Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009

Dustin Bentall

Miles from home: Travelling serves Bentall well on Six Shooter

It's been a few years since Dustin Bentall released his debut album, 2007's Streets With No Lights, but it's not like the BC musician has been sitting around letting time pass him by. No, Bentall has been busy writing songs and running down roads leading to stages all over the country, and it shows in the confident, rolling, dusty country of his new record—credited to the Dustin Bentall Outfit—Six Shooter. Bentall spoke with Vue Weekly recently about the path between his two albums.

VUE WEEKLY: Six Shooter was recorded really quickly over a couple of weeks last summer, but how long was the lead up to that?

DUSTIN BENTALL: Well, with the first album I just kind of made it and threw it out there with not much experience, and then it just slowly gained speed and after the first run of touring it got more attention and I kept going back out and getting busier and busier. So the timing just kept getting pushed and pushed until we got to go in the studio and make this album. I had all the songs—I was ready to make it probably at least a year before we did, but all these touring opportunities kept popping up.

VW: Do you write all the time?

DB: I'm always writing. I'm not really one to sit down and just write an album or kind of woodshed to get it done like that. Especially with this album, a couple of those songs were written right after I finished the first album, and one part of one of the songs was written five minutes before we recorded it in August last year, so they were written over a period of almost three years.

VW: When the band came together, you worked as a unit for about a year. Was that an important period of development for you and the other players?

DB: Absolutely. That was also it, we wanted to take the songs out on the road and just be playing together so we could go in to the studio, because we really wanted a live feel with all of us just playing the songs.

VW: Did you notice a big difference between when you first started putting the band together and a year later?

DB: Yeah, absolutely. Even more so this year, this past summer, just because we have even that much more experience. The guys in the band are such heavy, talented players that we don't even rehearse much. We just play on stage and we get up whenever we can and play as much as possible and I can throw anything at them and they'll nail it. That kind of keeps [the songs] unscripted ... There's a benefit to when a band's got their thing down and they nail it all the time, but I want to keep it interesting for us as well as whoever is watching so you don't know exactly what's going to be happening. Then it's fun for us because there are moments when you're just riding the rails and just hanging on.

VW: Tell me about the name of the band—this second album is credited to the Dustin Bentall Outfit.

DB: Well, the first record I did with session guys and it was just my songs and it made sense to do it like that. I didn't have a touring band at the time, but with this record, we've been playing for a year and we've got plans to keep playing together—we're a band—so I didn't want to call the record just under my name. I wanted to give the band more credit and let it be known that we're a band now. V

Wed, Sep 16 (10 pm)
The Dustin Bentall Outfit
Flow Lounge & Grill (11845 Wayne Gretzky Dr), Free

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