>>PREVIEW
DUSTIN BENTALL
Saturday, May 19
Hillhurst-Sunnyside Community Centre
Lying on a highway, Dustin Bentall and his beloved 1969 Chevy Impala smashed up around him, hearing "the sirens whine out of tune and in time" in the distance seems like no way to begin a career in music. Yet for the songwriter, the end of what had been a very beautiful road trip was the beginning of hang-time on the musical road.
Sounding drowsy and relaxed after his first good night’s sleep in a long time, Bentall recounts the On the Road flavoured cross-Canada trip he and a friend took to the East Coast before he became a full-time musician. "We had done all this driving around the country and then were coming home from the ranch (his father, musician Barney Bentall’s British Columbia ranch). We had made it almost all the way home. We were driving the last four hours to home and got hit head-on when a truck came around the corner on the wrong side of the road," he says from an Edmonton hotel room.
As it turns out, what could have been a nightmare was a gift. Although his car was smashed up and his friend had a broken back, Bentall had only minor injuries. His friend recovered after the accident. Bentall counted his blessings and took it all as a wake-up call. A carpenter by trade, the event inspired him to leave his job building houses.
"I was able to sit down and think for a long time that it’s not about making a big paycheque and working at a job six days a week, having to go without your dream. I had never really thought that I could actually do it, you know, but it changed then. Building houses was good, I liked it, but after working that much I was too tired to play guitar after work."
The song about lying on the road hearing the sirens, "Cold and Lonely," was born of the crash, as were others. The huge front-end on the Chevy that had been sacrificed saving the passengers’ lives was also worthy of a song. "It was crushed. The car kind of took the worst of it for sure. That’s what the song he had such a pretty face ("Such a Shame") was about, that car. I tell the story now that it’s about the car, but at the same time I have had a good friend of mine pass away in a car." Bentall decided to collect all his songs, record them and hit the road hard again, this time with the purpose of playing his music for the world.
These songs are nestled in among eight others on Bentall’s 2006 album, Streets With No Lights, an addictive collection of Zen stories about love, lust, romance, the road and life. The record is startling in its simple intensity and tuneful appeal, and for the fact that Bentall was only 22 when he recorded it. The tunes’ uncluttered, open-air feel and their tendency to compete with each other to become the current favourite earns the disc the sticky habit of being perpetually in your player or finding its way back there again and again.
Bentall says his father was supportive of his decision to pursue music full time. "When I started to learn to play guitar (at age 12), he didn’t push me, but he would ask me if I wanted to learn a different technique, or he would show me a way to do it differently. When I told him about my decision after the crash, he was fine with that. My family has always been very positive about everything we do, so this is just one more thing for them to cheer on." |
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