Velvet Hammer Music and Management Group is an artist development and management company and record label located in West Hollywood, California in the United States. Its current client roster includes Alice in Chains, Battle Lines, Coheed and Cambria, Cypress Hill, Deftones, Hot Water Music, Jackson Guthy, Pepper, Scars on Broadway, System of a Down and Touché Amoré.

The company was founded in 1997 by David Beno Benveniste, expanding out of Benveniste's independent music management practice. Beno was born and raised in Beverly Hills, California, and graduated from the University of Southern California. He began a career in the music industry after developing the band System of a Down. Through his creation of the marketing company Streetwise Concepts and Culture, a fan volunteer network that assembled over the Internet for grassroots promotion, Beno tapped into the power of youth marketing to promote the group. Within three years, he was able to build an army of over 30,000 kids through the platform to distribute promotional items to their friends on behalf of bands he managed through “hand-to-hand” promotion.

Orville J. Rhodes, better known as Red Rhodes or O. J. Rhodes (December 30, 1930 - August 20, 1995), was an American pedal steel guitarist. His mother taught him to play the Dobro at the age of five, but at the age of fifteen he switched to the steel guitar. He moved to Los Angeles in 1960 and became a session musician.

Rhodes played pedal steel on many country rock, pop and rock albums with The Monkees, James Taylor, The Beach Boys, Seals and Crofts, The Byrds, The Carpenters and many other groups. He is most often remembered for his work with former Monkee Michael Nesmith on Nesmith's first solo albums in the early 1970s. Rhodes is also credited for the "other-worldly" effects he created with pedal steel on The Ventures futuristic album The Ventures in Space in 1964.

In the late 1970s Rhodes shifted his focus from performing to guitar electronics at his Royal Amplifier Service shop in Hollywood, California. There Rhodes modified amplifiers and created his custom Velvet Hammer guitar pickups for James Burton, Clarence White and other influential guitarists. His shop staff included future instrument makers David Schecter, Michael Tobias and Bill Chapin.