Dierks Bentley Switches Things Up

Dierks Bentley has built his reputation as an artist by mixing mainstream country with alternative sounds, playing clubs with Cross Canadian Ragweed and even playing a date on Chicago’s Lollapalooza stage.


But for his next album, Up On The Ridge, he’s scaling back on the volume for an album that’s built around acoustic and bluegrass sounds. One of country’s hardest-working artists, Dierks used the opportunity to scale back on his schedule, too.

“I love bluegrass. I love acoustic music, so I’ve always wanted to make a record like this,” he told Billboard. “Last year, I needed to slow the wheels down a little bit, take some time off to make this kind of record. The original thought was I’d make a bluegrass record and a country record. And once I started working on the bluegrass record, I quickly became aware that this was the only record I’d be making, because we started breaking down the barriers between genres.”

Dierks enlisted a bunch of fellow artists to appear on the album, including Jamey Johnson, Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Miranda Lambert, Kris Kristofferson, Chris Stapleton and Del McCoury. In fact, Dierks hit the road with Del on the Up On The Ridge Tour, though he finished it before the album even came out.

Up On The Ridge is officially in stores on Tuesday, June 8.