Just six miles southwest of downtown Bend off the Cascade Lakes Highway, you will find the iconic Seventh Mountain Resort, formerly known as Inn of the Seventh Mountain. Every Friday night from late spring through August they are hosting free live music on their skating rink. With a variety of leather couches set up, and plenty of space to bring your own chairs or blankets, it’s one of the most chill and beautiful outdoor spots to hear live music this summer.
The entire summer lineup can be found on their website and there truly is something for every musical taste, from funky R&B by Heller Highwater to Country Western dance music by Dry Canyon Stampede. This holiday weekend the Rusty Frets, a reggae band based in Bend, will play on Friday, July 4 from 5-8pm. I spoke with Darcy Erickson, bassist and leader of this group of stellar local musicians.
the Source: I see that your band collaborated with G. Love on your song “Swervy,” which is pretty crazy. How did that come about?
Darcy Erickson: It was really random and really lucky. It was when Tyler was still in the band [he has since moved out of the state] and we were just practicing one day and we came up with this funky groove, and he kept saying, “This sounds like a G. Love song.” And so he, I thought jokingly, said, “I’m just going to reach out and see if he wants to do a collaboration,” and I was like, OK. Well, the next day Tyler was like, “I reached out and he said he was interested!” Sure enough, he had reached out on Instagram and said, “Here is a rough copy of the song,” and G. Love liked it. We went into the studio the next week and threw it down and threw it to him. He recorded his part and threw it back, and we mastered it. The rest is history.
tS: It’s wild that G. Love checks his own Instagram.
DE: Yeah, for real! You’re not wrong. He’s still that kind of a guy, and I knew it in my heart of hearts. He’s Gen X, so I knew he was checking his own stuff.
tS: What is the origin story of the Rusty Frets?
DE: The band was put together by Tyler, and at the time he was playing bass for Rubbah Tree. He put an ad on Facebook for a bass player and I stumbled across it. I’m fairly new to the Bend music scene, I’ve been here about five years. I moved here from Boise and I’ve been playing in bands in Boise for a long time… twenty-plus years. The drummer, Dylan Bernal, he’s in a bunch of different bands like the Mostest. And Steve Miller, our guitar player, has been a local legend forever. Andrew Lyons, the sax player, is also kind of a legend. And we have Stephan Kalani, who is classically trained, on keys. I’m really lucky to have fallen into the talent pool that we have here.
tS: You are a reggae band, but you do some awesome covers and other genres of music. How do you describe your style?
DE: We all come from different musical backgrounds, so we all bring a little different flavor. “Swervy” has more of a funky feel, and then our very first song “Tide Keeps Rising” is more like traditional, straight-up reggae. The songs we have been writing most recently are kind of all over the board. Definitely one has a little more ska influence, one has a little more West Coast reggae feel, one is a little slower. It’s easy to call us a reggae band, because we are, but we don’t want to box ourselves in as just a reggae band.
tS: To me, I feel like your music is feel-good music. It makes you want to dance, smile and have a good time.
DE: Yes, smile music. I wish that was a genre.
This article appears in Source Weekly July 3, 2025.
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