The Charlatan caught up with one of the performers for this year’s CityFolk Festival: Barney Bentall. Bentall is best known for his 1990s pop-rock band, Barney Bentall and the Legendary Hearts. Having been in the Canadian music scene for nearly four decades, he has seen the rise and fall of many genres over time. Still, he believes that all music has the power to move audiences.
The Charlatan: What has influenced your style of music over the years?
Barney Bentall: Life, you know? I started playing music almost 40 years ago, performing at folk clubs. I’ve been through a journey in music, through rock ’n’ roll, folk, new wave punk. When you listen to all kinds of music, you become a traveller through music. You understand what moves you in particular. There’s so much power in it—that’s why I always love playing at venues like Folk Fest because there’s so much energy and power in that audience. A love for music is sustenance—it’s been keeping me going for so long now, and it’s what will keep me going.
TC: What do you believe separates Canadian artists from the rest?
BB: I think it’s taken a while for us to get an identity as Canadians. It wasn’t until the 70s that people started seeing Canadian music as a separate thing from the States, and a lot of that was due to the fact that it’s a big culture hub down there. But it is so important that we protect our culture as Canadians because it’s a different thing that we have. We need to create a great environment for Canadian music to grow, like, for example, when The Tragically Hip became huge, they were very proud to be Canadian. They stood out from when people were saying that they were anything but Canadian. We have a very colourful music industry, and it’s only gonna grow bigger as more artists get involved.
TC: So you’ve been in the music industry for a while now. What has been one of the highlights of your career?
BB: I think any time we get to do one of these festivals is always a great time. We’re playing Skookum festival up in Vancouver after we finish playing in Ottawa. It’s so great to go up there. There’s a lot of Canadian artists up there—Blue Rodeo, Mother Mother. It’s really an amazing array of music, and we’re really lucky that we still get the chance to play at these festivals. It’s really such a privilege to be making a living doing this.
TC: What advice do you have for upcoming musicians—people who want to make it big in this industry?
BB: For me, it’s all about the song. If you’re writing songs, you got to make sure they’re good. The thing that frustrates me now about the industry is you have all this autotune and things to change your voice, whereas when I first started, we didn’t have that.
You also got to keep an eye on the business things. People are unfortunately taken advantage of when they don’t, so that’s really important. There’s so many ways to be creative and make yourself stand out. It’s all about marketing it and making yourself known.
TC: Any last words for our readers?
BB: Just you got to keep on keeping on, you know? I think the future of music is so varied and vast because on the one hand, you still have all these people listening and collecting vinyls, but you also have all these streaming services which makes music so much easier to access than ever before. People want fame and success, but I don’t think they realize how much it can affect you as a person, really stunt your growth as a human.
I think it’s such a beautiful thing to play small venues and feel a connection with your audience over the music you’re playing. But if you’ve got a dream, go after it and you work hard at it.
Barney Bentall will be playing at the City Stage of City FolkFest on Saturday, Sept 15.
Provided photo
