Finding himself adrift on a sea of psychedelic dreams, folk-pop maestro Barnaby Bennett, front man for The Tetraktys, uses his voice as a sail and a ukulele as a paddle. Wrapping his listeners in a honey-coloured cloud of capricious energy, this mellow-yellow acoustic hero has the tousled dirty blond hair, disorganized smile and soulful blue eyes of a young Henry Gross (of Sha Na Na), but with a contemporary cachet. Describing himself as “the literary type,” Bennett chose the band’s unpronounceable moniker from a Latin term that expresses the magical connection between music and mathematics in Pythagorean theory.
“The Tetraktys is a four dimensional symbol that describes musical octaves and divides infinitely into itself,” Bennett explains. “To us, it’s a tool for spiritual ascension and meditating on space. Obviously, we’re not your normal rock ’n’ roll band.”
Bennett has performed his flashback-inducing audio-visual extravaganza to a variety of venues, from churches to art galleries. Along with multi-instrumentalists Neil Todd, Jamey Lougheed and Alex Judd, Bennett employs moving pictures, flashing lights and a rotating orchestra of band members (including members of Azymuth, The Firm Handshake, The Consonant C and Honeybear) to enhance the band’s mind-blowing performances. Thanks to these shows, The Tetraktys have garnered a well-earned reputation as a band that props open the doors of perception.
“I think it’s special when an artist can create a comfortable yet interesting imaginary world,” says Bennett. “Our approach is fairly gentle — the sensations wash over you, but there are also unexpected twists and turns to it. We’re totally nonchalant and unpretentious about presenting our ideas. There are common, non-linear threads linking our songs together within a conceptual narrative — but we’re not going to do all the work for you.”
Encouraging their listeners to turn on and tune in, The Tetraktys have put special care and attention into the engineering of their debut CD, Die Brucke (the bridge), named for the turn-of-the-century German art movement. Fancying themselves “old masters of a modern style,” Bennett sees the album name as an apt summary of the band’s goals.
‘I think the name is an appropriate metaphor for the ways in which we try to build a musical bridge between the present and the past, and our interconnectivity to the previous generation,” Bennett explains. “I’m a big fan of Todd Rundgren and Ian and Sylvia Tyson’s band Great Speckled Bird. I wanted to cover their Festival Express classic, ‘Calgary,’ so I had the idea to cold call Amos Garrett to see if he’d be willing to come into the studio and play guitar for us. We were so ridiculously lucky that he jumped at the chance. It was so great to work with an artist of his caliber. Plus, he told us all kinds of stories about doing acid with Grateful Dead.”
