by Chandler Christopher
November 30th, 2021
Dean Keeton is the sonic project of University of Texas grads, Josh Benzadon and Nathan Levine. The two met in Austin, Texas just around the corner from Dean Keeton Street, frequently linking up and collaborating with (at the time) fellow Austin musician, Cole Bauer. Brought together through being able to fulfill each other’s unrealized musical needs, dean keeton makes high-production songs to truly groove to. Led by their hit single, Unread (2020), and their debut EP, That Sound (2020), a collaboration project with singer Cole Bauer, dean keeton effortlessly made a name for themselves in and around Austin, Texas. The duo, along with their manager Julia Greenspan, have all moved to different cities and states around the U.S. since graduating. Josh is in law school in Miami, FL, Nathan working a job in Dallas, TX, and Julia working for a PR firm in New York City, the crew has remained in touch. With the trio finally settling into their respective locations, they plan to begin a new project with all of the tunes which patiently await the duo from their song-vault. Check out their tunes here, read our q&a below, and check out the rest of our interviews here!
Q: Tell me about y’all’s background a bit… When did y’all start to make music together?
Josh: We got to UT and met each other freshman year. Neither of us had made any music before really. I walked in and saw Nate playing guitar and I got really into it and had some production experience… and the next day we were sitting down making beats.
Q: Did y’all graduate from UT? What were your majors?
Josh: Yeah we both graduated and I was an advertising and Nate was business major.
Q: When did y’all start taking music seriously?
Nate: We got introduced to Cole Bauer by a friend, and he was super talented with an incredible voice. Once he found out we made beats together, he was super eager to hear the beats and see what we had been working on. He was immediately really hype about what we had made, and basically laid on lyrics right on the spot. That was back in 2018, and I feel like we started to take things more seriously at that point.
Q: Tell me a little about Unread and the That Sound EP.
Both: That Sound was a quarantine project… We had a few songs from the summer that we had made after Unread had gained momentum… We wanted to keep that going. Interestingly, we recorded the majority of the songs on the project from different parts of the country, which was definitely a challenge.
Q: What are your musical inspirations?
Nate: We really like Tom Misch and FKJ and artists kind of like that. That was one of the big things that brought us together, realizing we had the same music taste.
Q: Any future plans in the works? Anything else y’all want to add?
Both: We are all settling into our new lives, Josh finishes exams in a month, so we are looking forward to hopefully putting some new music out. A huge shoutout to our boy Cole Bauer
