GRAMMY NOMINEE DIERKS BENTLEY CELEBRATES IN NASHVILLE

Dierks Bentley celebrated, along with the local all-genre Grammy Award Nominees, during a pre-party Thursday night at Nashville's Loews Vanderbilt Hotel, hosted by The Recording Academy. The 52nd annual Grammy Awards air Sunday, January 31 at 7:00 p.m.

"Nashville's coming of age, Nashville's crossing all genres. We're getting more nominees from this area, and it's pretty cool when you look around the room and see the caliber of people here," said George Flanigen, the national chairman of the board for the Recording Academy.

Dierks was nominated with Patty Griffin for their collaboration on the song, "Beautiful World," from the Feel That Fire CD. “I’ve been nominated six times before this, but this one really is special,” he said. “Just to see her name on my album means a lot to me, to look back there and see ‘featuring Patty Griffin.’ That’s really cool. It wasn’t even a single, and the fact that people picked it out of the album and it got nominated, and now we’ll be in L.A., it’s a huge honor for me. I don’t take it lightly at all.”


"Dierks Bentley's albums tend to include performances from people who aren't necessarily well-known to contem...porary country fans. The Grascals, Del McCoury and Patty Griffin come to mind. But Bentley, whose performance with Griffin on "Beautiful World" is Grammy-nominated, isn't thinking about expanding audiences for his collaborators when he goes in to record. "At the end of the day, it's about, 'Who do I want to sing with on this song?' " he said. "And on 'Beautiful World,' I was like, 'Dude, I got Patty Griffin to sing with me.' It was incredible."(Peter Cooper, the tennessean.com)

Photo courtesy of The Recording Academy® 2009. Photograph by Rick Diamond/ WireImage.com.

Dierks can be seen for a few seconds in this short video from the party.

Thanks to dierksfans.com for finding this story and pics.