Dierks Bentley literally climbed a mountain to make his new music, and he hopes his fans are inspired to ascend their own when they listen to it.
The country superstar has announced today (Jan. 10) his forthcoming ninth studio album The Mountain was inspired by the Colorado mountain town of Telluride, where Dierks not only wrote the album but also recorded it.
“Telluride just makes you want to reach for your guitar. We all went out there and got completely off the grid,” he says of him and co-writers Natalie Hemby, Ross Copperman and others, “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.”
But it was ultimately the figurative mountain, “the struggle to put one foot in front of the other even when things are hard,” that became the overall theme of the project.
“Obviously, the songs were written and recorded in the mountains,” the singer adds. “But it’s the mountain that we’re all faced with every day…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 Mountain is set for release in early 2018.