Breaking Benjamin and Bush are coming to rock Grand Rapids May 16. Ahead of the show at Van Andel Arena, I got to chat to guitarist Jasen Rauch about the tour, dream collaborations, what bands he's listening to right now and where Breaking Benjamin are with new music.

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It's sounds like Breaking Benjamin are having a blast on the the road with Bush. Jasen says,

"Every night with them is standout."

It's always nice to hear when musicians are fans of other artists, and it sounds like Jasen is a true Bush fan.

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He talks about how cool it is to hear the songs he used to jam out to in high school live each night.

I asked Jasen who he's listening to right now, and it's an eclectic mix: Bring Me The Horizon, Bad Omens, Morgan Wallen, Hardy, Slipknot, Duran Duran, Genesis, Peter Gabriel, and more.

Recently, Breaking Benjamin collaborated with Starset on the song "Waiting on the Sky to Change".

Jasen actually wrote the song with Starset's Dustin Bates over a decade ago. He says it was very cool to revisit the song and see that it's stood the test of time and it's still a good song now.

In terms of dream collaborations, Jasen says that is something that the band has been talking about... and he could not give too much away, because some of those collaborations may actually happen! Personally, Jasen says he loves the work of Trent Reznor and would love to work with him.

As far as new music,

We are working on music. We've been writing for quite a while... a little over a year... We kinda keep the bar pretty high for ourselves as far as the standard moving forward. I've experimented with some things, thrown some things out, started over a couple of times, and are getting to a place where we're pretty happy. We've been in the studio, we did some in Nashville, we've done a lot of stuff remotely... hopefully we'll have something out soon for everybody to hear.

Check out the full interview below! And be sure to get your tickets to see Breaking Benjamin and Bush here in Grand Rapids!

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