Taylor Swift’s former band leader and banjo player Ben Clark is looking back on the “risk” he took by agreeing to join the then-16-year-old on tour.
In a series of clips recently uploaded to TikTok, which appear to have originated from the account of a church, Clark offered a testimony that involved some of his experiences working with the Eras Tour superstar during her early career—a worthwhile venture he almost declined.
The musician detailed his hesitation in accepting the job offer, which came while he was working with Grand Old Opry member Craig Morgan. Knowing just one single from Swift’s catalog—which he wasn’t fond of—he had little to no interest in going to work for her or, as he so boldly put it, her mother.
“Let’s be honest, that’s how it’s going to be,” he remembered thinking, anticipating “all the drama” that was likely to be involved. But finding out she was set to open for George Strait, in addition to the “magic words” that he would be salaried, quickly sealed the deal, and the road only went up from there.
“As a new artist, to offer salary is very rare,” he revealed. “It’s almost unheard of, but that’s how they ran their business and that’s how they took care of us band members.”
In fact, by the time he quit—a move he said Swift was “very very gracious” about—he was the “highest-paid band guy in Nashville,” going on to explain, “There were artists—George Strait, whoever you want to name it—that have had bands for 30 years that weren’t making as much money as Taylor was paying us.”
So he took the “risk” of going out with the new artist, even though “there [was] no way to know what [was] going to happen with [her] career.”
“…to jump ship from somebody who’s a Grand Old Opry member and had multiple number ones to go to a new artist that could be done in a year and just fizz out is a pretty scary thing to do,” he admitted.
But, in the “few years” that Clark worked with the “Mastermind” songstress, “she went from her first single to the number one selling artist in the world”—though she’s never strayed from the “standard” she set, as one fan described it, recently issuing “life-changing” bonuses to her Eras Tour crew members.
