Photos by Zach Belcher, courtesy of Dierks Bentley
Whether you know it or not, Dierks Bentley is currently the king of the breakup song. The guys in his songs drink all the bourbon in Kentucky to forget a woman. They get piss drunk on a plane and they beg their exes to just lie to them on the phone about still loving them. And in his new smash single, they take a one-way flight to a beach. It’s probably safe to say that there are more people drinking a beer in a bar right now thinking their breakup is best articulated by Dierks Bentley—who himself is actually happily married—than any other artist right now.
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Bentley first took off back in modern country’s Paleolithic era: 2003. He, along with Brad Paisley and Keith Urban, stood apart from the brawny patriotism of country at the time. But where Paisley and Urban incorporated guitar heroics, Bentley, whose first two albums went platinum, stood out for being the guy who’d be making bluegrass records if he never got scouted by Music Row. His music was always tinged with mandolins (particularly early single “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do”) and he seemed uncomfortable in the role of country bohunk. So, at the mid point of his discography, he swerved and made Up on the Ridge, an album that you could swap for the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and most people would be none the wiser. He went back to country for 2012’s appropriately titled Home, but it was 2014’s more grown up Riser—it had songs about loss and was dedicated to his dad, who died before the album’s release—that truly launched him to the upper crust of country radio’s apple pie; it spawned multiple hits and gave Bentley another shot at superstardom he’s since taken to wholeheartedly.
He’s celebrating this late period success with his darkest, most considered album to date: Black, out May 27, a 13-song cycle about hookups, breakups, makeups, and fuckups. It’s more melancholic harder than his past albums; there isn’t a mandolin to be found, and most of the songs are as black as the title and the cover. The album is not just a rehash of number one hit “Somewhere on a Beach”; here he trades verses with Maren Morris about being an extramarital affair (“I’ll be the Moon”) and talks the differences in what a hookup means for men and women with Elle King (“Different for Girls”).
Bentley’s currently on his “Somewhere on a Beach” tour: He just wrapped the first week in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, sharing the behind-the-scenes photos with Noisey, and now he’s headed on through the Midwest. I gave him a call while he rolled along in his tour bus, not particularly close to a beach.
Noisey: I listened to Black, and the first thing that jumped out at me apart from the songs themselves is that there’s a narrative arc here that your other albums don’t necessarily have. Was that something you were consciously trying to do when you went into the studio, or did that come together with the songs you picked for the record?
Dierks Bentley: There’s definitely a story arc here, for sure. You know, I try to make albums. I try to make records. I have a turntable on my bus, and I love listening to vinyl records, where you listen to songs in order then flip them over and listen to the whole thing. I really wanted to make an album that has a story, a theme, a thread that runs through the whole thing.
I went into this album with no idea what I was going to write about. I had nothing. I just go into the studio and hit my head against a wall, and maybe something will happen. When I wrote the title track, I knew I had written the cornerstone of the album. Then I realized it could fit with an idea that I had a couple years ago to make an album that follows a guy as he leaves one relationship as it all falls apart, and matures throughout the record, and finds himself in a new relationship at the end. So I wrote songs, and dove into the Nashville songwriting community to stockpile songs that allowed me to do this idea I had.
I like that this record has that little arc in it. That’s what excites me about this. If fans buy a single they hear on the radio that’s fine; but for me, I want to have a record on my shelf that I can be really proud of.
Speaking of a single they hear on the radio: Are you worried at all that people will pick this up expecting an album full of “Somewhere on a Beach” and have Black be different than what they’re expecting?
I hope so. I know it sounds crazy for an artist to say, but the safe thing would be to make a record people are expecting. When I walk in to Target, I do not want Target to change. I want the red circle, and I want every store to look the same. It’s a comfortable feeling, and I get that.
Musically, the records and bands I like, I want them to be experimenting and trying new things. Even if the band doesn’t nail the new sound, you appreciate it as a fan because they were at least trying and going for something different. Same thing as tours: I hate throwing away what works on a particular tour and starting from scratch, but you owe it to the fans who have come out to shows in the past to give them something different. Even the people that want the old thing, you have to give them something else.
For a happily married man, you do a lot of songs about breakups. The last album had some classic ones, and this one is mostly breakup songs. What about doing breakup songs really appeals to you?
Those songs are a lot more interesting than the “happily ever after songs.” As a country music fan, I like songs that have that raw heartache. I just found, for this album in particular, that the other side of being happily married was more interesting to write about. The shadows of love are more interesting. There’s more to mine out of it.
And in some ways, the remembrance of a bad breakup brings up more accessible emotions than if you’re in a new, committed loving relationship. Those feelings are always fresh in a way, even if it happened a long time ago.
But I don’t want to say being in a long marriage is stale by any means. It’s just the opposite. It’s constantly evolving. When you’re in a committed relationship, there’s no out. Love is not stationary. Just when you think you have it in spot it changes on you. You have kids and things change, you know? It’s just as interesting as being in a new relationship; it’s just different.
Sure. You said you have a turntable on the bus. What do you have on your turntable right now?
The records I can see from right here: Van Halen self titled, and Kris Kristofferson’s Border Lord.
Oh man, that Kristofferson album is incredible.
Gosh man, he was incredible. “Getting’ High, By and Strange,” all about living it how the hell you wanna do it.
I just finished watching the end of the four part video series you have for Black, and I’ve got to ask, have you ever seen R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet series?
No man, I haven’t. I had someone else mention it.
Oh man, you need to. It’s this video series where over the course of, at first, 12 videos, he tells this musical story about a guy cheating, and there’s a cliffhanger at the end of each one. It’s incredible. Your video series is like the country version of it.
That’s awesome. It’s been a lot of fun making these ones. You want to do different things to get your fans involved in your record.
I heard you used to work in the research department of the Nashville Network.
I did, yeah.
And your entire job was to just watch and catalog old country performances all day.
I did a little bit of everything in there, but yeah, a lot of it was producers asking for specific songs or performances, and I’d have to get timecodes off a VHS video for them.
Do you remember watching anything specifically? Did you take anything from watching all these old performances?
I’m a country music fan, first and foremost, so that job was incredible. I got to watch old Johnny Cash performances. I learned about performing from watching Faron Young, just the way he moved his eyes and his head in a performance; he didn’t have to move, his facial expressions did all the work. Porter Wagoner. Old Loretta Lynn footage. I learned a lot.
It was like you were getting paid to research what it takes to be a country performer as a job.
I was getting paid $10 an hour and I felt like I hit the lottery. Because I could work and learn more about country music history.
I was looking back through your past albums, and I realized that you had a greatest hits album come out in 2008. I wonder what that feels like to have your greatest hits packaged together when you’re only halfway through your career, and you’ve had many great hits since then.
It was a time in my career when I was really sort of struggling. I wanted a fourth single to come off my Long Trip Alone album, a song called “Trying to Stop Your Leaving,” and I promised the label they could do the greatest hits album if they let me do that as a single. It was really a terrible idea to be honest; it was the beginning of the end of that first era of my career.
It all kind of came to a screeching halt in 2009; I was touring OK, but I wasn’t at the front of the pack anymore. So I left to make a bluegrass record (2010’s Up on the Ridge) and the second half of my career really started with that. The records since then have all felt like they’ve gotten better, and I’ve gotten more determined to make the best music I can make. I feel like I’m making my best records. It’s kind of crazy we had that greatest hits album out in 2008. We were really pushing it there a little bit (laughs).
How long do you want to keep doing this? How many albums do you see yourself making? You know, in country, you can make like 50 albums over the course of a career.
That’s a good question, man. I feel like I left it all on the table for this one. I don’t even know where I would start to start on a new album. That’s a scary thought, but that’s probably how you should feel after you make a new album. I wouldn’t even know where to begin; if I went in a room to write songs right now I wouldn’t know where I’d go.
I don’t see myself doing this forever. When I’m maybe not one of the guys—like in NASCAR, in the Top Ten drivers—it’ll be time to do something else. And by something else it’ll be making music in a different way. Bluegrass maybe. But for right now I’m loving swimming in the biggest pond you can swim in as a country singer.
I just try to be in the present, you know? You can take as many videos to see where you are as you want but it doesn’t stop time. It’s like life, too: the best way to enjoy it is just be present in the moment you’re in.
Andrew Winistorfer is somewhere in Wisconsin. Follow him on Twitter.