Just before recording The Bushpilots' latest album, Seven Ways To Broadway, frontman and creative catalyst Rob Bennett thought about the albums he's always loved.

The Stones' Exile on Main St., David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Elton John's Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player and Neil Young's Harvest.

That's when he noticed something freaky. They were all recorded in the same year, 1972.

That was a very good year.

It was then that Bennett decided he wanted to make a record just like the records they made back then.

"It was a special time because the vibe back then was prized creativity over commercialism," the 47-year-old singer and songwriter explains from his home in Manotick. "It was a golden era for music, rock and roll for adults. Great songwriting. No wonder guys like Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and David Bowie have had careers that lasted as long as they have."

Inspired by that spirit of iconoclastic creativity, Bennett went, in true rock and roll style, on a songwriting bender, penning 10 original songs that sum up his years of living the rock and roll dream in short order.

"Song ideas were exploding inside my head," he says in a wave of excitement. "Half the songs came to me in that sudden flash of inspiration, and if I didn't write them down on the spot, they disappeared just as quickly."

Seven Ways To Broadway is Bennett's musical memory of the highs and lows of his life in an Ottawa rock and roll band.

"A lot of the record came from past stories about all those experiences that got me here. Disillusionment and despair. A lot of the record either comes from dark places, or happy places. Story of my life. I did a lot of stupid, asinine things in my 20s. Rolling cars and bad road trips. It's a wonder I'm still alive."

And to ensure the album sounded like a classic vinyl recording, he and his comrades, guitarist Tom Gillon, bassist Jeff Monette, keyboard player Tom Pechloff and drummer Kevin Smith, recorded them on vintage two-inch analogue tape at Dave Draves' Little Bullhorn studio in Little Italy.

"It's rock with a twang, from listening to all those Steve Earle and Neil Young records when I was younger.

"I'm from the anti-singer school of singers," he laughs. I'm no Freddie Mercury. I'm more Keith Richards. A hopeless romantic if there ever was one."

I remember one night The Bushpilots played the Blacksheep shortly after releasing their first album, Sonic Scenery, in 2005 when superfans Michael and Marlen Cowpland's limousine parked in front of the Wakefield watering hole and the celebrity couple stepped out, crystal champagne glasses in hand, to see their favourite raunchy rock band.

But now, with the addition of keyboard player Tom Pechloff last year, the band pushed their musical vocabulary up to the next level and now, can go in directions they couldn't in the past, adding layers of arrangements, including a mariachi band on I Know You've Got Nowhere to Go and making Seven Ways To Broadway a surprisingly sophisticated album.

"We're firing on all cylinders on this record as a band," Bennett says. "We've really taken the band to the next level with this record."

The Bushpilots debut Seven Ways To Broadway at the Blacksheep Inn on Friday. Opening is The Brothers Chaffey.

For tickets and information, check out the band website at www.thebushpilots.ca.