Dierks Bentley Looking Forward to 'Great Summer' on Mountain High Tour

Dierks Bentley's Mountain High Tour kicks off on Friday night, May 18, in Columbia, Md., where he will be joined by Brothers Osborne and LANCO, and perhaps his three children.

"I just want this to be fun for me at the end of the day," shares Bentley. "I've got a lot of great stuff going on and I'm gonna spend the whole summer out there. I've got a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old and four-year-old. It's more than just; it's not about making money. It's about my life. I want to have a great summer, have a lot of fun, make a lot of great memories, be totally present from the second we get there on-site, thinking of the fans' experience when they first pull into a tailgate to when they leave and get home safely."

The Arizona native put a lot of thought into who would join him on the road, considering both their level of success, and whose company he enjoyed.

"Obviously it'd be nice if it was people that are having success in their career and could help sell tickets and all that," Bentley says. "You're always trying to find that – I say this a lot, someone said this to me early on, where one plus one equals three. You know, where a group of people come together and their sum is greater than their parts."

Bentley's Mountain High Tour kicks off only a couple weeks before the release of Bentley's The Mountain album, inspired by his time in Colorado.

"The whole experience was transformative for me, and it was going out on a limb with a little idea and following it to the end," Bentley tells Nashville's Tennessean. "It was a really magical experience. But I know we're in Nashville, Tennessee, and everybody is making records. It's hard for me to balance the specialness of this album with overthinking my overall experience in this town."

The Mountain became, at least in part, Bentley's way to compensate for some of the challenges of the previous year.

"I feel like last year was a really heavy year for country music and something about being in the mountains, that felt really freeing and really good," explains Bentley. "I feel like it was needed for me and hopefully this music is helpful for my fans in the same way, too."

A list of all of Bentley's shows on his Mountain High Tour can be found on his website.

Photo Credit: Instagram/dierksbentley