Dierks Bentley: Red, White And Bluegrass

If Bentley’s last statement has the ring of moral conviction, it’s because he’s come to equate writing or co-writing all his songs with shutting out much of the Nashville songwriting community – and he’s nothing if not attuned to his relationships with varied music communities.

“You look at the charts, there’s a lot of singer-songwriters more so in mainstream country than there might have been in the ‘90s,” he explains. “So that makes it tough on Nashville writers, you know? … I want to make great country music and I want to be supportive of that community, and I think they go hand in hand. I think I can write my own songs and co-write, and also listen to great material and make the best record possible, at the same time also help some guys get their first cut.”

One of the first-timers, Charlie Worsham, co-wrote “Heart Of A Lonely Girl”, a new-school old-timey number that somehow slipped into a batch of songs his publisher was pitching to Bentley. Word came back that it might actually get recorded, and, Worsham learned, the tracking sessions would even be webcast live.

“I didn’t want to be a creep or a stalker,” he says, “but I got online and started watching the last night of the sessions. The sound was off for most of it, but I could kinda tell he was mouthing the words to the song. I called my parents. I was like, ‘Oh my god! I think Dierks just cut my song!’ A couple hours later they turned the sound on, and it was like, ‘Okay, we just cut our last song. We’re going to play you a piece of the song.’ And lo and behold, it was the intro to ‘Heart Of A Lonely Girl.’ So I called my parents again, and I was crying … Then, of course, most of that week’s sessions ended up getting canned. I just thought, ‘Well, I’m never gonna get a cut.’ But then he cut it again … I think when they released the tracklisting [for Home] I finally started to ease up and believe.”

Bentley has a habit of closing his non-bluegrass albums with bluegrassy tunes featuring formidable pickers, and “Heart Of A Lonely Girl” fills this role, though it’s not technically the album closer. That distinction belongs to “Thinking Of You,” a billowy sentimental ballad that suggests his center of gravity is starting to shift; the guy who used to glorify roaming and rambling is singing about feeling his heart tugged toward the wife and kids back home. “There was a time that ‘Lot Of Leavin’ (Left To Do)’ was my theme song,” he laughs, referring to a hit from his second album. “I met my wife right as that song was peaking.” Needless to say, it wasn’t one of her favorites.

Bentley’s singing retains an amiable, boyish grit, and he’s clearly still fond of country-rockers that revel in youthful attraction, not to mention good-time drinking songs. He topped the country chart with one of the latter – “Am I The Only One” – last year, but, you noticed, it made rounding up some buddies to hit the bars on a Friday night sound a little harder than it used to be. They’re adults now. They have other demands on their attention.

Then there’s “Diamonds Make Babies,” a classically goofy honky-tonk number about preparing for serious life changes. Offers Bentley, “A lot of young dudes are thinking about getting married and getting that ring, and I think that a song like ‘Diamonds Make Babies’ is pretty relatable – and something I probably could’ve sung about a couple years earlier.”

By far the heaviest song on Bentley’s back-to-country album is the title track. Perhaps you remember the parade of patriotic country songs recorded in the wake of 9/11 – Toby Keith’s “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)”, among them – and how many were laced with fighting words, galvanizing to some listeners and polarizing to others. “Home” is of a different breed; it doesn’t draw its emotional power from squaring up against an enemy, either foreign or domestic.

“At the time we wrote the song,” Bentley explains, “there was so much of this – I think it’s died down a little bit in the media – but it’s like politics has become a football game. You pick a side and then they want you to yell at the other side, and you’re paying all this money to go to the game, while the people down on the field really don’t even seem to give a shit about you the fan, or you the voter. That’s the way the media blows it up on TV. They make it seem like we’re so divided. But then you go out on the road like we do everyday and hang out with people, the fans, military. I look out at a thousand faces every night and it’s like, ‘I don’t see those differences you talk about all the time on the news networks.’ And you know what? I’m not going to buy in anymore to this whole [idea that] I’ve got to pick a side.”

Bentley’s the right person to sing a Twenty-first Century country song that takes American diversity in stride. “I feel like the song is malleable,” he says, “and lots of people can get behind it and find something good in there for themselves. And it’s an honest song about our country, you know?”