Despite his increasing popularity, Benjamin Dakota Rogers remains humble and dedicated to writing music that reflects his experiences and creativity.
Rogers, who grew up just outside Mount Pleasant, explained how he got started in music.
“My great grandfather was a full-time fiddle player, up in Timmins. He would play every Sunday on the local radio station. He had passed before I was born, but when I was six his son (my grandfather) came down to visit us. There had been some sort of a sibling squabble over who was going to get his violin, and so my grandfather just took it, drove down here, and gave it to me,” Rogers recalled. “It started [my] itch [for music], and I would play it, and ended up asking my parents if I could take the lessons…they put me in some lessons…and that was kind of the start of it.”
However, during his youth, Rogers reflected on how important his upbringing was towards his development as a singer-songwriter.
“As a kid, I was fairly isolated from any sort of pop culture. I didn’t have a TV. It was just my brother and I. We didn’t have a lot of friends that lived close to us [so] if we were going to hang out with people, my parents had to drive us,” Rogers said. “Instead of doing a lot of kid things, I practiced music [and] I spent a lot of time outside, which was great…we built a lot of forts and ran around on the farm. But I think the biggest impact on my music…was just it gave me so much time to work on it.”
Another essential part to Rogers’ growth as an artist early on was trips his family made across Ontario.
“My parents took us to a lot of little festivals in an old Volkswagen bus [and] we saw old-time bands and listened to a lot of traditional music,” Rogers recalled.
During his teens, Rogers continued to practice and refine his song-writing skills while picking up various instruments such as violin, guitar, fiddle and banjo, giving his music a richer dimension.
He would eventually record his debut album “Wayfarer” in 2014 which brought him some acclaim when he was nominated for Young Performer of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards.
“I wrote those songs [during] my last year of high school…and I tried to hide them from as many people as possible,” noted Rogers. “I ended up recording those songs in Brantford…it was a great first experience…and I think it really got the ball rolling for what I wanted to do.”
Although Rogers had already released several albums and had toured extensively by 2021, his social media started to solidify his popularity among new fans.
“Around 2021, my TikTok blew up which helped me start to feel more and more like this was a real thing,” Rogers explained. “It’s funny, I’ve been doing this as my job for close to ten years and being my only source of income…yet it definitely feels a little more real now.”
From 2014 to 2024, Rogers recorded five albums, including his latest one released in 2023, which was nominated for Traditional Roots Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2024.
“Paint Horse would probably be my favorite record I’ve made so far…that record was a great experience because [it was] recorded in a couple days after I wrote all the songs. What happened is that I had this song called ‘John Came Home’ that went viral, and I knew I needed to follow it up with something quickly. And so, I sat down and I wrote around two dozen songs in about two weeks,” explained Rogers. “We tracked it live in my barn [which] was before I had air conditioning. It was incredibly hot, and we were in our boxers most of the time sweating…We made a whole record in three days. And it’s still one of the only records I look back at, and like almost everything about it.”
Along with his dedication to songwriting and recording, Rogers has also toured extensively including his most recent experience with another talented musician.
“Colby Acuff, who’s a great country musician from Idaho, took me out on the road with him. We went down to Virginia, then flew out to California and played up and down the coast…playing a bunch of sold-out shows. It was really great…as we’re the same age, and he’s been grinding for a long time, like me,” said Rogers.
