COUNTRY THUNDER ROLLING IN
Bentley bringing The Mountain to city
It would become one of country music’s worst-kept secrets.
But for a time last year, Dierks Bentley was able to fool his fans at stadium shows, donning a disguise and performing straight bluegrass as part of an acoustic opening act. Actually, they would usually open for the opening act, offering quick 20-minute sets under names such as The Bolo Boys Bluegrass Band or, more generically, That Bluegrass Band.
“You can usually find us on stage around 6:30 with wigs and glasses on and all sorts of overalls,” says Bentley with a laugh, on the line from his home in Nashville “It’s pretty funny. It gives us a chance to scratch the itch and play a little bluegrass every night. Also, for our hardcore fans waiting in the front row, it gives them a chance to see something a little different.”
Unfortunately, neither the Bolo Boys nor That Bluegrass Band are likely to make an appearance this week at Country Thunder, when Bentley headlines the Friday night festivities at Prairie Winds Park. But the idea that one of country’s most successful mainstream artists still finds the need to scratch a bluegrass itch every night is refreshing and a sturdy reminder of Bentley’s habit of occasionally throwing a wrench into the Nashville machinery that has helped turn him into a country superstar.
Released earlier this summer, there is nothing on Bentley’s ninth studio record, The Mountain, quite as radical as what was found on Up on the Ridge, a defiantly non-commercial straight bluegrass record — featuring input from the Del McCoury Band and Alison Krauss — that Bentley unexpectedly released in 2010. Instead, The Mountain is a hybrid that mixes introspective ballads, radio-friendly anthems and — particularly on the wistful Brandi Carlile duet, Travelin’ Light — nods to his love for an early immersion in bluegrass music.
It was also an album that Bentley didn’t want to make in Nashville, his home for the past 25 years. But while he felt the need to leave Music Row to develop and record the album, he took pieces of it with him to the mountains. Even before recording began at Studio in the Clouds in Telluride, Colorado, Bentley took six Nashville writers with him to share a house and write songs. He couldn’t explain the feeling he wanted, so he took them there to find if for themselves.
“I hand-selected six people, five guys and one girl,” says Bentley. “That’s the thing about music, I think that’s why we’re attracted to it: it’s unexplainable. When you’re trying to write it, there’s not a tangible result. You can’t exactly explain what you’re trying to write. But I knew I had this feeling and the mountains were a big part of the vibe I was feeling. I knew I couldn’t take that back to Nashville. I needed to bring people to it.
“I brought these six friends of mine up to Telluride, Colorado, and I was like, ‘Guys, you have to find what I’m feeling. Walk around, go for a hike. Just take in the vibe here. I’ve got some song titles and basic ideas, but I want to write this ... whatever this is.’ They got it right away. We wrote four or five songs a day. We wrote more than half the album out there.”
The results are certainly different from 2016’s Black, a record that explored the dark lows and giddy highs of modern relationships. But, not unlike that record, The Mountain is a concept album of sorts. The songs certainly stand on their own but make the most sense when listened to as a collection telling a bigger story.
“You find those songs that work well for everybody: for the radio, for iTunes, for the tour,” he says. “But, really, when you’re making the album, you have to concentrate on just making a great album. It’s just as if you were writing a book. It needs to be something you can put up on your shelf as a stand-alone piece. It wasn’t made to support anything other than itself.”
Still, with The Mountain it’s less about a straight narrative than a thematic thread or reflection of the feelings Bentley gets when he visits the mountainous splendour of Colorado, where he owns a vacation home. It wasn’t just the hustle-bustle, hits-obsessed world of Nashville he wanted to escape, but a certain heaviness he had felt while touring his troubled country over the past few years.
Last year, he also worked on the film Only the Brave, Joseph Kosinski’s harrowing true-life drama about the 19 elite firefighters who died battling the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona. Bentley, who is an Arizona native, was enlisted to sing and co-write the song Hold the Light, which plays over the closing credits of the film. But he also travelled to a number of the film’s premières, adding another layer of star power to help promote what he saw as an essential American story about heroism.
After those experiences, he found a certain peace in the mountains and quickly decided he wanted to capture that vibe by writing and recording the album in Telluride.
“It feels like there’s a concept involved of just living and feeling alive and the gratitude that I personally find in the mountains,” he says.
“Everybody has their own place to find it. For me, it’s out there. The songs all fit into the idea of feeling alive and feeling inspired and feeling gratitude.”
Both the rocking opening track Burning Man and reflective country closer How I’m Going Out contemplate maturity and mortality; the celebratory Living is “all about
the difference of just being alive and just living ”; while the poppy and anthemic Can’t Bring Me Down is “about being so high up that no one can bring you down with their negativity.”
While Bentley continues to live in Nashville with his wife and three children, he has not gotten the mountains out of his blood. Over Labour Day weekend, he will host the inaugural Seven Peaks Festival in the small Colorado mountain town of Buena Vista, joining Miranda Lambert, Clint Black and Brothers Osborne as headliners over the three-day event.
Over nearly two decades, Bentley has gone from releasing partyhearty songs such as Drunk on a Plane and the ultra-catchy 5-1-5-0 to the more brooding and introspective work found on his past two albums. But he manages to capture both sides when he is on stage, he says.
That’s the thing about music, I think that’s why we’re attracted to it: it’s unexplainable. When you’re trying to write it, there’s not a tangible result. You can’t exactly explain what you’re trying to write.
It was a month after a gunman murdered 58 people in Las Vegas during a country music festival that Alberta singer-songwriter Drew Gregory attempted to sort out his feelings during a songwriting session in Nashville.
In November, he sat down with co-writers Dakota Jay and Will King to write what he thought would be an angry song.
“The healing power of songwriting is why we really did it,” Gregory says in an interview from his home in Strathmore. “I was really angry when we started it and so were the other guys I wrote it with. We started it as this angry song. But the more we wrote the more it became a song about love.”
The song became Good Place to Start, the title track on Gregory’s newest EP. It’s not without its powerful imagery — including the spectre of an man waving a Nazi flag as he marches a small-town square — but ends with a glimmer of defiant hope: “We’re not going to stand in the shadows, let hate lead us into dark,” he sings.
As far as political statements go, it’s perhaps not as establishment shaking as those recently made by Gregory’s songwriting hero Eric Church. In a Rolling Stone cover story, Church made headlines by criticizing the National Rifle Association while expressing admiration for left-leaning Democrat Bernie Sanders, neither of which went over particularly well among conservative segments of country music’s fan base.
But Gregory insists his song isn’t meant to be political, other than to make a point about diplomacy.
“I never really take one side or the other in politics or discuss it much,” says Gregory, who will play Country Thunder at Prairie Wind Park on Friday, two days before Eric Church is set to take the stage.
“That’s what I like about this song. It talks about some serious subjects, but says, ‘Whatever side you are on, maybe just show a little more love and compassion to the other side and maybe the world will be a better place.’ That’s all we were saying.”
The title track certainly shows that Gregory is not reluctant to tackle serious subjects alongside the more irreverent fare found on Good Place to Start, which also includes loosely philosophical outings such as Workin’ Drinkin’ Lovin’ Livin’ and Better in a Bar.
The catchy Know Good, cowritten with ex-pat Nashvillebased Canucks Trinity Bradshaw and Brad Stella, was an attempt to write a purely positive song, while Smokin’ tells a typical young-lovers-on-the-road tale.
“I really try to not ever have two songs that sound the same,” Gregory says.
“I try to have a lot of different topics. I always love the albums where they throw the odd curveball in. You get some of those album tracks that might never make the radio, but just hit you really hard. That’s what always made me a big fan of an artist as opposed to just: ‘Oh yeah, I’ve heard a few songs of his on the radio.’
“That’s why it’s always been important to me to not just worry about the singles going to library, you have to make sure the album is solid all the way through.”
It’s all evidence that Gregory is in it for the long haul. He grew up in Standard, on a grain farm, where he still works today. He began playing guitar as a teenager, eventually becoming obsessed with the instrument and then with writing his own songs. It was actually Eric Church’s first album — 2006’s Sinners Like Me — that inspired Gregory to take his songwriting seriously. He recorded an acoustic album of his original material in 2007 — initially as a Christmas gift for his mother — that led to his first trip down to Nashville.
Since then, he has been a prolific collaborator with writers on Music Row, including a good number of Canadian ex-pats. Good Place to Start, released earlier this summer, is Gregory’s fourth studio recording, which he put together with Jason Barry in the awardwinning producer’s studio in Kitchener, Ont.
Unlike most country singers, Gregory schedules his musical endeavours
(The song) says ‘Whatever side you are on, maybe just show a little more love and compassion to the other side and maybe the world will be a better place.’
around work on his family grain farm in Standard. He also has a 21/2-year-old son and another child on the way, which makes time management skills crucial.
“Country Thunder is kind of the last show,” he says. “I usually shut it down for September and May for seeding and harvest season. Other than that, we’re pretty flexible with what we can do in the summer and just getting down to Nashville or cutting records in the winter time. We don’t have any cows or anything, it’s all grain farm. So the careers work pretty well together.”
Drew Gregory plays Country Thunder at Prairie Winds Park on Friday at 4 p.m.
Country Thunder runs from Friday to Sunday. Other acts include The Cadillac Three and Dierks Bentley (Friday), Restless Heart, Dean Brody, and Toby Keith (Saturday) and the Kentucky Headhunters, Midland, and Eric Church (Sunday). Visit countrythunder.com for more information.