Country Music Blog: Dierks Bentley

From here on out, Dierks Bentley will be known to beer drinkers everywhere as Mr. Sad Country Song Songwriter in Bud Light's popular "Real Men of Genius" ad campaign. Misery sells records, indeed.

With a lot of pomp and a little circumstance, Gretchen Wilson will don her cap and gown to graduate from high school on May 15.

It sounds like Miley Cyrus' guitar is her best friend and her therapist. That's one lucky six string.

Brooks & Dunn are looking for a girl. Specifically, one who makes everything more fun. And you could win big if you're the one.

Country's not just a one-off for Darius Rucker, former frontman of Hootie & the Blowfish. He promises his new album will be the first of many. Yee haw.

Another day, another celebrity book. But this one's for a good cause. Brad Paisley's wife Kimberly is trying to get kids to eat their veggies with Henry and the Hidden Veggie Garden.

It's true. Mindy McCready did have a sexual relationship with Roger Clemens, despite their 13-year age difference.

A Seventeen magazine cover and a triple platinum album both in one day? It sounds too good to be true, so it must be happening in the life of Taylor Swift.

Even dentists think that Carrie Underwood is all that. Her smile, anyway. They've named hers the Smile of the Year.

If you'll be near Los Angeles on May 15, you might want to throw your name in the hat to see Dierks Bentley on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

The Young Hollywood Awards were a little sweeter this Sunday, thanks to Taylor Swift, who was there to pick up her Superstar of Tomorrow award.

Record Making for Dummies? Nashville record producer Steve Fishell has founded the Music Producers Institute to teach students how to track, record, mix and master.

Whew! Almost 31,000 people ran 26 miles in Nashville's Country Music Marathon.

The grass is always greener on Dierks Bentley's side of the fence. So why not win your own private backyard party with him on May 12?

Ryan Adams, the songwriter behind Tim McGraw's "When the Stars Go Blue," blogs about how much he hates country music, hates the Ryman Auditorium and hopes he dies alone.

With his special BioWillie biodiesel fuel, Willie Nelson made it into Billboard's top 10 "green" artists doing their part to help the environment.

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In Dierks Bentley's new hockey blog for the NHL, he predicts what will happen with the Nashville Predators in the playoffs.

It's no trouble at all for Reba McEntire and Wynonna to help troubled teens. They'll play Divas Nashvegas on Saturday (4/12) to raise money for the Oasis Center.

Innovative sponsorships (want Crocs with that concert?) and bundled deals may be responsible for the growth in spending for live music this year.

Is she the latest desperate housewife? Watch Carrie Underwood steal Teri Hatcher's man -- and Hatcher steal Underwood's song.

Merle Haggard's still on the fightin' side, ranting about the war in Iraq and the politics of putting a woman in charge.

If you win the Road Hammers' graffiti contest, you'll get your drawing autographed by the band and they'll display your drawing on their site.

Here's a very rare opportunity to own a piece of country music history: a handwritten three-page letter from Patsy Cline to her fan club president back in 1956. It'll be worth every penny it goes for.

Like Waylon Jennings and Steve Earle before him, Dierks Bentley will be the one and only country act to grace the stages of Chicago's alt-rock festival Lollapalooza.

John Michael Montgomery's "Mad Cowboy Disease," the drunken-cowboy-meets-barroom-beauty tale, is now streaming on his MySpace page.

Taylor Swift is positively bubbly about making music with Colbie Caillat. She says Colbie's cool and the song is cool, so everything's very cool.

While Def Leppard's guitarist thinks that most collaborations are crap, he does think their recent effort with Tim McGraw turned out quite well.

Of all the friends you've made in real life, how many share your passion for country music? They may like it, sure. But do they love it the way you love it? Do they want to go on concert road trips with you and share stories about the way the music has touched their life? Probably not. That may be why so many country fans turn to the message boards on artists' Web sites to make fan friends.

Tammy and Mark McGraw (no relation to Tim McGraw) are a great example. Back in 2003, Tammy started posting on Tim McGraw's m-board. "One name kept catching my eye. (Mark) made an impression as quite a friendly gentleman. I started chatting with him on the board and we decided we would like to take it a step further," she remembers. Long story short, they were married in 2006 -- with four other m-boarders in the wedding party -- and are still blissfully happy. While theirs is an extreme example, sharing a passion for a star is a good foundation for any relationship. That common bond is just a springboard for other conversations. The Off-Topic or General Discussion forums are usually the most active on a board. You can only talk so long about how hot Dierks Bentley is before you decide to share recipes, ask for prayers and recommend good books. As Tammy said, "We share our families and our life with one another as though we all lived in the same little neighborhood."

See for yourself how these little neighborhoods have evolved. Go lurk on the boards. (Some are free, some are only open to fan club members.) You may be surprised at what these folks share with each other, and how many people are willing to road trip with complete strangers. Then again, how strange can someone really be if they love country music that much?

Dierks Bentley, John Rich and Gretchen Wilson remember the Station nightclub fire, which occurred five years ago, with an acoustic concert in Rhode Island.

Did you bite into something crunchy at Country Radio Seminar? The health scores for the Nashville Convention Center might explain why the lights were so dim.

Speaking of country radio, is your favorite station among the off-camera nominations for the Academy of Country Music Awards?

Sam Bush, Natalie McMaster and Chris Thile will be playing RockyGrass this summer in Telluride, Colo., and the single-day lineups have been announced.

This rock star produced Loretta Lynn's Grammy-winning album and lives in Nashville. Now, Jack White is rush-releasing a CD by his new band, The Raconteurs.

As I've blogged before, I am not a fan of flying. I'll do it if I have to, but only short little flights to nearby hot spots like Nashville. But now I'm about to board a flight for California. A four-hour flight. If you know anything about aerophobia, you know there's a strong correlation between the length of the flight and the increased risk of death. In my mind, anyway. Since I may not make it back, I wanted to put in writing how I'd like to be remembered. Basically, I just want country music to sing me home.

I know funeral services are usually steeped in religious tradition but I'd like mine to be steeped in a more twangy, banjo-rich tradition. With lots of fiddle and steel, too. Lyrically, I'd like for my services to tell the stories of my well-lived life, cut tragically short while on a family vacation. Which is why I think the mass should open with Kenny Chesney's "Who You'd Be Today."

Then Tim McGraw's "My Old Friend" could bring my loved ones back around, telling them that "The love and the laughter/Will live on long after/All of the sadness and the tears." While I'm sure the priest will say a few words about the final destination of my soul, I'd prefer a religious requiem from the lips of Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton, singing about what's in store for me up there with "When I Get Where I'm Going." Gary Allan's "Best I Ever Had," Andy Griggs' "If Heaven" and Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain" are must-haves, too. I'd probably want the day to end with "Prodigal Son's Prayer" by Dierks Bentley. Even though I'm nobody's son and have not led a particularly rebellious life, this gospel-bluegrass number sends a beautifully simple message that if you ask for God's forgiveness, you can ask him to keep a spot open for you in heaven. Because my God is a devout country fan, He will have no problem welcoming me with open arms after a funeral like that.

I've been reading Three Dog Nightmare: The Continuing Chuck Negron Story, a book about the tragic fall and personal resurrection of one of the lead voices from the pop band Three Dog Night. In it, Negron makes a claim that the band was one of the first to pack stadiums with a rock show.

The Beatles had done it before, at New York's Shea Stadium, and there were other bands that played stadiums, though many of them fell far short of filling them out. But I'll bet no one in the Fab Four's mid-‘60s era -- or in Three Dog Night's early-‘70s prime -- ever thought country music would be capable of that.

So this week's anniversary of the first George Strait stadium tour is one worth celebrating. Strait brought in 56,000 fans on March 14, 1998, to Sun Devil Stadium in Arizona for a lineup that featured Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, John Michael Montgomery, Lee Ann Womack and others. And Strait continued doing stadium tours with massive talent rosters for several more years before pulling back to his traditional in-the-round arena format.

What's now amazing is that while the stadium date is still a country rarity, it happens much more frequently than anyone could have predicted in the past. Kenny Chesney is playing 14 of those dates this summer, supported by a rotating list of acts that includes Keith Urban, LeAnn Rimes, Big & Rich, Gary Allan and Luke Bryan, among others. Toby Keith has offered a handful of stadium shows as well.

Strait could likely pick up and fill out stadiums again, if he chose, and you can imagine Keith Urban, Tim McGraw, Brooks & Dunn and Shania Twain (remember her?) doing the same thing. In fact, when the Gridiron Bash -- a strange, college-football-related fan competition -- lined up stadiums across the U.S. for April, a surprising number of country lineups were employed: Alan Jackson in Alabama, Dwight Yoakam in West Virginia, Dierks Bentley and Wynonna in Kentucky, Montgomery Gentry and Taylor Swift in Tennessee.

At last week's Country Radio Seminar, one booking agent noted that outside of such longstanding classic-rock icons as the Rolling Stones and U2, there's no stronger genre for live shows these days than country music.

Considering that a lot of country artists were happy to play high-school gymnasiums and small county fairs at the time Three Dog Night was playing those stadium dates, it's tough to find stronger support for the upward transformation that's taken place in country music.