Artist Spotlight: Dierks Bentley's "Riser"; A Discussion About Making The Album and More

Last week we spoke with Dierks Bentley about Riser, the singer's seventh album for Capitol Nashville. Throughout the conversation we learned more about the creation of the record, what makes Dierks tick as a human being and what makes Country music so special. Included is a video of the discussion.

When one thinks of the music Dierks Bentley makes, it’s easy to think of him as not the most gifted of vocalists when compared to some of his peers but for what he lacks in range (and he discusses this in the interview below) he makes up for with passion and attention to detail. Through the course of his career he’s styled his music in a way that instantly has it recognizable to him, which is all any artist can really do. When working on getting stuff ready forRiser, his seventh album, Dierks looked for songs that suited a common thread and theme to make it one of his most cohesive records to date. In this exclusive discussion (there’s a video of the whole conversation below), we discuss the album and how his life has helped influence the record along with what it is about Country music that makes it the special genre that it is. 

Matt Bjorke: How did you go about choosing which songs to record for the Riser project?

Dierks Bentley: Whether I wrote a song or out looking for songs in a Nashville community, for me to be able to cut a particular song, I need to be able to sing a song convincingly. The stuff that you wrote is pretty easy to sing convincingly because, you wrote it and it’s probably happened in your life. One thing I discovered on this record, I’ve been trying to cut outside songs for a while now but for this record — more than any other record I’ve made — we really sought outside songs. The program was to write as much as I could but also listen to as many songs as we ever have from the Nashville writing community. You have to be able to sing the songs convincingly, whether it’s a party song, being in a truck or all of that stuff or a heartache song. For me, I have to be able to have lived that experience. Luckily, I’ve been in enough relationships where things went south and I’m a romantic in some ways so I used to get my heart broken real easily, still do, my daughter’s tooth fell out and it broke my heart. I still get messed up pretty easily. I’ve had relationships where I’got heartbroken that my hair falls out, losing weight kind of heartache. That experience lets me feel like I could sing the songs convincingly and the fans think it’s real.

Matt Bjorke: Did parenthood help shape your songwriting?

Dierks Bentley: Yeah, being a dad changed it more than you think it would. Really what it does is having kids puts you back into the emotions you had when you were single. The drama, the ups and downs of everyday living with kids, they’re growing on you and they’re painful and you’re up to your elbows with life. It put you back in touch, or me, into reality, someways. I always thought I was in touch with reality but when you’re on a bus and traveling around you tend to write about being on a bus and traveling around. It’s all about being road weary and I love those songs because I’ve lived them but with kids, I’m on the same plane with a lot of my fans and it’s an immediate equalizer, being a dad. I feel it gives you so much more material to draw from as a writer, new ground I haven’t been able to draw from before. And certainly with my Dad passing away, going into making this record, actually during the process of writing for this record that happened, it’s been new territory I’d never discovered before as a writer and a human being.

Matt: Yeah, like “I Hold On…”

Dierks: Yeah, “I Hold On.” I mean, gosh, I listen to the radio and I feel like there’s nothing else like that out there. It’s not a party song, it’s not a love song, it’s a song about me and my personal experience with things around me. Inanimate objects like my truck, my guitar, could’ve been about my boots, could’ve been about my Dad’s Iron Man watch that I usually wear, it’s broken so I’ve got my own Iron Man watch on. These things I hold onto because they have special value to me. So the verses are very personal with vignettes about my personal life. The choruses are very universal with the faith, love and freedom that we all attach on to. So it’s a crazy song. There really isn’t anything out there like that in my catalog or radio. It’s cool to see something out there like that, room for a song with real life and substance. I’m as guilty as the others about writing party songs and they’re a big foundation for our live show and what we do but man, this song, when I sing it live, it’s goosebumps for me and just to have a song a real substance for our live show and radio, I couldn’t be happier.

Matt: What was it like for you to work with Ross Copperman and Arturo Buenahora, Jr. in the studio on Riser?

Dierks: Well, it was the first time I’ve worked with Ross Copperman and he wrote “Tip It On Back.” So I heard the demo for “Tip It On Back” and I fell in love with the demo and i had to find out who made the demo. I found out it was this guy Ross who is a great songwriter but also makes demos. So we started writing songs together and Arturo, it was really his idea to kind of put us together and see how it felt. So we collected a bunch of songs. Arturo, it was his job to make sure that the song quality was as good as it could be, whether I wrote it or someone else wrote it, he was kind of the yes or no guy. So we cut five songs and it felt great, it was fresh, it was cool, it was different. One thing about working with Ross I discovered, I really don’t like singing in the isolation booth when recording, and after seven recordings, I finally made that discovery and I figured out why. I never grew up learning to sing in the studios. My first gigs always involved someone being drunk in the crowd — usually me too — but just being around other people has been a big part of singing for me. So, this record, I found out whether it was me and him in one room together or tracking in the room with the band or being on the bus with other people, it’s a much better place for me to sing. ‘Cause I’m much more of an emotional driven singer than a technically perfect singer, I don’t do vibrato stuff and octave stuff that’s…

Matt: Yeah, I started to write the intro, that’s kind of what I said, I compared you to Bono in a way. The emotion of it…

Dierks: Yeah, unfortunately he’s got the emotional and he’s got some range, he can get up to that operatic…He’s got some range…

Matt: Well, but he’s not perfect [as a vocalist]….

Dierks: No, no, no… it’s all a gut vocal…That’s why for me I don’t need to be in a vocal booth. I’m not trying to capture this great nuance. I try to put air and tone under that note but I’m not trying to do anything special with it. I’m just trying to get an emotion across. So it’s great, I just discovered the freedom of not being in there, it just felt more like a live show. So that’s something I discovered with Ross and Arturo just helped me find great songs, selectively with my own songs and great outside songs.

Matt: How important was it for you to bring the Nashville community on this record?

Dierks: It was really important for me to bring the Nashville songwriting community into this album. I think I put out 17 or 18 songs that I wrote, which was never my intention, to radio. I always thought I was looking for outside songs but I realized that without having Arturo, without having an executive producer, somebody out there combing the streets, finding the songs, it’s hard to be taken seriously, especially after putting out so many songs with my name on it. I’m kinda doing the opposite than others, some really wanna write a song and have a cut on radio, I’ve been lucky enough to do that but I really wanna cut someone else’s song  have it go to #1 and present them with a #1 plaque. That’s a big ream of mine, cause I’ve never have done that. I wrote six songs, well I wrote 100 probably, I cut six of my own and cut six outside songs. That’s the biggest split I’ve ever had but I really feel that the outside songs compliment the songs I write and there’s a story, a thread that goes through the album and having that many songs to choose from helps you achieve that.

Matt: How special is it for you to have people like Chris Stapleton, Charlie Worsham and Kacey Musgraves to sing on your record?

Dierks: Really cool. I’m always looking for a cool collaboration in some way on my records. I’ve always thought about working with guys like George Strait, I’ve had a chance to record with George Jones. Alison Krauss, my favorite female vocalist, I’ve had her on the record before. I’ve recorded with Miranda Lambert and Jamey Johnson. All that stuff’s special but for this record, I was wanting to go with some totally new acts, maybe some folks people hadn’t heard of yet. Kacey Musgraves, obviously people have heard of her of course. Honored to have her on the record. To me, you can tell a lot about a person whether I can text them directly and they’ll text me back directly, so I hit her up on the phone and she’s like “I’d love to.” We worked out the stuff to make it happen. Chris Stapleton, this is the third record of mine he’s been on, starting with Up On The Ridge, He’s on the vocal tracks of “I’m The Only One.” I just love Chris and I’ve been singing his praises like so many other people in this town (Nashville). He’s a great guy to have on the record. Actually, one of my favorite instruments on the record is Chris Stapleton’s voice, He does some cool things with his voice on “Hurt Somebody,” we used that like an instrument. Charlie Worsham, who has played acoustic on my records, he’s incredible. I’m a huge fan of his. And Jaren Johnston from the band The Cadillac Three, I’m a big fan of his, he’s played my stuff before but it’s good to have him on this record and as a co-writer as well.

Matt: What can you tell me about choosing the “Riser” song and what it meant to make it the anchor of the album?

Dierks: “Riser,” I just loved the song. It’s just a great song. Travis Meadows and Steve Moakler wrote that song. It just is one of the best lyrical songs I’ve ever heard. There’s such a great picture being painted throughout the whole song. The overall painting of this guy or this girl no matter what life deals them, constantly getting back up again and you can count on them for anything. I think anyone can listen to that song and find something they admire in themselves or someone they admire, someone they want to be. I think of my dad in that song. Me in that song, the kind of person I want to be as a father to my kids and husband to my wife. A powerful song. For me personally having lost my dad at the beginning of this process and the birth of my son at the end, it’s been a sort of rise through a range of emotions and I felt it was the cornerstone of the record and made for a good title for the overall project.

Matt: How have the fans been reacting to the new songs out on the road?

Dierks: It’s been great. We played “Riser” for the first time out at Niagara Falls. It was great, I had goosebumps just singing that song with it’s powerful message. Whenever I try out a new song, I put it between, I’ve been lucky enough to have enough hits, so I slide it in there whether it goes over well or not, I can go onto the next hit. It went over great, it was a powerful message and as a band it felt good to play it. “Drunk On A Plane,” been playing that one live and people get a kick out of that. And it’s been fun to play because the last single, “Home” off of the Home, or “Tip It on Back” and then we put out “Bourbon In Kentucky” which was a little too edgy for country radio, but still a heavy song and then “I Hold On” which is a heavy song, it’s been kinda nice to have something like “Drunk On A Plane,” which is a little lighter. I wanted the heavy stuff on this record but you gotta give the people, their ears, a break, so “Drunk On A Plane” has been fun to play live. We’ve worked up “Sounds of Summer” but haven’t played anything else live off the record yet. As it comes out, we’ll keep playing with it. 

Matt: I know other artists say they can always tell when fans really like a new song because they’re singing along to it right away…

Dierks: Drunk On A Plane, they’re doing that. They’re singing right away with that one. It’s been cool to sing them singing along with “I Hold On” That’s been blowing my mind. To go from writing that song, I wrote it in Arizona after my Dad had passed away and I was looking at the sunset thinking about the trip we took from Phoenix to Nashville together when I was 19 years old and how we drove out there in this Chevy truck I’m still driving and wondering why I still have that truck, Why am I still holding onto this truck. That’s how that song started. To see them singing along to every verse, it’s been like, ‘whoa,’ it’s crazy.

Matt: So recently you got to do Crossroads with Ryan (Tedder) and OneRepublic. What was it like to get to do that with them?

Dierks: It was totally awesome. I’m a big OneRepublic fan and I’ve been listening to their record Native since it came out last March. Actually, I tried to record a song called “I Lived” which is on that record and I wanted to get Alison Krauss & Union Station to be a part of it and I asked my buddy Jon Randall to hit them up to see if they could be on the record and timing wise it just didn’t work out, it’s hard to get the whole band in there, so it never happened. 

So time went by and all of the sudden, I got a call asking if I wanted to be on Crossroads with OneRepublic, I said yes. It happened so easily as far as making it happen but there was one week of preparation where it was like trying to get my instrument rating as a pilot. I was just cramming. I know their songs so well but he sings up here and I sing somewhere down here at the barroom floor..

Matt: Like Bono…

Dierks: Yeah, sings like Bono and he’s a big fan of U2 as and I so we just hit it off. To find out he lived in Nashville for a while and he actually sang a Keith Urban demo and he knows Nashville really well and Country music and he’s brothers [actually cousins] of the Clark Family Experience and I took him to The Station Inn and it was just a real easy hang. Musically for me it was fun for me and my band to play on some of other people’s stuff and his band, they really enjoyed playing with my guys. To be with our steel player, Tim Stergens, he’s a killer steel player so to hear him and the fiddle playing on a song like “Counting Stars,” it was awesome.

Matt: I’ve always thought his music, especially now, with Country getting so rhythmic, it seems like he’d be a good fit…

Dierks: I think you’re going to see his name a lot more in Country, see him around. He’s got a good feel for it, he’s hot and a great songwriter, great singer and a great producer. So I can see him around a little bit.

Matt: What one one word would best describe Country music for you?

Dierks: It’s a simple word to use but I think Country music is “real.” Not that any other genre of music isn’t, whether it’s a happy song like “I Always Get Lucky With You” from George Jones and Haggard sang that song too, to the sad songs. It’s real sentiment, real lyrics with instruments like the steel guitar that helps heal or hurt that much more. Real music for real people going through real life. It has to go through change in the way it sounds but lyrics will always be king when it comes to Country music. They say during the great depression that the only sales that went up were Jimmie Rodgers records and alcohol. because people gravitated to it. Then on 9/11, Alan Jackson’s song “Where Where You (When The World Stopped Turning),” people gravitated to it. People gravitated towards Country. People always come into Country because they think it’s about their life, just about them. I don’t think any other genre of music can do that. It’s the most real format of music I think. 

Matt: And the current economic situation we’re seemingly getting out of now, it seemed Country music was able to not go down as far in the market as other genres did…

Dierks: Yeah, It’s about real life and at the same time it’s a big relief. So Country music has this way of being relatable to you as a listener even with the sad stuff and the live stuff has a way of letting people blowing off some steam. No one parties like Country fans at Country concerts, these festivals and these amphitheaters we do, nobody knows how to let off stem the way Country fans do. I think the genre itself lends itself to that. There’s a tension to Country music, always a good and a bad in the good songs are always playing against each other. Like “I Always Get Lucky With You,” that song. It’s a happy song but gosh, at the same time, it’s sad too. Country live shows have these happy, great moments but then these songs that also pull you back down too. It’s not just a fluffy fun show, there tends to be some strong medicine mixed in with plenty of alcohol and it makes for a great country show.

WATCH THE FULL CONVERSATION HERE: 

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