An evening with two great talents and legendary hearts
You wouldn’t think it at first, but there are a few similarities between being a professional musician and being a cattle rancher.
Both are wildly unpredictable. Both involve forging ahead through changing markets and climates. And both have found their way into the heart of Barney Bentall, venerable singer/songwriter and Canadian household name.
Bentall will play the Centre for the Arts on March 11 with Toronto multi-instrumentalist Kevin Fox. The gig comes four years into Bentall’s comeback after taking a decade off to be a full-time cattle rancher.
“I used to think being a touring rock n’ roll musician was hard,” he says. “But after I started ranching, I looked back and thought ‘That wasn’t hard at all.’”
Born in Toronto, Bentall broke onto the music scene in the 1980s with his band, the Legendary Hearts. Their hits included “Something to Live For,” “Do Ya” and “Come Back to Me.” The band released five studio albums before Bentall halted his music career in 2000 to work a cattle ranch.
Bentall loved music, but started to feel like “the years were evaporating.” A longtime fan of agriculture and the cowboy
life, he started Cutter Ranch Lamb in Clinton, B.C. He woke at the crack of dawn, rounding up cattle on horseback, fixing tractors and bailers and birthing calves.
Ultimately, though, “it wasn’t me,” and he handed operation of the ranch to his daughter and son-in-law, Sacha and Tyler McNaughton. (His other daughter, Jessica, is married to Rob Niedermayer of the Buffalo Sabres, while son Dustin Bentall is also a musician.)
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