Dierks Bentley Quotes

Country music is always changing but the Opry is always there to serve as a lighthouse for what country music really is. The past, present and future is all encompassed by not only the physical structure of the building but also the radio show.

My guitar, it was new when I got it, but it has a hole like Willie’s where it’s just worn out from my pinky going back and forth over the wood over all these years. I got Willie Nelson to sign that spot on my guitar. I’m a huge fan of him.

I never want to lose the audience‘s attention or break up the party, but at the same time, it would be weird not to do some new music.

I got into rock music at thirteen, listening to Van Halen, learned how to play the electric guitar.

Some people associate red with love, but to me, red is for an earlier stage of a relationship. Black is much deeper, to me. It’s certainly the sexiest color.

I went into the Verizon store the other day, and the salesman was pretty excited. He was like, ‘Hey Dierks, what can I show you?’ I said, ‘The cheapest, lowest tech phone you have.’ I think he was disappointed. Everybody else was running out for the new iPhone 6, but I got a flip phone.

When you go to the Opry for a show or hear it on the radio, you get the whole circle of country music.

I’m a member of the George Jones fan club, and I’m a member of U2’s fan club.

Everyone talks about new love all the time, but there’s so much to draw from when you’ve been in a longer relationship. It makes me stick my chest out a little bit. It’s like, ‘I know what you’ve been through, but you don’t know what it’s like over here.’

If someone wants a picture, I’m so honored and so flattered, and I hope I have a reputation as someone who goes out of his way to do those kinds of things.

But as far as being an American and loving this country and getting a chance to travel across it every day and meeting people on the road and folks in the military, I love this country on so many different levels.

I put a lot of time into making sure my relationship with my family is well taken care of because I want to be as successful as a father as I am as an entertainer.

In my 30s, I became more open to music other than country or bluegrass.

Patty Griffin is iconic, and there’s no other word to really describe her. She is iconic for a lot of people – not only for me but for a lot of fans. Her voice is one of a kind, and she‘s such an important figure in the American music scene.

I discovered early on that I was more of a strummer than a picker.

As a songwriter, you might write every day and throughout the course of a year you might get four songs that are really special.

Hey, if someone is crushing on me, and it brings them out to the show, so be it!

If people sneak into my show, that’s a sign of a good show, you know? If people want to risk getting in trouble with the law to come see you play music, that’s a sign you’re doing something right.

I think the great country songs mixed with some of that bluegrass instrumentation – and surrounding all that with a little bit of a rock vibe and energy – is the kind of music I make.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I tell my wife when she’s listening to my songs that the slightest hint of whether she likes it or not puts the pressure on me.

You can’t write about stuff you don’t know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter.

I still feel like that 17-year-old-kid that fell in love with country music, but I also am allowed to write songs about being a man, too, which I think is the coolest place I’ve ever been in my life.

I hung out with Merle Haggard on his bus, which sort of freaks me out. It was him and his wife. We played with Merle in Oklahoma City. I’m from Arizona, and we talked about Arizona, and he remembered playing for two dollars a day down there at a bar.

Most of my read on America is through looking through the front windshield of a bus and hanging out with country music fans backstage.

Only in country music can you compare an old pickup truck and an old guitar to your wife and turn it into a love song… Thank God for country music.

I have so much respect for the genre of country music and for all the greats that have been a part of it. I’m a country singer, I’m a country fan, and I’m a student of country music.

My dog Jake ran up to Dolly Parton, and he put his nose up her skirt. We were like, ‘Oh my God, don’t do that.’ I didn’t know Dolly, and she said, ‘Watch out there little doggie, don’t start something you can’t finish.’

It’s Frederick Dierks Bentley, but my whole family goes by their middle name – my sister, my brother. So from day one, I’ve always been called Dierks.

Where I’m at in my relationship with my wife or my family and life in general, I feel like it all comes out in the music. Hopefully, it’s always there, but in an ambiguous and abstract way and not real straightforward.

I try to make my box as big as it can be because I never want to do the same thing twice.

That’s how I feel, oddly, when I walk on stage in front of 20,000 people, and it’s crazy, the madness: I feel the most relaxed and free, and all of my worries and troubles just are gone. Just I feel the most present in that moment.

Music is my first love, and I can’t step away from her. I love music, and I love playing and living the dream, but I also miss my family.

The people I always loved listening to had a little bit of dirt under their fingernails because they had done some living and had these stories to talk about.

Honestly, I sleep best wearing nothing. But with kids, I’ve learned to sleep with underwear very close by, if not wrapped around one of my feet, so I’m ready to go if something happens.

I listen to all types of music, but big rock records are the ones that, in the walk-up, make me wonder, ‘What’s this next set going to sound like?’

Meeting my wife changed everything; it really, in the long run, made me a much better artist, a much better songwriter, a much better maker of albums.

I’m a huge fan of Billy Idol. I spiked my hair every day like him in 7th and 8th grade.

I met Michael Jordan on a golf course! I don’t even know what to say. I’m still freaked out that I met him.

The transformation that happens when a young artist goes on the road – you put the acoustic guitar down and start to play the electric a little louder – it gets a little bit ragged.

I was 17, and a friend said, ‘Man, you’ve got to listen to this song,’ and he played ‘Man to Man.’ From there on, I was hooked on country. Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black. Every show that came through America West Arena, I was there.

I was like, ‘Man, bluegrass – that’s like Roy Clark playing banjo on ‘Hee Haw.’ I’m a huge ‘Hee Haw’ fan. But I didn’t know about bluegrass. It seemed like old people‘s music.

That’s what we get to do as songwriters, right? You get to explore stuff.

I like big shows, a lot of volume and a lot of energy. I love electric instruments. But I do love mixing those with bluegrass instruments and cranking those up, too, with a little bit of that rock energy.

I don’t think my music has changed to reflect getting married or having kids. But… if you want to continue to write your own songs, you’ve got to find deeper stuff to write about. You’ve got to go to different places.

If I’m not on stage, I’m a pilot. I like flying planes; I have a little plane back in Nashville.

Love always had my number. I could never patch a breakup together with whiskey and a one-night stand. I took them real hard.

I always say the best applause you can get is when you walk from backstage up to your microphone at a concert. It’s also nice to walk up to the mike at an awards show, and that applause is great, too, but the best is when your fans are cheering for you.

I really can’t tell you the feeling I feel, like, being on stage: it’s such a high; it’s like running a marathon. You just can’t get that feeling anywhere else.

People are gravitating towards Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders because they are doing their own thing. I think people are trying to cut out the middle man and just get to the source and get away from Washington politics.

I ask myself all the time, ‘Why keep doing this?’ If I wasn’t exploring or finding something to write about that was personal or meant something, there’d be no reason. If I was ever making a record just to make a record, or ever just like, ‘Just put something out there that someone will buy,’ I would quit.

I love singing fun songs; I’ve built a career on them.

I wrote that song ‘Black,’ and it was just this idea that I had been married for 10 years. Everyone talks about ‘happily ever after,’ but there’s so much more to it than that.

Being married is one thing, but having kids will completely change you. I still go out and hang with my buddies, but having two daughters will completely change your perspective on the world.

I love bluegrass music, I love acoustic music, and I try at the right times to push that a little bit.

I’ve had fans and friends in the business say, ‘Oh man, you’ve made it.’ I still don’t feel like I’ve made it. I still feel like I’m as good as my last show, as good as my last single.

The radio is not show fun, it’s show business. It’s money.

I don’t tour to make money: I do it because I love it. When I’m putting a tour together, I’m not sitting with number-crunchers, having them tell me I can’t do this or that.

And if I want to get involved in choosing sides, I usually pick hockey or football.

When I got to Nashville, people started asking me about how I got into country music. I’d tell them I came from a place where people wore cowboy hats for a real reason.

It’s hard to make music when you’re not excited about it. So trying new things and going for new things is something that I can enjoy doing.

I also was a huge ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ fan. I used to have T-shirts that said ‘Dierks of Hazzard’ custom-made.

I do see the world as being different for girls – especially now, having daughters.

I really love flying, but it’s really nice to jump on a plane, sit back, and let someone else do the heavy lifting, but flying is my main passion for sure.

Whether lyrically or musically, it reaches in there and grabs your soul. That’s the stuff I gravitate toward.

I never met Johnny Cash personally, but I feel like I did because I listened to so much of his music, and even though he’s gone, it’s still there: you can go pull a vinyl record out and hear his personal thoughts and his voice and feel connected to him.

A typical day for me on tour is a marathon – it’s like five days rolled into one.