One step at a time

Joe Benintende walks with a cane. The honey-colored wood falls even with his waist where it curves into a traditional cane handle.

Its surface is covered in markings ― symbols of the Free-Masons, Benintende said. The cane once belonged to his grandfather. 

The 58-year-old is probably a little young to be walking with a cane, but then again, he’s lucky to be walking at all. After almost 40 years in the music business, Benintende’s career came to a halt when he was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. The accident left him paralyzed from the waist down. 

What happened next is nothing short of a miracle, he said. In October of 2015, after being paralyzed for six years, Benintende took a trip to Tampa for an experimental treatment that eventually restored movement and feeling to his legs.

After a week, he was walking again, and he hasn’t stopped since. As if that wasn’t achievement enough, Benintende is hard at work putting WorkPlay on Birmingham’s map as its general manager.  

Music: Life’s passion

Benintende’s love for music began in New Orleans, where he grew up. At 15, he attended his first concert at the legendary Warehouse music venue. He marks the show, “Peter Frampton Comes Alive,” as the beginning of his lifetime obsession with music — the day he knew he had to work in the business. 

Since that first concert, Benintende has had the opportunity to work headlining tours across the country in every genre. He’s worked shows for the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Aerosmith, John Mayer, Toby Keith and *NSYNC, which he regards as his favorite of all. 

“It was hard, but it was a blast,” he said of his time promoting with Live Nation. “I promoted basically every show I could imagine. I literally got to go around the world three times. What else can you do for a living that lets you do that and still pays?”

In 1990, Benintende’s mentor, longtime Birmingham concert promoter Tony Ruffino, called on him to work with Live Nation at the Oak Mountain Amphitheatre. Benintende accepted the job and spent the next 18 years working as the director of productions and operations. 

Long before Benintende got started promoting music, he played it. The lifetime singer-songwriter said he has always dealt with his emotions through music. When the World Trade Center attacks happened in 2001, Benintende said he did what he’d always done in hard times: He wrote a song.

Three days later, Benintende produced the President’s National Day of Prayer at the Oak Mountain Amphitheatre. The event, one of 50 across the nation, drew 7,000 people — the most of any state, earning it a live spot on CNN. He said the governor heard about his song and invited him to sing it on stage at the event.  

A journey of starting over

In 2009, Benintende was driving back from St. Peter’s Catholic Church when his life was turned upside down. Stopped at a traffic light on Lorna Road in Hoover at about 1:30 in the afternoon, a car hit him from behind. 

After several major surgeries and six months in the hospital, Benintende was left with four artificial vertebrae; his spinal cord was 50 percent severed below the L5 vertebra; and the diagnosis was that he would never walk again. He had no feeling below his navel. He visited spinal cord doctors across the country and even contacted the Christopher Reeve Foundation for resources, but they all had the same response. They told him it was best to work toward accepting his new life as a paraplegic. 

“So I came home and tried to make the best of my life as I could from a wheelchair,” he said. 

He was forced to quit his job in the music industry. Benintende said he proceeded to mourn the loss of his legs through the five stages of grief. First was denial. 

“I can remember trying to shake my legs back into feeling and moving again,” he said. “I remember literally beating them against the floor, thinking if I just shake them enough there would be the right connection, and they’d start working again.”

Once he cycled through anger, bargaining and depression to reach acceptance, Benintende said there were still adjustments and disappointments to encounter every day. 

One of the biggest problems for Benintende was wheelchair accessibility, he said.

For example, he said he had to switch churches because the only way into his church’s sanctuary was by going up stairs he could no longer climb.  

“I couldn’t do what I loved to do, because in a wheelchair, you can’t go places you want,” Benintende said.  

Then, last October, everything for Benintende changed again. He received a call from Tampa. A few of his friends in the medical profession had found a guy who had healed paralyzed people.

“I’m thinking that he’s a scam artist because there’s no cure for spinal cord injuries,” he said. 

Out of curiosity, Benintende gave the man — Ken Bryant, a 44-year-old legally blind licensed massage therapist and certified reflexologist — a call.

He said Bryant explained how he uses minute electrical currents to restimulate movement. He said if the nerves sustain a current for long enough, they can re-communicate with the brain and bypass the spinal cord. Benintende, still skeptical at the time, told Bryant he might give him a call when he could save enough money for the treatment. Then, Bryant said something that sealed the deal for Benintende.   

“He said, “Don’t not come because you can’t afford it. I’ve never not treated someone because they couldn’t afford it. If you come here, I’ll treat you,’” he said. 

So Benintende, along with his service dog, Angel, set out in his Dodge Caravan for the 14-hour drive to Tampa. Benintende said he was still doubtful once he arrived, so he decided to use his phone camera to film the treatment and his progress.

Benintende became Bryant’s 685th patient. By the end of the first day, Benintende was able to move one foot about an inch off the ground — the only movement he had been able to produce from the waist down in six years. 

“It seems like nothing, but to me, it was substantial,” he said. 

By the second day, he could move both feet another inch, and by the third day he was able to wobble his knees. Benintende said the gravity of the situation hit him the first time he was able to make a movement that resembled taking a step. Strapped to a leg press machine, Benintende recorded the moment when his right foot shot forward a few inches: his first step. 

“I just cried. I bet I cried for a day, because I honestly had gotten to the point where I didn’t think I was ever going to move again,” he said. 

By the end of two months, Benintende had regained full sensation in his lower body.

Perfect timing

Over the next few months, Benintende said, his only goal was to build back his strength and balance. At least it was until Tom Williams, former Birmingham auto tycoon, called. The owner of WorkPlay needed a new general manager for the venue, and he didn’t want just anybody. He wanted Benintende. 

“I love the music business, and I was more than ready to get back into it,” he said. “It was really just perfect timing.”

Benintende said going back to work has been a blessing in more than one way. As general manager, he oversees all 30,000 square feet of the venue, which houses a full-service bar, theater, sound stage, office space and three recording studios. With no short distance to walk, Benintende said working at WorkPlay has pushed him to the limits of his post-accident ability.

“My first week or two, I was really sore,” he said. “This place has actually helped me a lot in the sense that I have to walk a lot now, so that’s built my strength up even faster.”

But the relationship doesn’t go just one way. Benintende wants to help WorkPlay just as it has helped him. After the redesign of WorkPlay’s outdated bar in March, Benintende said he intends to follow suit with the rest of the venue by giving much needed attention to the rest of its amenities.

One of his plans is to make the soundstage more user-friendly, which means adding a permanent bar and creating a patio where people can congregate before and after shows. He said he hopes to add a similar outdoor space in front of the main bar, and plans already are underway to get all eight Birmingham breweries on tap as well. 

Benintende said he also wants to revive WorkPlay’s music academy. At his new academy, students will learn to play an instrument, as well as learn about production, promotion and recording. At the end of the program, he envisions a collaborative performance in the style of the Jack Black movie “School of Rock.”

As the second-oldest operating music venue in Birmingham, Benintende said its time to give everything an upgrade at WorkPlay — even artist lineups. 

“Everything we do, we’re magnifying times 20,” he said. “We’re completely turning this whole place upside down.”

One step at a time

Though he’s ready to go full speed ahead on WorkPlay’s changes, Benintende said he intends to tackle things the way he has his entire life: one step at a time. 

“One of the things I’ve never tried to do is predict the future,” he said. “I figure between now and whatever time, I’ll make the most out of each 24 hours.”

For Benintende, each step forward is monumental. 

“I believe God put me in the position to be able to do these things again,” he said. “Not everyone gets that opportunity so it’s one, a miracle, and two, a blessing.”