Ben Eyestone Fund honors life of Nashville drummer, seeks to save others

In just seven years in Nashville, Ben Eyestone built a legacy of musical accomplishment and generosity that stands to last for generations.

Eyestone played drums for top-flight artists like Nikki Lane and served as an anchor for East Nashville’s vibrant independent rock and country music scene. Between tending bar at the 5 Spot and picking up drumming gigs for an array of artists, Eyestone was a pillar of a community of artists who are the lifeblood of Music City.

He was the guy behind the bar who strangers would pour their hearts out to, and the drummer that artists could trust to lead their rhythm section for a show on short notice.

For a city that depends on wide-eyed dreamers moving here to fuel the $9.8 billion music industry, Eyestone could be viewed as a poster child for the Nashville music scene. Talented, kind, accomplished, supportive. The exact kind of guy professional musicians would want to hire for their band.

Tragically, Eyestone is the poster child for another increasingly familiar aspect of the music industry: the musician forced to navigate the health care system without insurance.

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Eyestone died last July, just a few weeks after he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He was 28. The details of his case have left those close to him and experts who examined his case to believe his death should have been prevented.

Thanks to his friends, family and leaders in the Nashville music industry, Eyestone’s legacy is just beginning to be formed. The Music Health Alliance and St. Thomas Health have partnered together to create the Ben Eyestone Fund, which will provide a variety of services, especially diagnostic tests, for uninsured and underinsured members of Nashville’s music community.

Among its immediate success stories, the fund has already made a difference, helping a gifted young singer-songwriter be diagnosed with tumors in her abdomen after years of suffering.

“He had what I believe to be the greatest pre-existing condition in Nashville,” said Music Health Alliance founder and CEO Tatum Hauck Allsep. “He was a poor, uninsured musician. Ben tried to utilize the resources available to him at free clinics and two public hospitals, but the health care system failed Ben at every single turn.”

Born into a musical family

Eyestone was born to be a rock star.

Growing up in Port Angeles, Wash., his mother Laura Eyestone was a music teacher and his father Paul Eyestone was a musician who played in a local blues band.

Music was in his blood. As a toddler he would tag along with his mom to music lessons, and as an 11-year-old, his dad introduced him to the cello. Drums was the instrument Ben was really drawn to, so his dad borrowed the drum kit from a friend.

Ten months later, the family bought that kit, triggering Ben's career in music at a young age. To represent his love of drumming and his personality, Ben got the word "steady" tattooed on his arm.

“He was always around it,” Laura Eyestone said. “It was just a natural thing.”

In high school, Ben and three of his friends (Eric Whitman, Mark Fredson and Johnny Whitman) got together to form a band, the Lonely H. Only unlike most high school bands, this one showed immediate promise.

When Ben was 15, the Lonely H recorded its first album in Seattle with producer Joe Reinek, who thought so much of the band he pitched them to Capitol Records executives in Los Angeles.

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The band was flown to L.A. with the opportunity to audition for a record deal. Although the band didn't sign with Capitol, the momentum carried through high school and upon graduation, the Lonely H piled into a van and embarked on its first national tour.

Sometimes the gigs were for crowds of 200, and other times there were three or four people in the room.

"I actually can't believe our parents let us do that," Eric Whitman said. "This was before smart phones too, so we were driving around the country with an atlas trying to figure out where we were going.

"It was really just roughing it, and figuring out what life's all about and just being together. We made a lot of mistakes. At one point they started calling it the concrete classroom because we left college to drive around the United States over and over again."

The Lonely H would continue to tour, and on a fateful trip to Nashville performed at the 5 Spot with a popular Music City band Buffalo Clover. The experience at the East Nashville venue was so positive, the band began discussing relocating here from the Pacific northwest where they were freshmen in college.

Laura Eyestone said it wasn't hard for her son to choose a career in music over a college education because he had such a passion for it.

"Because I figured, now's the time in your life to do it," she said. "If this is your passion, if this is what you really want to do, then do it."

The Lonely H went on hiatus not long after the band relocated to Nashville around 2010, but the members began picking up gigs and entrenching themselves in the East Nashville scene.

Ben began to stand out, landing gigs with Nikki Lane and Little Bandit, among many others.

"He was all about music," Whitman said. "There was no way to take him away from music."

Working at the 5 Spot helped him pay his bills and make connections with other musicians. For several years, Ben lived the life that is so familiar to Nashville musicians — scrapping for work, creating music, meeting interesting people, frequently touring the country. If a gig came up — like it did when Nikki Lane needed a drummer just a few days before a lengthy tour — the 5 Spot was happy to save his job until he returned.

Between touring and working at the bar, Ben became well-known in the music community.

“He was just a really sweet guy,” singer Margo Price, a friend and one-time neighbor said. “But he would also tell it like it is. He was not afraid to give you an honest opinion or an honest answer. We got to be really close. When I first met him we kind of butted heads. He was kind of picking on me, but he was just having fun.

"For my birthday he’d always throw down a bunch of money on the bar table and tell me to buy drinks.”

Ben had talked with friends and family about his goal of continuing to build his career as a musician. He loved being on the road, so continuing to travel with touring artists was a possibility. His mom said he mentioned the idea of opening a music venue at some point.

"After he passed away, we'd have people come to us and say they came to our merch table to meet me, but ended up talking to Ben for 30 minutes," Lane said. "He was just all about compassion. I don't think I realized aside from my relationship with him how much he permeated the entire East Nashville area."

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Without insurance, Eyestone was forced to navigate painful stomach ailment

Ben began telling friends about serious stomach ailments beginning in January 2017, but his family said he had been complaining sporadically about indigestion or bathroom problems for about a year prior to that.

Just a few months prior, Ben made the choice to forego health insurance because the cost was just too much for his budget. He made too much to qualify for subsidies on the Affordable Care Act exchange.

Though he may have qualified for Medicaid if the state of Tennessee had chosen to expand TennCare, Ben decided that as a young man in his 20s, it was worth the risk to pay the tax penalty he would incur for not having insurance.

After reviewing his medical records, Allsep — who runs the nonprofit Music Health Alliance which helps Nashville music community members navigate insurance and health care issues — believes Ben received inadequate care because he was uninsured.

It started with a trip to a free walk-in clinic, which treated his stomach pain with laxatives. Return trips to the clinic when those didn't work resulted in Ben being referred to Nashville General Hospital, the city-run facility that primarily treats patients who are uninsured. But Ben was told in May that he could not get a colonoscopy until August.

He died in on July 12. 

The final weeks of Ben's life were painful for him and a shock to his friends. After his pain increased to unbearable levels, Ben visited the emergency room at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where a colonoscopy was finally performed, revealing tumors.

Ben was never given a treatment plan, because his case was under review by the Vanderbilt tumor review board, his family said.

Even after he learned the tumors were cancerous, Ben was hopeful. His good friend Alex Munoz, who played guitar in Lane's band, had successfully beaten testicular cancer the year before.

"We were going to beat that thing, man," Munoz said. "He said, 'I know it's going to be hard, but I'm going to do what I need to do and in six months or a year, I'm going to be healthy again."

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His mother flew to Nashville to help him, and lived in a spare property Lane owns. Laura Eyestone describes the final days of her son's life with painful clarity. She remembers the way hospital staff was dismissive of his pain, wrongly assuming because of his long hair and tattoos that Ben was a pain pill addict.

She remembers begging the admissions nurse to take Ben into a room as he writhed in pain on the waiting room floor, and then begged for pain relief once he was finally admitted.

And Laura remembers those terrifying final moments, like out of a movie, when she had basically passed out from exhaustion at his bedside but was awakened by doctors and nurses trying unsuccessfully to revive him. Laura frantically called family and friends to tell them what was going on.

Ben died because his tumor perforated his intestine, causing sepsis, which sent him into shock and ultimately killed him.

Ben Eyestone Fund aims to diagnose illness for those without insurance

For Ben's family, it's impossible to not ask, what if? If he had health insurance, would he have received better care? Would they have discovered the tumor sooner?

Those questions are all the more painful since medical experts who have examined Ben's medical files believe his death was preventable.

But Eyestone's legacy continues to unfold even after his death. The Music Health Alliance and St. Thomas Health have created a fund that will cover the diagnostic testing costs for people in Nashville's music community.

The musicians in Ben's exact situation without health insurance can receive the often extremely expensive tests they need without having to worry about the costs. "The goal is to offer 100 percent access and get all diagnostics covered while eliminating all the same barriers that ultimately led to Ben's death," Allsep said.

Already, artists like Elizabeth Cook, who was friends with Ben, have contributed to the fund, which already has garnered a healthy $70,000.

"I think Ben's legacy will be that the love for him and the senseless tragedy he, his family and friends have suffered and continue to suffer, has single-handedly changed the way musicians in our community receive access to health care. His loss will save others," Cook said.

And the fund has already made a difference. Vanessa Olivarez, the Nashville songwriter and member of the band Granville Automatic, has already taken advantage of the fund. Tests paid for out of the Ben Eyestone Fund discovered eight tumors in Olivarez' abdomen.

A surgery removed the tumors and though her recovery continues to unfold, Olivarez's prognosis is positive.

"The diagnostic was the most important part of the whole thing. It was a life saver and I could never be thankful enough," Olivarez said.

Reach Nate Rau at 615-259-8094 and nrau@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter @tnnaterau.

Learn more

For information on the Music Health Alliance and the Ben Eyestone Fund, visit musichealthalliance.com, email info@musichealthalliance.com or call 615-200-6896.