SOUNDS GOOD Dierks Bentley is a 14-time Grammy Award nominee, a 27-time Country Music Award nominee, the performer of 18 No. 1 country songs and the third-youngest member of the Grand Ole Opry. But he doesn't really like writing songs.
"If I'm being completely honest with my fans, it's not something I really enjoy or look forward to," Bentley said, in a phone interview with me earlier this week. The 48-year-old country star is wrapping up a two-year tour for his 2023 record "Gravel & Gold." One of the last shows will be at Moline's Vibrant Arena at The Mark on Friday night.
And if you have tickets, don't fret — touring is something that Bentley still loves. Shows don't feel like work to him anymore. They're rejuvenating.
He could do it with his eyes closed. While in the Quad-Cities, he's hoping to play some pickleball at a court near the arena. But when the tour is over, writing a song is the last thing Bentley wants to do.
"You get off the road, and it's a beautiful day outside, and I'm gonna spend the next eight hours in a small room with a couple of people trying to create something out of nothing — and most likely, we have about a 3% chance of getting a hit," he said. "We're gonna come out the door with a B-plus song, but B-plus songs aren't good enough. I need A-plus songs, but those are so hard to write.
And so it's kind of (like) spending your whole day just pounding your head against the wall to most likely get nothing to show for it." It hasn't always been that way. Bentley's debut album was released 21 years ago last month.
And on its cover, there's a different person. Bentley is boyish, sitting on porch steps with a golden retriever and a hopeful smirk on his face. In those early years of songwriting, Bentley said, it was exciting.
He eagerly played all his new songs for friends and family. But two decades later, things are different. Bentley's priorities have shifted.
He's got a wife, laundry to get done, dishes to clean, three kids who have hockey practices and theater rehearsals. This week, he's signing whiskey bottles for fans; next week, he's going elk hunting. On top of it all, Bentley is an entrepreneur with a chain of Whiskey Row country bars, a clothing line with Flag & Anthem, a signature whiskey — the ROW 94 Kentucky bourbon — and a partnership with beverage company WithCo to co-sponsor non-alcoholic beverages, because he's got friends who don't drink anymore and some more who shouldn't.
It can be tough to juggle it all. Family always comes first. But all of a sudden, as Bentley puts it, "your pencil isn't as sharp as it used to be.
" And so he leans on songwriters. Award-winning ones like Ross Copperman and Ashley Gorley. It turns out they're about as good at sounding like Dierks Bentley as Dierks Bentley is.
"They start writing songs that sound like the best version of you ever wrote," he said. "It's so me, but it's better than anything I could write. I mean, these people are just tapped into my brain.
" Even on tour, Bentley is fine with taking the backseat. He's immensely proud of his backing band, which he says is the best in Nashville. And the resumés back that up.
After all, acoustic guitarist Charlie Worsham was named the ACM Acoustic Guitarist Of The Year last year and has opened as a solo performer for Taylor Swift and Kenny Rogers. On the Bentley setlist, there are, predictably, plenty of covers. He pays tribute to the late Toby Keith, covers Tom Petty's "American Girl," and performs an entire encore set of 90's hits by Shania, Garth and more with his semi-satirical band Hot Country Knights.
"We used to do more originals in our set. At the end of the night now, we just do covers," he said. "Let's give the people what they want.
" That last sentence is an idea that leaks into Bentley's songwriting, too. He wants hooks that you can sing loudly in your car, like the Morgan Wallen tracks his pop-loving teen daughter requested on a recent drive. The moment made Bentley proud.
He played it cool. He's a big Wallen fan, though, because the country star's songs don't come with a backstory. If they can make you smile or dance, that's enough.
The recipe is working. Recent Bentley songs like "Sun Sets in Colorado" and the ironically titled "Something Real" are great, even though they have three and five songwriting credits each. Bentley laughs at descriptions that brand every record as an artist's "most personal album yet.
" "I get so tired of reading those descriptions of some of these albums," he said. "It feels like ChatGPT is writing this stuff." (Writer's note: I second this frustration, as someone with an email inbox full of press releases that read like confessionals).
And that's certainly the way things are trending. Authenticity is an analytic now. Country music has been a real profiteer.
The genre is in an "Urban Cowboy phase," Bentley jokes. Everyone has a cowboy hat. He credits, partially, Wallen and the TV show "Yellowstone.
" But while some fans may pearl-clutch about outsiders coming to country shows, Bentley is optimistic for the genre's future. He's rooting for singers like HARDY, Lainey Wilson, Zach Top and The Red Clay Strays, all of whom seem like shrewd investments. And of course they are.
Bentley is obviously a savvy businessman. So it's sort of refreshing that, when it comes to songwriting, he doesn't have interest in weighing the market value of sincerity. He'd rather spend that time smiling in the car with his daughter instead.
Bentley's show at Vibrant Arena starts at 7 p.m. Friday, with opening acts Chase Rice and Ella Langley.
Tickets start at $30.75. Concert of The Week: Worry Club at Raccoon Motel If country isn't your thing and you're looking for concert plans this week, I nominate the Worry Club show at the Raccoon Motel on Monday.
Worry Club is a band I've kept my eye on for a few years now. I was hooked by their 2022 indie-pop single "Lately," a collaboration with The Maine frontman John O'Callaghan that sounds like a sunburn. But the Chicago band's 2023 emo-pop EP "All Frogs Go To Heaven" has the band on another level.
Every song is engineered with electricity. Each crunchy guitar chord jolts with lightning-like precision. But unlike lightning, these songs strike twice, three times, four times.
The thunder sounds just as nice. It all builds to "Same Name," the project's closing track and moststreamed song. It's a crescendoing ballad that ends with throat-splitting screams and spacey accents.
It'll sound too big for the Motel stage. That's perfect. Tickets are $23.
81 and the show starts at 7 p.m. New York punk band Sorry Mom is opening.
On This Daytrotter: Whispertown on Sept. 18, 2012 Lastly, let's take a moment to revisit Whispertown's Daytrotter session, released 12 years ago this week. On it, the indie-rock project from former child actress Morgan Nagler (a frequent collaborator of Jenny Lewis) breezes through four evocative tracks.
The jittery, panning riff on the folksy "State of Mind" sounds perfect in this setting. So does the wary "Parallel," where Nagler quarrels over keeping track of the latest breaking news. It's all-encompassing and overwhelmed.
Most admirably, it's still empathetic. Nagler wants to march for you. But she's got her own business to address first.
So the song marches on her behalf, boiling to a side-splitting guitar solo. "It's contagious," she sings as a kick drum holds its boot back behind her. And it is.
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