Dierks Bentley announced this month that his upcoming album will be titled The Mountain, and the country star is sharing some insight into how the record came about.
Last summer, Bentley played the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Colorado, crediting the town with suddenly inspiring him to pick up his guitar in the middle of his tour.
Videos by PopCulture.com
“Usually when I’m vacation, I don’t really reach for my guitar. I’m there to recharge in a way,” he explained.
“There’s just something here, which I can’t put into words, but I feel like this could be a good starting place in some way. What I’m looking for is here somehow. I know that’s weird, but making albums is a hard thing to really verbalize to the people you’re working with.”
So he came up with the idea for a writing retreat in Telluride, and songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Dick, Jon Randall, Jon Nite, Ashley Gorley and writer/producer Ross Copperman came together to work on the project, which will be released later this year.
“I just had this crazy idea to bring some songwriters out there and let them go for hikes and walk around town and just hang and see if they can sense that same intangible vibe that I was sensing, and they did,” Bentley shared. “We jumped right into it and it was really, really special. And everyone immediately starts talking about how can we start getting back out here again, because it’s one of those places you just like never want to leave.”
The singer was so inspired by the town, he returned a few months later to record the album.
“It’s one of those things where you just kind of follow your gut, just keep your heart open to ideas and see what you’re feeling, and once you get that little, tiny feeling, you’ve got to go for it, just like that gut instinct of I want to be a country singer,” he said. “It’s that little seed that if you believe in it, you’ve got to go for it, try it, so that’s what we did with this album, and it was magic.”
This week, Bentley announced the first single from The Mountain, titled “Woman, Amen,” which was inspired by his wife, Cassidy.
“The song’s about gratitude, and the song is just the cracks in your heart and love and how you really need to have those failures and those cracks to really let love get in, so it’s an inspiring song,” the singer explained. “I think it’s an album that has a lot of gratitude in the album throughout every song.”
Photo Credit: YouTube / Dierks Bentley
