Bento

Bento rocks. Just ask Heather St. Marie, the lead singer of the Los Angeles-based rock band Hydrovibe.

Heather St. Marie
Hydrovibe

Bento rocks. Just ask Heather St. Marie, the lead singer of the Los Angeles-based rock band Hydrovibe. She uses Bento to keep track of concert venues, band merchandise, and more. The database program has become the band’s electronic administrative assistant, handling all the day-to-day data that keeps the band going. “ This is pretty much a personal assistant for me,” says St. Marie. “It’s taking a lot of effort out of the admin side of things. It gives me more time to be the singer, be the merchandise person and to just be a band member.”

Hydrovibe

Hydrovibe—lead singer Heather St. Marie, guitarist Mat Dauzat, bassist Eliot Lorango, and drummer Phil Mathys—formed in Louisiana. Eventually, the band moved to L.A. to pursue a recording contract. Hydrovibe was offered a deal, but decided to go independent. The band formed its own label, called Orleans Street Records and laid down a four-song EP for the label. Then one of their songs was featured in the movie Saw III and the rest was history. The band launched a nine-month tour across the U.S.

The shows rocked, but the bookkeeping could barely keep up. “I kept track of everything with pen and paper, just wrote in a notebook,” says St. Marie. “It was a real pain to keep up with merchandise inventory and even remember all the different venues we played. I knew I needed something better to work with for our next tour.”

St. Marie didn’t want to be mired in complicated spreadsheet applications, so she searched for an easy-to-use alternative. “I don’t come from a business background,” she says. “I’m an artist. I’ve tried other database programs in the past, but I would just get lost and give up. I saw that Bento offered an easier way to organize things and I downloaded the trial. Right away I knew it would work much better for me than any spreadsheet. I set it up quickly and I’ve been using it ever since.”

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