Dean Cottrill
Guitar

(Active in the Montreal Scene)

Dean Cottrill is the composer of Everybody Knows My Car¸ a song slated for Car Tunes Volume II, an off-the-wall CD from the off-the-wall U.S. National Public Radio show, Car Talk. He has appeared on BRAVO’s Café Campus Blues performing original roots-oriented songs like Two Dollar Ears or, as in the case of CBC Radio’s Madly Off In All Directions, Wiener Water Soup. He is also a music critic for Montreal’s HOUR magazine, profiling scores of musical personae and finding fault with everything from blues to classical genres.

Apart from solo and freelance activities Cottrill plays with longtime Montreal drummer Al Paterson in a duo called (logically enough) AL & DEAN. Perhaps as ‘an act of purest optimism’, they released a retro package of upbeat lounge covers called Wha’dya want for 10 bucks? in early 2003 to favourable review.

The duo’s logo inspired a series of panel cartoons in which Cottrill casts light on the gigging musician’s life and world view.

A Moment With You was released on Vv Records in 2000, featuring Cottrill in small ensemble and solo settings. The Montreal Gazette called it “musically engaging, full of feeling and plain good fun”. Around the same time Cottrill put his slide guitar expertise to good use on RJ & the Houndog’s That Love Thing.

His first release of original music was Handful of Grooves (1990). Guitar legend Amos Garrett covered one song, Baby Your Feets Is Cold while Pussyfootin’ was chosen for a Saturday Night Blues Juno-winning compilation.

Plays with: Al Paterson

Has played with: Karl Roth; Vic Vogel

Articles:
Getting OFF with Pierre Tanguay (Dean Cottrill)
Pierre Tanguay and I are rather from different sides of the tracks, he being more into the improv thing and I being more accustomed to lounge and club work, vintage jazz, blues and roots.