Settled into his home recording studio in Annapolis, Maryland, Benjamin Heemstra sits in a corner playing bright chords on a piano. As he plays, it’s clear how different this one is compared to the many others he has readily available to play. His piano is from 1922, a pre-World War II Steinway Vertegrand upright, which he acquired through Facebook Marketplace.
“I name most of my instruments, and I’m a fan of alliteration, so she’s Stella the Steinway,” he said with a passionate smile.
Ben works as a full-time musician, a job that has taken him all over Maryland and beyond. On top of trying to play at least six days a week in the evenings, the 34-year-old keeps himself occupied during the day by creating visual and audio content for himself and others in the area. He also utilizes his 30-plus years of playing and music education to teach lessons.
“I have ADHD, so I love that I have the diversity of different ways of making money, all music-related, but it’s different applications of music,” he said. “Sometimes days can be busy, but since I work for myself, I can do whatever I want.”
In high school, Ben played basketball for Severna Park High School before leaving the team in his senior year to pursue being a musician. He said it was around that time he began smoking Cannabis, but he didn’t smoke while on the basketball team due to concerns about its impact on his performance.
After high school, he was accepted into the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland before switching his major to music education in 2010. Following four years at UMD with no degree, he transferred to Anne Arundel Community College to get an associate’s degree in transfer studies with an intent to finish up at Towson University.
While at Anne Arundel, Ben moved back in with his parents and, for a time, smoked synthetic marijuana after getting caught with real Cannabis. He quit cold turkey and went back to smoking Cannabis when he moved out again in 2015.
Ben left Towson after two semesters and began working odd jobs to support himself while playing music on the side. After feeling a personal shift to get out into the music scene and start working, he made the full-time switch to working musician in 2018.
“My best and worst quality about myself is if I’m not passionate about it, it’s going to be really hard for me to put forth effort into said thing,” he said.
Sporting a 6-foot-5-inches, 270-pound frame, Ben has long suffered from chronic back pain and sciatica, and when he went to get an X-ray to see what was wrong, his doctor refused. When he confessed to his doctor that he smoked weed and that it did alleviate his pain, she helped him get his medical Cannabis certification.
“I’m high-fiving my college self,” he said. “It’s cool that it’s come to the point where we’re not just talking about how sticky or purple it is, but we can talk about terpenes, the medicinal side of things.”
Ben said he enjoys Cannabis in a few different ways, like smoking flower and taking edibles, but he prefers smoking concentrates out of anything and leans toward more sativa-dominant strains.
“I’m a musician who gigs out. If I smoke indica stuff, I’d be in-da-couch,” he explained. “You’re just a part of the upholstery, and I can’t do that when I’m trying to entertain people and have a good time.”
When he’s playing longer gigs, however, Ben turns to RSO to help maintain a prolonged buzz that helps him stay focused during setup and take his mind off the temptation to smoke more throughout the night. He said that even with a pretty high tolerance, he reduces his dosage to 100mg to avoid overdoing it before playing.
Ben recently celebrated the release of his debut album, “speak your mind.,” this past July. When making the record, he asked local musicians to contribute, much like how he puts together a live band for his cover gigs. With no real blueprint for what he wanted them to play, he would simply show them the song and encourage them to “add their own flavors.” With all of these different musicians contributing a piece of themselves to his art, Ben said he owes it to them to make sure their unique contributions are heard and to continue spreading the love between his collaborators and peers.
“My biggest fear for anybody is not finding that thing that makes you unique,” he said. “So when people find that thing, it’s almost like you start to get superpowers because that’s where you’re supposed to be.”
