{"id":3004,"date":"2011-08-03T13:11:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-03T20:11:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3004"},"modified":"2011-08-03T13:11:36","modified_gmt":"2011-08-03T20:11:36","slug":"dierks-bentley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/dierks-bentley\/","title":{"rendered":"DIERKS BENTLEY"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/h1>\n

DIERKS BENTLEY<\/strong><\/h1>\n

A country star rediscovers a teenage love affair with bluegrass<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Dierks Bentley was a 19-year-old from Phoenix, Ariz., aiming for a career as a country singer when he walked into Nashville\u2019s Station Inn nightclub, famous as the stomping ground to many of the city\u2019s finest bluegrass pickers. What he heard there changed his life. \u201cUp to that point I always thought of bluegrass music as being an older generation\u2019s genre,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t associate it with being young, cool and hip. But I walked in and saw kids my age tearing away on these instruments and having so much fun playing together. It was like Columbus seeing land\u2014it was a whole other thing I never knew existed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentley eventually got the mainstream country career\u00a0he was after, but always made sure to include a detour into bluegrass on each of his albums. For his latest, Up on the Ridge<\/em>, he\u00a0opted to pursue a sound closer to what he heard that first night\u00a0at the Station Inn than to the sleek sounds of modern country\u00a0radio. He set up shop with producer Jon Randall and tackled\u00a0a set of songs ranging from his own originals to Kris Kristofferson\u2019s \u201cBottle to the Bottom\u201d and even a version of U2\u2019s \u201cPride (In the Name of Love)\u201d that finds bluegrass elder statesman Del McCoury singing the chorus\u2019 keening harmony part. \u201cHere\u2019s a guy that\u2019s as hardcore bluegrass as they get,\u201d Bentley says, \u201cbut I thought his voice would sound great on that song.\u201d<\/p>\n

McCoury is only one in a long list of high-profile guests that also includes Alison Krauss, Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert, the Punch Brothers and Kristofferson himself. Bentley was determined to make all the collaborations happen in an unforced way. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to make a record that was like Dierks Bentley and Friends Do Bluegrass Music<\/em>,\u201d he says with a chuckle. \u201cIt just came together naturally. It was really organic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bentley is the first to acknowledge that Up on the Ridge <\/em>is not a straightforward bluegrass album\u2014rather, it\u2019s a record that combines his influences from that genre as well as country and rock in an acoustic setting. \u201cPretty much from day one I knew we were going to start breaking down the genre walls,\u201d he says. \u201cI said, \u2018It\u2019s gonna have drums on it, it\u2019s gonna have electric bass on it, but it\u2019s obviously going to be heavily bluegrass-y.\u2019 I felt like the record was going to be what it was going to be, and everyone else can define it as whatever they want to define it as. I hope they\u2019ll just define it as being good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Chris Neal<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DIERKS BENTLEY A country star rediscovers a teenage love affair with bluegrass Dierks Bentley was a 19-year-old from Phoenix, Ariz., aiming for a career as a country singer when he walked into Nashville\u2019s Station Inn nightclub, famous as the stomping ground to many of the city\u2019s finest bluegrass pickers. What he heard there changed his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[2273,80,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3004"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3007,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3004\/revisions\/3007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}