CMT Blog: Dierks Bentley

If it was not for Jerrod Niemann's swift rise to fame, and his very infectious "Lover, Lover," I might never have heard of Sonia Dada. Neimann remade the group's 1992 hit, "You Don't Treat Me No Good," into "Lover, Lover." And if it was not for Kenny Chesney's "Down the Road," I might not have taken it upon myself to fall in love with Mac McAnally's music, as he sings the thoughts of a hesitant father on that tune. And really, I might not have paid enough attention to Kelly Clarkson until she and Reba McEntire came together for that unforgettable collaboration on Clarkson's "Because of You."

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Dierks Bentley's latest album, Up on the Ridge, has quickly become a favorite among country fans. His music video for "Up on The Ridge" is also one of the most popular on CMT.com. Through his "Posted" page at CMT.com, Bentley took the time to answer fans' Twitter questions. Take a look.

@areyes03: Any new songs you're writing? I've been trying not to ... trying to just focus on and enjoy Up on the Ridge. But, I've had some ideas floating around up there for a while and I'm starting to think about getting back into it.

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What did we do before Twitter? Seriously. It gives country fans so much random but hysterical nuggets of information. And it's not just Blake Shelton, Dierks Bentley and Brad Paisley who are cracking people up. Girls are getting in on it, too. This weekend, Miranda Lambert sent out a tweet after her show on Saturday (Aug. 7) night that said, "Soooo.....some crazy girl showed her boobs to us all night while we were on stage. And they were not the pretty kind. Ew!" That was about the same time that Kellie Pickler was on her tour bus rolling down the highway saying, "can't quit looking down at my left hand and thanking God that I get to spend the rest of my life with @kylecjacobs." Martina McBride tweeted a little movie of her husband (and an audience) singing "Happy Birthday" to her. Even LeAnn Rimes, who is back on Twitter after a week-long hiatus, was retweeting the always-pensive John Mayer, with his quote, "I have found the key to a happy life is to surround myself with like-minded people who agree with me constantly."

Say you've lined up Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Zac Brown Band, Kenny Chesney and a whole onslaught of talent from all kinds of music for an outdoor festival. Sounds like a moneymaker, doesn't it? So how on earth did Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., lose $5 million in three days with HullabaLOU? I could see taking a bit of a loss, but come on. Five million? The president of Churchill Downs Entertainment said that he wanted to create the Kentucky Derby of music festivals (which is a nice goal, by the way) and noted, "When we started out with Derby, it didn't start out with 155,000 people. And it's grown for 135 years. Hopefully this thing will grow over the next five to ten years and become something that's meaningful." They had hoped to have 90,000 people but wound up with about 78,000. And the lost income from slow tickets, parking and concessions is partly what caused the big loss. They aren't giving up just yet, though. Organizers say they will try again in 2011.

Photo Credit: Erika Goldring/Getty Images
(HullabaLOU 2010)

Whenever I cover a country music festival, I'm always happy when Kenny Chesney and Keith Urban are on the bill because their music is easy to enjoy at the end of a long, hot day. They're both playing WE Fest this weekend near Detroit Lakes, Minn., along with Jason Aldean, Dierks Bentley, Randy Houser, Montgomery Gentry, Joe Nichols, Blake Shelton and Gretchen Wilson. That's a pretty strong lineup for country fans, but as they say on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the other. So, where are the women? Rand Levy, vice president of WE Fest, told a North Dakota news website that it's just a coincidence that female artists are scarce on the lineup this year -- and that he did try to get Miranda Lambert, but she was unavailable. But he did grab Gloriana, which has two female members. Eric Church and Gloriana's Cheyenne Kimball weigh in with their opinions about women entertainers in country music, but I'm more curious about what the fans think. Do you care if there's an equal balance of men and women on stage at country music festivals?

Usually the late nights come after the baby. But for Dierks Bentley, it's kind of the other way around. Next week he will be staying up super late for shows with David Letterman on Tuesday (July 27) and Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday (July 28), where he'll be performing "Fallin' for You" and "Draw Me a Map," respectively. "A lot of times when you get invited to do these shows, you end up doing the same song over and over ... usually whatever your current radio single is at the time. It's really flattering that folks were listening and asking for deeper album cuts," he said of the upcoming gigs. Around Christmastime, Bentley will be staying up all night for a much more adorable reason: a baby. Bentley and his wife Cassidy are expecting their second child at the end of the year. Soon-to-be big sister Evie must be thrilled.

Photo credit: Frazer Harrison/ACM2009

Usually when there's a celebrity interview on CNN, it's very CNN. The hushed interviewer lets the star do all the talking. But in this clip of Dierks Bentley showing CNN's Denise Quan around his dressing room, they left in her gut reaction to his boots. "Dierks! You're a platinum artist! And you have duct tape holding your boots together," she sort of yells at him. But he humbly laughs it off and explains the "lucky" tape by telling her, "I like old things. Old things have memories attached to them. Old guitars, old trucks, old boots." Then as a way of explaining the passion behind his new-with-an-old-twist album, Up on the Ridge, he says, "Paying homage to the older stuff makes country music what it is."

By the time you're reading this blog entry, I will be aboard the Barefoot Lady Pontoon Excursion, deep in the crystal clear waters of a Wisconsin lake. As you might imagine, I elected myself Music Director and put together a playlist of songs to thoroughly entertain my friends and me as we cruise up and down and around this lake. But I didn't want to make it all about the patriotic weekend, because we'll have enough of that on Sunday. Nor did I want to make it all fun-in-the-sun songs, since too many of those can feel like you are actually trying to turn your day into a country song. But now that I look at this mix I've come up with, I realize I'm a little heavy on the good-time songs, so please add a few I-Heart-America songs to the list to balance it out.

"Water," Brad Paisley
"Redneck Yacht Club," Craig Morgan
"Drive (For Daddy Gene)," Alan Jackson
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We're just a little over halfway through 2010 so I decided to assess my favorite albums of the year so far. Alan Jackson's Freight Train is at the top of that list. The aggressive title track chugs along with a breakneck tempo that's about twice as fast as what Jackson usually offers, but like his 21-year career, he keeps up just fine. Of course, he's still the master of mid-tempo tunes about his family, like "After 17," "Big Green Eyes" and "The Best Keeps Getting Better." I also appreciate the nod to Johnny Cash on "I Could Get Used to This Lovin' Thing" and the stone-country duet with Lee Ann Womack on "Till the End." Although I like the singles ("It's Just That Way" and "Hard Hat and a Hammer"), I'm hoping he'll go deep and release "Taillights Blue" and "True Love Is a Golden Ring," too. If you've been missing traditional country music, you'll want to get on board with Freight Train.

Since I'm a hopeless Top 10 list maker, here are nine of my other favorites of 2010:

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Nashville, here's the good news in your neck of the woods. Weatherman Al Roker, of NBC's Today show, gave the charity Hands On Nashville a much-needed boost for their flood relief efforts yesterday (June 24). His Lend A Hand charitable project donated thousands of dollars worth of things like carpet, mattresses, paint, furniture and clothing needed to rebuild the roughly 11,000 homes that were affected by the devastating floods in May. Dierks Bentley was also in the Bellevue neighborhood for the presentation (and a quick acoustic performance of "Love Goes Wild" with fiddler Jason Carter and Jon Randall on mandolin) after the donations were revealed. Hands On Nashville dispersed more than 17,000 volunteers right after the flood in early May and with this donation, their hands will keep rebuilding even more homes.