by Sheldon Birnie
For Barney Bentall, this time of year means something special, and it isn’t the return of campy holiday tunes to shops across North America. Nope, when the snow starts flying, it’s Grand Caribou Opry season for the Bentall Gang.
“We hold this time with the Opry pretty sacred,” Bentall, an elder statesman of Canadian rock n roll who has fully embraced the roots scene since the early 2000s, tells Stylus over the phone from Vancouver, where he is hastily preparing to catch a ferry. “When it comes Opry season, we really try to book it a year in advance, so we all know we’ll do it.”
Bentall is speaking not only of himself and the cracker-jack band of pals he enlists every year to bring the old time country western review to life, but also of his son Dustin Bentall, Kendall Carson, Ridley Bent, and the other cast of characters who populate the Grand Caribou Opry every year. For the past seven years, Bentall & Co have been assembling the Opry in support of local charities, performing gigs in and around BC’s lower mainland and interior, Vancouver Island, and Calgary. This year marks the first foray across the prairies to Winnipeg since the inaugural “official” Opry in 2006, with dates in Edmonton, Vancouver, and Bragg Creek to follow Winnipeg.
“The very first Grand Caribou Opry show we ever had was in Winnipeg,” explains Bentall. “We had no idea if the thing would work or not … It was bringing together so many artists, such a variety of music, that we thought Oh my god! This is going to crash and burn!”
But the event went off without a hitch at the West End Cultural Centre, and the Grand Caribou Opry has developed a life of its own from there.
Dustin Bentall remembers the genesis of the Opry going back even further, to informal annual gatherings at the family ranch in BC’s interior.
“There was a rodeo dance that my dad and his band would play in a small town in BC a number of years running,” the younger Bentall explained over the phone from the West Coast, after returning from a few months spent in Joshua Tree, California. “It was really fun. It was in a big old barn, dusty floor. It was a great night. Everyone would show up the night before and we’d sort of run through songs and figure out what we were gonna do. And that evening was as fun, if not more fun, than the actual evening. It was just a bunch of great friends, and musicians, just jamming songs. When they stopped playing the rodeo dance, that’s when Barn decided he wanted to make a show of what happened the night before.”
Ridley Bent, a GCO regular and longtime friend of the Bentall’s who has made Winnipeg his home of late, describes the Opry as “a lot like the Grand Ole Opry, or the Prairie Home Companion. [It’s] asically a variety show of country music. There’s always a killer eight piece band, with fiddles and steel guitars. Usually there’s five or six songwriters. The songwriters take turns playing with the band. Sometimes oyu’ll get a fidle playing with a piano, and the next time you’ll get a full band. You really can see a lot of different things.”
Barney Bentall is quick to point out how exciting it is to have so much talent on one stage, and the thrill he gets from performing on stage with his son Dustin.
“For me to be able to play with him and his contemporaries, guys like Leeroy Stagger and Ridley Bent [is inspiring] … At a certain point when I could have lapsed into a music ennui or just lost a certain degree of spirit, the exact opposite happened. Those guys lit a fire for me and inspired me with their enthusiasm for music.”
This year’s Winnipeg performance will also feature local Romi Mayes, who Barney says was involved with the original performance, as well as Chris Dunn and Jeffrey Hatcher of the Blue Shadows.
“I used to go sit in with the Blue Shadows whenever I could in North Vancouver,” Bentall recalls, “so we’ll be doing three or four Blue Shadows songs.”
The proceeds from the whole evening will be going towards West Broadway’s Good Food Club. The grassroots program “serves over 800 people, primarily low-income families from inner-city Winnipeg, and offers a good food box for discounted purchase, community kitchens, community dinners, farm trips and a farmer’s market.”
For Bentall, the evening provides not only a fun opportunity to perform with friends and family, but a good excuse to visit Winnipeg again.
“I love Winnipeg. It’s in some ways the musical heart and soul of the country,” he says. “I love coming there, have lots of good friends. It’s a wonderfully supportive musical community.”
The Grand Caribou Opry hits the West End Cultural Centre on Thursday, November 21. Doors open at 7:30, the party get hoppin’ at 8. Tickets are $30, and proceeds, of course, go towards the Good Food Club.