To listen to the music of Cash Bently is to revel in the resolution of improbable combinations. His debut album, Cash Corridos 3 (out November 10th on True Panther), channels the intimacy, sentimentality, and equally romantic and mournful lyricism of generational singer-songwriter talents before him. So too does the musicality and vivid storytelling of his work pay homage to the legacy of Regional Mexican music. Yet Cash Bently’s addictive freshness comes from a unique and utterly contemporary approach: combining the raw bedroom songwriting approach of indie, acoustic instrumentation, with psychedelic production flourishes – making his own complex and troubled character deeply vulnerable and immediate. He fuses influences of Frank Ocean, Elliott Smith and Lil Yachty, with Ariel Camacho and Junior H; all under the umbrella of contemporary Regional Mexican music. It’s Sad Sierreño for outsiders. Bedroom Corridos for the world we live in. 

It’s only natural that Cash Bently arrived at this unlikely juncture given the unconventional journey he took to get there. He was born to Guatemalan and El Salvadorian parents in Long Island, then raised largely in a Virginia community with strong cultural ties to Mexico. Cash Bently’s musical involvement was inextricable from his family life, starting on piano, playing religious and cumbia-style music with his dad and brother, eventually juggling homeschool and a four-year tour that took them to play as far as Central America. That his family structure was so formative also meant its dissolution would impact Cash Bently greatly, and his parents’ separation fractured both his musical practice and his emotional compass.

In the years that followed, Cash Bently explored different sounds in keeping with the new landscape of his personal life. In the mid 2010s, he gravitated towards the nascent plugg scene centralized around SoundCloud, collaborating as a rapper and producer with Summrs, Autumn, 909Memphis, and touring as his star rose within the genre. It was a troubled time for Bently, marred by self-doubt, violence, and loss (his eyebrow is tattooed with the name of a best friend who passed away). It wasn’t until his move to LA in 2020 – leaving a conflicted life and the simultaneous retreat into his bedroom to experiment with different outlets for his production and songwriting – that the sound of Cash Corridos 3 took root. 

Cash Bently was no stranger to corridos, having grown up in a community where the vaquero lifestyle, a strong sense of history, and themes of oppression and transcendence were widespread. His musical choices – utilizing vocals, guitar and 12-string guitar, bass, and the occasional trumpet – don’t stray far from the palette utilized by other genre figures. But it’s the treatment of these elements, as they’re handwoven with Cash Bently’s writing and production, that gives Cash Corridos 3 a voice of its own. 

Indeed, despite some notable collaborators involved in its making – including Jhay B (Grupo Diez 4tro), Mick Coogan (Bad Bunny), David Segura (DannyLux), and Mikey Hart (Bleachers, Taylor Swift) – the record is profoundly the product of Cash Bently’s bedroom studio. This sense of being grounded deeply at home could also lend itself to the album’s deep well of feeling, with Bently revealing his character to be complicated, tenacious, ruminative… a hard lover who’s sometimes prone to disappear. Heartbrokenness echoes throughout life on and off the record, but the album is also an empathic message to the self of life already lived: compassion, solace, and understanding are offered at the feet of foolhardiness and grief.