Barney Bentall has a lot of directions he can ride in music. He became known in a big way across Canada for his hard-driving rock 'n' roll with his band The Legenday Hearts, which fans paralleled with Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp or Tom Petty. Like those three guiding lights, Bentall was able to withstand the changing trends and make relevant new music over a long period of time from the early 1980s up to the late 1990s, and he still has a lot of torque in that engine despite modern changes in the way music success is measured.
A career that long in that industry can only occur if the material is based on quality material. Something To Live For, Crime Against Love, and Do Ya are not similar songs but each was critically acclaimed at their stages of release and each one still sounds pleasing with today's ears.
It's little wonder, then, that Bentall also played a major role in The High Bar Gang, a collection of B.C. rock, folk, country and pop musicians who formed up to share their mutual love of bluegrass music and traditional folk. Other members of the group include Dave Barber, Kirby Barber, Rob Becker, Wendy Bird, Colin Nairne and Shari Ulrich. They instantly became leading modern voices in the genre of ultra rootsy North Americana and the awards got handed over to prove it.
Bentall also loves some acoustic country and folk music, plus a solo brand of rock 'n' roll when his Legendary Hearts project isn't in the foreground.
The last time he was in Prince George was the summer of 2017, at the concert thrown in Prince George to say thank you to the firefighters who tried their best to save the forests and all the volunteers who helped with the wildfire refugees that had to come here while their homes were in danger. The devastating Elephant Hill blaze came within nine kilometres of Bentall's own ranch not far from Ashcroft.
Now Bentall is coming back to just rock as a support act for Colin James, but he does love to perform in Prince George as a sort of favourite outside city. This was one of those early places that gave him an audience back in his formative years.
"It's kinda cool because I have Simon Kendall playing keyboards, and Simon has been in Doug & The Slugs since Day 1 and the very first time I played P.G. was opening for Doug & The Slugs back in 1980 or something. So that's a sentimental bonus," Bentall said.
You can take from Kendall's presence that this concert will be focused on Bentall's rockier side. There will be an emphasis on all his past hits, but don't be surprised if a few new ones make an appearance too. He is already into the early stages of recording the next solo album. The collaboration musicians are largely the same people who helped him with the The Drifter And The Preacher, his 2017 project.
"I've never been an autocratic person in the studio," he said. "You just bring in a whole bunch of good players. My job is to log the hours and write songs, have 20 or 25 to draw from so you can see which ones of them form a gang, and that starts to form the record, then you go in with great players and just be open to where it's going to go. Because they are great. The men and women I record with will go 'why don't we do this here at this part?' or 'maybe this could be shorter' and all that stuff, and you embark on that wonderful discovery that is the art of making music."
He has to be the one to make the final decision when there are multiple options on the table but that's a pleasure, he said, when the people in the room have supplied the process with a lot of talent. The choice may not be easy but the results will be delicious.
His love of collaboration aside, he said he also contemplates doing a "stripped down album like Springsteen's Nebraska, or Bon Iver's first record where he went to the hunting cabin and like a mad science experiment brought along a bunch of instruments and recording gear."
He has his ranch for that. He hasn't turned it into a sound lab as yet, but he does go there often from his primary home in the Lower Mainland in order to write.
He likes doing the ever present ranch work as well. It keeps his hands dirty, his boots weathered, his collar blue, and imposes a constantly humbling living condition that clears his composer's head.
All the gold records and ticket sales fade into the distance when a lifestyle like that is threatened by falls of flame and towers of smoke. He is looking at spring a lot differently these days, knowing that B.C.'s forests and ranchlands are now facing a regular threat of wildfire.
"Everyone's got their fingers crossed that maybe we'll have a better season this year," he said. "The last couple of years, you feel like that is the new normal and that's disturbing and very unsettling."
But, as a talented songwriter once penned, "life could be worse, things could get bad, I'm lucky, I guess, to remember what I am."
Bentall and the Legendary Hearts are celebrating the 30th anniversary of their first album release, so he hinted that maybe some reunion shows are on the horizon, perhaps even a live album of their greatest hits.
In the meantime, he'll be on the Colin James concert bill along with opening act Marty O'Reilly this Saturday at CN Centre.
Tickets are on sale now at the arena's box office or online at TicketsNorth.ca.
