“Oh man, I’m so far beyond where I wanted to be,” says the happily married father of three young children.
“I’m in the best year of my life, career-wise, and I’ve accomplished more than I ever dreamed of accomplishing in country music.”
In the last 10 years, the Phoenix-born singer-songwriter-guitarist has racked up a dozen No. 1 singles, been nominated for a slew of awards and managed to take home a few, including this year’s video of the year honor from the Country Music Association for his hit song, “Drunk on a Plane”.
The booze-fuelled tale of a freshly dumped man who goes on the honeymoon by himself was the third single from Bentley’s latest album, Riser, a project that started out on a very different track.
In the beginning, the album chronicled some heavy life experiences, including the death of Bentley’s father and the birth of his third child, a son. But when he ran it by some Nashville bigwigs at a pre-release listening party, he had an epiphany.
“I was sitting there listening to it with them,” Bentley says, “and I started realizing this record is a little bit depressing. I don’t want to listen to this over and over again.”
“At the time, I had moved on from the loss of my dad, was on the road with Miranda Lambert and having the best summer of my life. It was so much fun and there was so much light in my life, and I was listening to the record going, ‘Man, this is not really who I am now. It’s who I was about six months ago.’”
So he went back to the studio and rounded up a handful of party songs, including “Drunk on a Plane”, “Back Porch” and “Sounds of Summer”, to find a mix that better represented his gregarious nature.
“A big part of my personality comes out on stage, and that’s to have fun, be the ringleader of the party,” he says. “I think we got a good balance.”
Reflecting on the success of Riser, Bentley feels it’s the third stage of a career reboot that started in 2009, when he veered away from mainstream country.
“I’d had it with country music. I was frustrated with myself, the music I was making. I couldn’t find the forward button so I just kinda walked away,” he says.
“Somebody asked me, ‘What kind of record would you make if you could make any kind of record you wanted to?’ I wanted to make a more acoustic-based bluegrass album. I wanted to put something out there that would kick a little bit of ass, that was definitely bluegrass.”
The album he made was 2010’s Up on the Ridge, and although his record company didn’t count it as a commercial release, despite the inclusion of a U2 cover, Bentley had a great time exploring one of his favorite styles of music.
“It was such a fun record to make, such a joy and I really felt inspired. It gave me direction going forward with my next project, Home, and now I feel like Riser is the completion of the process that started with exiting stage right back in 2009. It’s been five years of trying to get to a new spot.”
“When you’re younger, you think it’s two different worlds,” Bentley observes. “But when you get older, it’s just one world — it’s called life. Music, career and family is all intertwined. When you get to be 40 and look back and realize you got three kids and a wife, it’s like pinching lightning in a bottle twice: a successful career and a successful marriage. I want to be as successful at that as I have been in my musical career.”
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