Local band Benny And The Clones will be stripping back their upcoming performance at the QT Resort on Thursday 1st October, to deliver a stellar live act on Tropical Thursday.

While the band members all have Melbourne roots the majority of the band now call Port Douglas home. Born of a mutual love of music, beer, party pies and sausage rolls, Benny & The Clones have been playing original music in Far North Queensland for the better part of a decade.

Newsport caught up with guitarist Dale Priem to talk about the upcoming gig and their plans for the future.

“The core of the band is myself on guitar, Ben Kuring on drums, and Ben Radford, lead singer and songwriter and us three are playing at QT. Paul Shannon, our bass player, lives in Melbourne but comes up quite often to record and do gigs.”

They write all their own lyrics and music and usually perform their original material as a four piece band, but their QT Tropical Thursday gig will see the band stripped back slightly.

“It's drums, one acoustic guitar, one electric guitar, three vox for the QT gig, no bass player. We have two different bass players for local gigs depending on who's available,” said Priem.

Their name came about because Ben Radford originally recorded all the instruments and vocals on their first album by himself, so in effect, every band member was him, that is a clone of Ben Radford, which ironically turned into Benny And The Clones. They enjoy performing their original songs at local gigs and festivals whenever the opportunity arises, but most of their gigs are usually in Cairns.

“We're just about to finish the third album, we're in the Mastering phase at the moment. It will be out by the end of the year. We've taken it pretty seriously this time, it's being mastered in Nashville at the moment.

“We've been a bit quiet on the gig front lately, focusing on getting the album finished, then we plan on doing a tour of Melbourne at least our old stomping ground. We're planning on gigging anywhere that promotes original music after the album comes out. We're playing as a four-piece at Rock The Yacht at the PDYC on the 31st of this October.

Benny And The Clones will perform this Thursday at QT Resort Tropical Thursday from 6pm till 9pm.