Album Review: Dierks Bentley’s HOME

As fans, we’ve waited a long time for new music from Dierks Bentley.  We’ve watched from silent web cams, made up stories about the players in the Asheville, NC studio as well the songs.  And because Dierks had to make an album that was as creatively satisfying as “Up On the Ridge,” no one knew what to expect: including Dierks. 

HOME debuted yesterday morning to an amped up Dierks getting ready to play the Today Show and the number two overall album spot on ITunes.  Number 1 on the ITunes Country Charts.    Dierks has been quoted about the creative process, finding the right sounds after Ridge.  And he wouldn’t be true to himself if he left out the persuasion of mandolins and fiddle in a bluegrass bent towards the album.  So this album finds him firmly settled in knowing who he is and what sounds mirror his feelings.  The sounds have matured with him, becoming more complex, more encompassing, more feeling. 

The fun is still there in Am I the Only One and Tip It On Back.  Rowdy drinking songs that have been associated with the fun, bad boy side of Bentley from the beginning. 

But the heart of the man is still there. He’s Everyman.  The interesting thing about Dierks’ music is everyone sees and identifies with something different.  From the rowdy 5-1-5-0  and Gonna Die Young, his vocals ease over the emotion and grab our attention.   There’s balance in the album.  It encompasses a little bit of all of us.  The Woods (Jon Randall Stewart) a mid-tempo song, flirts with familiar advertising lines.  Diamonds Make Babies (Jim Beavers) provides a great live show segue but doesn’t have the same effect on the album as it can’t slip past the cliché.

However,  any female will tell you that the gravel in Bentley’s voice makes them pay attention to the ballads.  For the ballads on this album are stellar.  When You Gonna Come Around (Jamie Hartford) incorporates a style that makes you ache to see where it leads.  Karen Fairchild from Little Big Town provides a smoky quality to the  vocals that match well with Bentley’s gravel and provide sexual tension.   Breathe You In (Ryan Tyndell) requires you to listen more than once.  And ends with you licking your lips.   Heart of a Lonely Girl (Charlie Worsham) incorporates those bluegrass elements never far from Bentley’s heart. 

But the two stellar songs that can’t be missed on this album are Home (Wilson, Beavers, Bentley) and Thinking of You (Beavers, Bentley).  Home, complex enough to encompass our nation and all the ideas and persuasions that divide us as well as bind us to each other.   Sitting at #7 on the Billboard and Mediabase charts when the album was debuted, Home speaks to all of us.  It supports our diversity as well as our connections.  It’s as positive a song as it's possible to be, and filled with hope.  Bentley supports this vocally masterfully as I expect it’s a difficult song to sing.

But my favorite is Thinking of You.  The song is subtle and you buy right in, Bentley’s vocals are superior and perfect for the tune.  It’s not until the end that you understand where he’s going with it.    No surprise about where  the album is going though.  It’s going to number one with the fans. 

--Janet Marlborough

DB Congress Rep, CA

Dierks Discusses Album-in-Progress

Journalist Chris Willman wrote an impressive, insightful article about our DB Congress president's upcoming album. Thanks, Chris! We are definitely serious Dierks Bentley fans and we appreciate you sending us your story and all the great sneak peaks on the songs and lyrics!

Dierks Bentley Talks New Single, Previews Album-in-Progress

Dierks Bentley recently invited a handful of influential radio programmers to come to a Nashville studio and hear a half-dozen of the new tracks he's working on—and we were on the scene. If you've asked yourself "Am I the only one (who can't wait to hear Dierks' next one)," no, you're hardly alone, and we've got a tantalizing sneak preview of what you can expect when the album comes out in July or August..

Of course, serious Bentley fans are already well aware of the first single, "Am I the Only One," which arrived at country radio this week, and which goes on sale at iTunes March 29. (He's also been performing the tune in concert) Being a party anthem in the tradition of "Sideways," "Am I the Only One" is an obvious choice for the album's leadoff single... obvious maybe to everyone but Dierks, anyway..

"We were playing different songs for the label," the singer explained, "and I hadn't played this one for (Capitol Nashville head Mike) Dungan or anyone yet. I was sitting there with my eyes closed, smiling and singing along with the song and having a great time, when I feel something hit me in the head. I'm thinking, what was that? And Dungan's looking at me and says, 'That's your [expletive] single!... Where has that been? You had me worried, brother!' I said, 'Hey, we're still working on the record!' I'd never had someone throw a book at me. But if you know Mike, that's the way he is—passionate. When the president of your label throws something at you, it's pretty wild.".

Here's something wilder: The other five tracks we heard from the album were even better—even if Dungan wasn't necessarily wrong about the pick for first single..

It seems almost inconceivable that the second single from the project won't be country-classic-in-the-making "Diamonds Make Babies." It's shaped in the form of a warning to a friend who is about to propose to a girlfriend. At some stops on his current tour, Bentley has even been picking engaged couples out of the crowd to serenade them with the cautionary tale. Lyrics include:.

That thing is more than a simple stone.

It's got some crazy powers all its own....

Diamonds make babies.

And babies make mamas.

And mamas make daddies make changes they don't always wanna....

As domestic as this song is, it sounds a little like one of his most famously anti-domestic tunes. "It's got a little bit of that 'Lot of Leavin' Left to Do' sound in the mix somewhere," he said. "I tried to get a little bit of a Waylon thing, with Paul Franklin playing steel guitar again, but also give it a fresh feel." .

Bentley didn't write "Diamonds Make Babies," though; Jim Beavers and Chris Stapleton did. He explained: "This record, I really listened for as many outside songs as possible. Every song I've ever put out to country radio before has been stuff that I've written. I know this is kind of the opposite approach of what most (country) people are trying to do. A lot of people would love to write more of their own songs and have them on the radio, but I'm dying to find some outside stuff. I started writing for this record in October, but my producer and I also listened to thousands of songs. I took my first road trip to Asheville"—the North Carolina city where he's been recording the album—"just to listen to songs for 10 hours. On this album I actually cut four outside songs, that being one of them, which is great, because I just hadn't done that enough.".

Dierks slowed down the pace by playing a couple of ballads in the "Settle for a Slowdown" vein. "When You Gonna Come Around" brilliantly encapsulates the mixed emotions of a guy who's in love with a sweet but wary girl and tiring of waiting for their slow-starting relationship to move from friendship mode into the next gear. "We've never been together, it's just something we talk about," he sings early on in the song, before getting to the crux of the matter:.

I've been waiting with a heart full of love just for you to say it feels right enough.

I've been waiting and I'm wondering when you're gonna give in and just give it up.

Your love is the sweetest thing I have ever found.

So when you gonna come around.

Rest assured that hearts will melt like Hershey's in Tennessee humidity when that one comes around to country radio..

But the same could be said of "You're Still in My Heart in My Head," which isn't any less emotionally primal for being a little more cleverly phrased. "I don't have to be alone tonight," he sings, going on to explain the poignant conditions of his non-solitude: "You never left, in my head... You're still in that T-shirt on my bed/You're ever song that's on/You're gone/But you're in my arms in my head." It's the kind of lost-love anthem that gives mopeyness a grand name..

Next up at Bentley's listening session was "Home," which he described as "definitely my favorite," in spite of—or maybe because of—it having "a little different kind of feel," to say the least. It's the rare non-relationship song in his catalog, unless we're counting a man's relationship with his country (as in nation, not music). He wrote it with ex-Semisonic rocker turned high-end song doc Dan Wilson, who plays guitar and piano on the track. Bentley said that he was thinking of the way an act like Mumford & Sons might write about their country, "although theirs is a lot smaller" and possibly easier to get a grasp on..

"In my home state, in Tucson, that shooting tragedy had just happened. I was thinking about it all the time, in the back of my head. It's slightly connected to that, in a way," he said, although the lyrics about the "blessed motherland" don't directly reference the incident. Sample lyric: "Scars, yeah, she's got her scars/Sometimes it starts to worry me/I don't want to lose sight of who we are...".

But of course Bentley was bound to bring things back down—in this case, with a preview of a song called "Bring It Back Down," which on first listen sounded like a wordier, lighter, and more uptempo variation on "Come a Little Closer." The verses provide a laundry list of contemporary distractions—celebrity culture, talk radio, YouTube, rampant consumerism—while the chorus proposes finding a place to shut all that out: "With nothing but the sound of a whipporwill playing/Let's get lost in the love we're making.".

Bentley hasn't exactly been slacking on the job these last few years, with albums as strong as last year's quasi-bluegrass departure, Up on the Ridge. But as the songs I've been using as comparisons—"Lot of Leavin'," "Slowdown," "Come a Little Closer"—might suggest, his sophomore effort, 2005's Modern Day Drifter, remains a hard benchmark to beat. If the rest of the material is as strong as what he pulled out to preview, this one could shape up as his strongest since then and be a contender for country album of the year..

Getting outside of Nashville for the recording has helped inspire him, he said. Up on the Ridge ended up being recorded largely in New York after a Nashville start, and "it was the last place you'd think of to go to make a country-bluegrass kind of thing," as he points out. This time, he figured Asheville was just far enough away to escape the buzz-killing, too-close-to-home vibe..

"Every time you get to make a record, you appreciate how lucky you are, and I take each one less for granted than the one before. This time, it was so fun to be away from Nashville. I've been here for 16 years, and I love this town. But, and I know it's hard to believe, it really can become almost like an office environment, being in the studio here. Everyone's thinking about their families when 5:00 rolls around. So for this record we went to Asheville and took some of the best guys in this town and got 'em on my bus and drove out there. We got guys who aren't used to doing this kind of thing, guys that get paid triple-scale for sessions, loading in their own gear in this little studio. I really wanted the best musicians in the world playing on the record, but I wanted it in a way that feels like a band. My vocals were done going down with the band. Everything has the spirit of the moment. We'd start at maybe 12 in the afternoon, recording till 12 at night, just hanging out till 2 in the morning and then getting up late—trying to do it the right way, in a little more rock 'n' roll kind of a place. We were going for new sounds. [From the last record] I missed the kick drum, I missed the electric guitar, I missed the bass. I really wanted to throw all that back in there but keep some of those other instruments that kind of define my sound—the banjo the mandolin...".

Taking your esteemed session players to another city, away from their families, to a keg-friendly studio is one way to make sure you're not "the only one who wants to have fun tonight.".

Follow Chris on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/ChrisWillman.

Married Couple-To-Be Come A Lot Closer to Dierks in CT!

If you ever had any doubt about Dierks Bentley's humbleness and generosity--this is the story that will change  your mind. Ryan Miller is a Dierks Bentley Fan Club member (DB Congress) and lives in Stratford, Connecticut.

Ryan Miller's Dierks Bentley Concert Experience
3/17/11 - Wallingford, Connecticut:

Last Thursday, I had an amazing experience thanks to Dierks Bentley in Wallingford, Connecticut. Approximately one hour into his energetic set, Dierks asked the crowd "is anyone out here getting married?" My fiance and I were sitting in the first row so we raised our hands and Dierks came over to us. He handed me his microphone stand and invited us up to the stage where he was sitting. He then asked me what date we were getting married (April 30, 2011), looked at her ring, made a bunch of jokes with us. He then sang a new song to us called, "Diamonds Make Babies". The song was hysterical and had a clear and humorous message. He even handed me the mic a few times to sing a few lines with him.

Then during last song of his set Dierks again came over to me and said into the microphone "I'm taking your girl up here, okay?" I, of course, said sure and he pulled her up on stage. At this point he started singing "Come A Little Closer" to her. Towards the end of the song, he gave her the microphone to hold to the crowd and the entire Oakdale Theatre started singing the song back to her. He did this three times on the sides of the stage with her when he suddenly ran away leaving Amy on stage by herself holding the microphone to the crowd. She didn't realize he had run away from her and when she turned around to give him the microphone back, she had no idea what to do. She ran over to me and gave me the microphone and I sang "I feel like laying you down" back to her. He then came back out to save her (and he was laughing hysterically). He then waved to me and I jumped up on the stage and followed them backstage.



Backstage he took a picture with us and actually said "thank you guys for making that so much fun for me". We responded by saying that he shouldn't be thanking us, that we needed to thank him because it was such an amazing experience. I cannot thank Dierks enough for the once in a lifetime experience he gave my fiance and I. We are truly humbled and grateful for how amazing he is to his fans.

Thanks for sharing your story, Ryan!  We wish you and Amy years of happiness and much "dierksness!"