Benztown Beefs Up With Silva & Urbanek

• Benztown has beefed up its already impressive production leadership team with the addition of two experienced production pros — Darren Silva is named West Coast Director of Commercial Production for Benztown and client YamanAir, and Jake Urbanek joins the crew as Production Manager, Long Form Programming.

Silva (left) joins Benztown after 22 years as Network Production Manager for Radio Disney in Los Angeles. Silva got his radio start in 1984 doing overnights for his hometown station in San Luis Obispo, CA, before moving to L.A. in 1987 to work at the late, legendary 105.5 KNAC as “Dangerous Darren,” followed by a stint with KEGL (97.1 The Eagle)/Dallas. Silva has also been with SiriusXM for the past 17 years as an air talent on Hair Nation, Ozzy’s Boneyard, and Classic Rewind.

Urbanek (right) segues from Apple Music in Los Angeles, where he was Asst. Producer of The Zane Lowe Show. Prior to that, he was Audio Engineer for more than eight years with Mr. Smalls Recording Studio in Pittsburgh. He was also Sound Engineer for the Washington Symphony Orchestra in Washington, PA.

Silva commented, “I’ve been aware of the Benztown company and brand since they started, and I’ve been in touch with them since my days with Radio Disney. The talent at Benztown is unmatched and I’m honored to be part of this company and work with these amazing people, as well as with Yaman and the amazing creative team at YamanAir.” Urbanek remarked, “I look forward to working and learning from the best, while bringing my experience in production to such an amazingly talented and driven team.”

 Benztown Pres. Dave “Chachi” Denes explained the sound reasoning behind these hires, telling RAMP, “I’m pretty certain that Darren and Jake know how to use Pro Tools, and to the best of my knowledge they have no priors, so we decided to roll the dice.”