JGT’s Joe Barth talks to guitarist Ben Darce’ about playing and living in one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Ben Darce has to watch for bears and elk in the dark on his way home from a gig. Instead of seeing skyscrapers on the drive to that gig, he sees some of the most majestic mountains in the world. Ben has carved out a musical career in Whitefish, Montana, near Glacier National Park.
JB: You grew up in Texas and South Carolina. Talk about what inspired you to play jazz guitar.
BD: One of my earliest guitar memories is Marty McFly in Back to the Future. Growing up in Austin in the early ’90s, Texas blues was everywhere, and Stevie Ray Vaughan felt almost mythical.
As a teenager in South Carolina, classic rock made me fall in love with guitar. I had no musical background. One friend showed me a few chords playing upside down, and another eventually introduced me to the modes, opening up a whole new world of harmony and improvisation.
That curiosity led me to the Fine Arts Center, where I studied with Steve Watson, an incredible guitarist and educator with a background in the Los Angeles studio scene. Steve introduced me to Wes Montgomery’s The Incredible Jazz Guitar and taught me how to transcribe and learn directly from recordings.
Steve threw me right into the deep end, learning tunes like “Donna Lee” and “Spain.” More than twenty years later, I still work on that same material and discover new things in it.
JB: You studied at the Fine Arts Center in South Carolina and at the University of North Texas. What did you musically appreciate about that era of your life?
BD: What I appreciated most was being surrounded by great musicians in environments where the standards were high and the feedback was honest. At the Fine Arts Center, I studied jazz guitar and AP Music Theory, which gave me a strong foundation for my studies at UNT and eventually sparked a deeper interest in classical music and counterpoint.
At UNT, I took the coursework seriously and sought out every opportunity to learn from the musicians around me. Fred Hamilton was especially influential, both as a guitarist and a teacher. I also learned from players like Kurt Rosenwinkel and Mike Stern, and even had the chance to play some blues with John Abercrombie. That environment helped me develop the discipline and practice routines I’ve carried with me ever since. Ultimately, I learned that most of the real progress happens at home, spending time with the instrument—something anyone can do, whether they attend music school or not.
Those environments gave me what I’d call a devastating level of truth about how deep music really goes. I can spend a lifetime exploring the same music without ever having to turn it in or be graded. I just keep learning because I love it.
JB: As a left-handed player, you fret the guitar with your right hand, with the strings “upside-down” compared to most players. Talk about the unique challenges and/or benefits in doing this.
BD: It’s the only way I know how to play. It’s just what felt natural. Surprisingly, the biggest challenge isn’t fretting chords or notes—it’s the picking hand. With the strings reversed, picking, strumming, and fingerstyle techniques all require a different approach. Thinking of the picking hand like a drumstick subdividing the rhythmic grid helps me compensate for some of those technical limitations and lock into the time. It’s something I’m still working on.
One advantage is how I visualize music. Like most musicians, I think of melody as the top voice, bass on the bottom, and the middle voices in between. With my strings inverted, that’s exactly how they appear when I look down at the guitar, much like notes on a musical staff. It makes melody, harmony, and counterpoint especially visual for me.
Some chord voicings are harder to play this way, while others come more naturally. Eric Gales has been a major inspiration, and seeing what he’s accomplished playing with the same inverted string arrangement has always been encouraging. Ultimately, I’m more interested in how the guitar sounds than how I physically play it. The technique is just the route to the sound.
JB: To you, in shaping your sound and approach, what are three of the most influential jazz guitar albums and why?
BD: Wes Montgomery — The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery (1960)
This is the first sound of jazz I can remember, and it’s still the gold standard for me today. Steve Watson introduced me to it when I was young, and more than twenty years later it still feels like a treasure trove. The better my ears get, the more I hear in it—the swing, melody, phrasing, harmony, and just how complete Wes was as a musician.
Michael Brecker — Tales from the Hudson (1996)
I want to say Pat Metheny’s Bright Size Life, but I’m going with Michael Brecker’s Tales from the Hudson because Metheny blends his unmistakable voice so naturally with musicians playing at the highest level. When I first heard Metheny, my experience of what guitar music could sound like was still pretty limited. His playing opened up an entirely new world of harmony and melody for me. His solos have incredible shape—he enters flawlessly, introduces an idea, develops it, builds to a peak, and somehow wraps the whole thing up like a gift, complete with a little bow at the end. It can feel spontaneously perfect.
Mike Stern — Standards (And Other Songs) (1992)
Mike Stern connected a lot of dots for me. Coming from blues and rock, I loved hearing that same fire carried into such a deep jazz vocabulary. Standards (And Other Songs) still sounds fresh to me more than thirty years later. I met Mike at UNT and saw firsthand how broad his musicianship is—jazz, blues, Bach; he could do it all. And as a person, he was an absolute shining beam of light. That combination of musical depth, energy, and personality has always stayed with me.
JB: As a North Texas student, you spent your summers gigging in Northwest Montana. Now you have built a career in the greater Flathead Lake, Whitefish, Montana area. Tell us what that career looks like.
BD: While studying at North Texas, I spent my summers working in tourism and hospitality in Glacier National Park, Montana, playing guitar whenever I could. Glacier Park Lodge became one of my first regular gigs, and nearly twenty years later I still play there. After college, the real work began—practicing, studying, earning a living, and finding opportunities to play. I kept a two-color calendar, one for day jobs and one for gigs, and gradually watched the music take over.
Today I play more than 200 shows a year, mostly under my own name, and nearly every day during the summer. It happened gradually, through relationships with restaurants, resorts and venues that became regular gigs, with weddings, private events and concerts filling in around them.
I’m constantly changing musical gears—jazz, blues, rock, country, pop, the National Anthem one day, a wedding or funeral the next. Pretty much wherever they’ll have me! I also work with bassist Billy Peterson, who visits frequently, John Stowell, and occasionally musicians from touring bands. I love everything from carrying an evening solo to playing lead or rhythm guitar with other musicians. Playing this often becomes an education in itself, with plenty of chances to fall on your face and do better the next night. As long as the music is improving, I’m happy.
JB: Talk about the impact of John Stowell upon your playing.
BD: As my own playing has developed, what I appreciate most about John has evolved too. These days I’m increasingly struck by his rhythmic vocabulary—his time, phrasing, and comping are every bit as deep as his harmony. As far as I can tell, John doesn’t play anything he doesn’t actually hear. He’s developed a completely identifiable voice while still sounding deeply connected to the jazz tradition. I think he’s ahead of his time, and his playing will be appreciated for a long time.
JB: It appears that you use a left-handed Stratocaster and sometimes a Gibson Barney Kessel model. What do you appreciate most about the guitars that you use?
BD: I currently have two custom Tom Andersons built with left-handed bodies and right-handed necks—a Strat-style electric and a Crowdster for acoustic work. Most of my other guitars are standard right-handed instruments that I simply flip upside down. My main hollowbody is a Yamaha AEX1500. I gravitate toward the warmth of mahogany guitars and the sound of a good neck humbucker. Right now, one of my go-to electrics is a Fender ’72 Telecaster Thinline.
JB: Whitefish, Montana, is what many would consider “musically remote.” What’s the best advice you’d give guitarists building a career in music in a more rural area?
BD: I think there’s real potential in finding a desirable place with a growing economy where the music scene is still developing. Whitefish and the Flathead Valley are lifestyle destinations near Glacier National Park, with tourism, restaurants, resorts, weddings, and new events creating opportunities for live music. Businesses are always looking for ways to add value, and music can be part of that.
Being in the mountains, our scene leans heavily toward acoustic music and singer-songwriters, which makes me somewhat of an outlier. It’s a double-edged sword—fewer established opportunities for the kind of music I play, but also less competition for what I do. There’s less of a defined path for building a music career here, so you have to help create your own little scene. Find musicians, build relationships, approach businesses, and explore opportunities that don’t exist yet. The more I improve, the more opportunities seem to open up. One gig leads to another, and those relationships become steppingstones to experiences you never could have planned.
My biggest advice is that just because you don’t live in New York doesn’t mean you can’t practice as you live in New York. Study the great players, transcribe, develop your repertoire, and deliberately seek out musicians who challenge you. Learn the standards musicians know and the songs audiences know. Become versatile, take opportunities to perform, keep learning from them, and continue studying the masters. That’s essentially how I’ve approached building a musical life here in Montana.