Dierks Bentley uses his powers for good, launches bluegrass(ish) tour tonight at the Wonder Ballroom

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on April 21, 2010 at 6:57 AM, updated April 21, 2010 at 8:04 AM
There are two things one can do with success: Try to duplicate it again and again by replicating the original breakthrough, or try and actually use that little bit of freedom success has bought.

"You get some creative license and that's definitely the goal," Dierks Bentley said recently from his home in Nashville.

Since the release of his first record in 2003, Bentley's scored seven No. 1 country singles. He's played on big tours and headlined big buildings. He's had enough success that last year he was able to take his dog to an awards show. Country radio and CMT like him a lot, and if you're fortunate enough to be the kind of guy who can get on country radio and CMT, well, keep churning out those hits.

There's a long list of highly-successful, rich country singers who release a lot of songs that sound exactly like the last song they released.

Bentley made a bluegrass record.

Sort of. It arrived billed as a bluegrass record, and his publicist emailed the title track, Up On The Ridge, ahead of the interview, and, as bad as I felt to be the one to break it to Bentley, it didn't sound like that radical a departure from, say, his first big hit -- What Was I Thinkin'.

Listen to Up On The Ridge:

"I hate to put a label on it, because when people hear the record, it's definitely, there's a big lack of electric guitars," he said.

But an abundance of many of the instruments that form the foundation of his best songs. And, it turns out, there is some pretty serious bluegrass on the disc, too.

The kind of stuff that attracted him away from the classrooms of Vanderbilt when he first got to Nashville. It wasn't the Music Row stuff that grabbed him, it was the house band at Station Inn -- the Sidemen.

"They turned me on to a whole new world," Bentley said. "When I got there, the whole country scene, I was a little turned off by it. It wasn't me. They weren't writing their own songs. It was artificial to some degree. It was different than I thought it'd be. I walked into the Station Inn and discovered real people playing real instruments."

After coming off his last tour, he was playing with a couple of different projects, but this album, let's call it bluegrass-infused, took hold. He ended up pulling in top-end players like the Del McCoury Band and the Punch Brothers. He loaded it up with singers and players like Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Jamey Johnson and Miranda Lambert.

He and his pals made interesting song choices. They do a Bob Dylan tune -- Senor (Tales of Yankee Power). They do a U2 tune -- Pride (In the Name of Love). They do a Kris Kristofferson tune -- Bottle to the Bottom.

They got Kristofferson to sing on that one.

"He lives in Hawaii and I thought, Maybe we can fly to Hawaii," Bentley said. "But that wasn't in the budget."

Fortunately, Kristofferson was going to be in Nashville and in a studio, so they barged in on that. Unfortunately, the film guy who'd been recording a lot of the recording of the album couldn't make it, so Bentley was trying to capture it all on his iPhone, because, how often are you in the studio with Kris Kristofferson playing one of the guy's perfect songs?

"Next time I'm not going to write a song with so many words in it," Bentley recalled Kristofferson saying as they worked.

The finished product ends up as a highlight on a record with plenty of them. Still, Nashville today isn't any different from the Nashville Bentley arrived to in the 1990s. If anything, it's probably more risk-averse -- because the entire industry (pick a genre, any genre) is more risk-averse.

Even if this isn't a massive departure, it's a tiny departure, and thus a risk to the people who wear suits.

So far, so good.

Bentley said he's gotten texts from buddies in Phoenix, where he was born, after hearing the new stuff on the radio. With any luck, he'll expose some new people to good music, and now comes the fun part -- playing it live.

The record doesn't come out until June 8, but he and the Traveling McCourys launch the tour tonight with a sold-out show at the Wonder Ballroom.

"I feel lucky to get a little creative freedom," Bentley said, noting he's not too worried about what to call the record. "I'm hoping it just gets defined as being good."