Draw Me A Map - Story Behind the Dierks Bentley Song

Dierks Bentley, 'Draw Me a Map' -- Story Behind the Lyrics
Posted Oct 14th 2010 9:00AM by Lorie Hollabaugh (theboot.com)

Dierks Bentley and Jon Randall Stewart have been buddies for almost 15 years. They write songs together, hang out together with their families, and share a strong, mutual love of bluegrass, which led to their latest collaboration, Dierks' acclaimed CD 'Up on the Ridge.' The Boot caught up with Jon Randall, the producer of 'Up on the Ridge' and co-writer of several tunes on the album, to find out the inspiration behind Dierks' latest single, 'Draw Me a Map.'

We were just throwing around some ideas and I can't remember how we came up with the words "draw me a map that leads me back to you" at first ... maybe we were talking about traveling, I don't know. But we approached it from this groove that we both really love, it's by that band the Shins ... it's almost a bluegrass groove, but it's the way that that acoustic drives that whole track, and we started playing around with that. We needed something in that slot on this record, we didn't have anything like it. So we just started playing with these melody ideas, and Dierks threw out the first line and, there you go, you just start writing. It's kind of like we wrote ourselves into that chorus. And it sounds like Dierks.

That line could be funny, really, but when you put it in a serious context and make a love song out of it, it's pretty strong. I think it works from both sides, too. I think guys really relate to that, that, "Hey, what did I do? I don't even know what I just said?" But I think women want to hear that, too. They want to know that you're trying. What I like about it is most ideas have already been written. But I hadn't necessarily heard this idea before. Maybe it has been done before, and I'm sure someone's approached it, but I thought it was a really different angle for a song.