Dierks Bentley Announces New Album, ‘The Mountain’

New music is on its way from Dierks Bentley! The country music hitmaker announces his ninth studio album, The Mountain, will be released early this year.

Much of the record, including the title track, was inspired by a writing retreat Bentley went on in Telluride, Colo., with several of his good friends, fellow songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Dick, Ross Copperman, Jon Randall, Jon Nite and Ashley Gorley.

“Telluride just makes you want to reach for your guitar,” Bentley shares . “We all went out there and got completely off the grid … out of our normal element and the grind that happens on Music Row and it was, from the very get-go, magic. We’d wake up every morning, grab a coffee, take the gondola up, watch the sun come up over the mountains, and by 8:30 we were writing. We just wrote non-stop.”

Bentley was so inspired by Telluride, he returned to the town two months later, this time to record songs for The Mountain in a small studio, along with musicians and his production team. Even though the Arizona native might have used Colorado as his muse, the mountain theme permeates throughout the entire project.

“Obviously, the songs were written and recorded in the mountains,” Bentley says. “But it’s the mountain that we’re all faced with every day, and the struggle to put one foot in front of the other even when things are hard, that we all have in common. Looking back now, I think we were all searching for hope and optimism when we were writing this music.”

The announcement about The Mountain comes one week after Bentley began leaving cryptic messages on social media, of him walking in the mountains. The record is available for pre-order on his website.

Photo Credit: Instagram/DierksBentley