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Ridley Bent writes country songs with a body count. Gunslingers, gamblers, hard cases and doomed romantics move through his catalogue like people he actually knew, and he delivers them deadpan, in a voice that never oversells the punchline.

Born in Halifax and raised across Canada in a military family, Bent surfaced in British Columbia around the turn of the century, opening for Great Big Sea and Sam Roberts. He arrived properly in 2005 with Blam (Apple / Spotify), a debut so thick with talking-blues murder ballads that Apple Music still files it under hip-hop. The press called it hick hop. The label stuck, and it undersold him.

Four more albums followed, each a step further from the gimmick and closer to straight country, through to the road-worn Ridley Bent and the Killer Tumbleweeds (Apple / Spotify) in 2018. Along the way: seven BCCMA wins, a CCMA nomination, and an Independent Music Award for best country song. Songs like “Arlington” and “Heartland Heartbreak” outlasted every category anyone tried to file him under.

He comes to The Dream alone. No band, no Tumbleweeds, just a guitar and the stories, which is the shape his writing was built for. Every line arrives without a drum kit to hide behind, close enough that you hear him take the breath before it.

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