13-year-old Kelowna guitarist well on his way to becoming a rockstar

A 13-year-old Kelowna guitar player has become a local sensation with his incredible skill.

Benny Patterson, who also goes by the monikers Metal Benny and Benny Shredz, is a virtuoso when it comes to playing the guitar.

He recently moved to Kelowna from Toronto with his family.

Benny dreams of making music his career and he seems to already be on track for it.

"I want to be a rockstar when I grow up, like a professional musician… I practice around one hour to two hours a day, lots of classical stuff and different genres like metal and sometimes grunge," he says.

He also dreams of attending the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

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Patterson first got into music through the influence of his father and was gifted his first guitar at the age of eight. He has since found his own inspiration in the musical world.

When he's not doing school work or going down the slopes at Big White, Benny is playing music, experimenting and mixing different genres.

"When I was super, super young, my dad used to play heavy metal in the car and that really inspired me to start listening to metal and playing guitar," he says.

"I love putting music together and mixing metal and classical together. Lots of my songs are arrangements from a guy named Cole Rolland who's Canadian and he does a lot of classical metal which I like to do a lot of."

One of Patterson's turning points was in 2019 when, at the age of nine, he won a Cosmo Music Competition which introduced him to a famous guitarist.

"I played a Metallica song in the competition when I won and I got to meet Kirk Hammett the guitarist from Metallica, and he gave me this guitar and signed it," he says.

"That was definitely a turning point and it inspired me a lot I got to see his sideband called the Wedding Band and I got to go on stage with them and it was super cool."

To hear more from Benny, before he becomes a rockstar, find him on Instagram under the name Bennyshredz or on YouTube at Metal Benny.

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