline too, to motivate you.
NOURANI: Speaking of that, I want to talk about the album. Tell me a bit about how that came together, the process.
ARNOLD: Should we tell the story of the cancelled LA tour?
BENCKE: Yeah. Okay.
ARNOLD: So, we met through a friend of a friend, a guy from LA.
BENKE: San Diego .
ARNOLD: San Diego, sorry, who wanted us to play at a party he was hosting. We started planning a tour where we went out to San Diego and back.
BENKE: Mind you, the concert that we were going to play at his house was for his high school reunion, and he graduated in the eighties. It was supposed to be all eighties covers. I mean, we love music from the eighties, but also, we're not a cover band. So, we were going to have to learn like three and a half hours of only covers. We started. We made the list; we started working on it.
ARNOLD: Then we kind of all started talking and decided that we didn't want to do that.
CERRA: Wait, this is totally not going to happen.
ARNOLD: But I brought to the table like, “Look, if we're going to cancel this tour, we have to do something big in its place. Otherwise, we're just sitting around doing nothing.” So, we decided to record an album.
BENCKE: That was I think Valentine's Day of 2024. Then, Jacob and I were talking on the phone like, “Okay, where are we going to record it?” Because there's, you know, like Crisp Studios. There’s East Hall, well, they're no more, R.I.P., but we didn't know what price point is. We started looking and then, like Jacob said, found Bryan Burkhart.
Then, we started recording in March of 2024 and finished the actual tracking recording part in November. We started mixing it probably sometime in either August, late August or September and didn't finish the mixing process till early January. The mastering was late January and got the, final masters early February.
NOURANI: So, it's been quite the labor of love.
BENCKE: It's been it's been a long journey.
NOURANI: Part of the Arkansas Tiny Desk performance is happening in little Rock at The Hall. Will you be playing some of your album there?
BENCKE: Yeah, absolutely. We haven't gotten full details on how many songs that we're going to be playing, but it's us and two other people who are playing. I'm sure it'll be kind of like a normal show where everyone plays forty-five minutes or something.
NOURANI: Okay. Yeah. That's exciting. And it's a cool it's a cool venue in little Rock, too. It's cool that you have the opportunity to do that as well.
BENKE: Have you guys been?
CERRA: No, I’ve never been there. Yeah, I haven't either. I remember scrolling through the submissions from the Tiny Desk and being like, “Oh, there's no way we're gonna get it.” Then he sent the screenshot to the group text and I was like, “Oh, what?!” Yeah, that was awesome.
NOURANI: You guys are having your own album release show later this this weekend?
BENCKE: Yeah.
NOURANI: Tell me a little bit about that.
BENKE: We're going to be playing every single song from the album, which we've done once before at the late Smoke and Barrel. We've also got a few other surprises- some covers, an extra musician to fill out the parts that we recorded in the studio but couldn't fully do as a four piece live. Then, we've got a lot of merch- some tote bags and shirts and stickers and CDs.
Andrew was talking about that. You were looking at the physical CD the other day.
CERRA: Oh, it was an emotional moment, man. The culmination of so many years of working. It was right there. “Here it is in my hands.” It was so cool.
MOORE: Andrew Sarah, Tommy Bencke and Jacob Arnold from the band Mildenhall. You can find more details about their performance and the Arkansas Tiny Desk concert here.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
