Gravel & Gold

For his 10th studio album, Dierks Bentley turned inward. Dropping five years after its predecessor, 2018’s critically acclaimed *The Mountain*, *Gravel & Gold* braids together three strands prominent in Bentley’s catalog: the hook-heavy commercial country sound of both his early days and his biggest hits; traditional, bluegrass-inspired arrangements, as first heard on his underrated 2010 project *Up on the Ridge*; and a mature, narrative approach to songwriting often eschewed by other male artists in the format. The resulting sound may not hew closely to current trends, but it reflects the kind of music Bentley tells Apple Music he’s been longing to make. Accordingly, the record is Bentley’s most personal and introspective, with a focus on being present and feeling gratitude. “For some people, \[a road\] is gravel,” Bentley tells Apple Music. “For other people, those roads are where the best moments of life happen. I think that\'s the overall theme of the record: just being present in the moment you\'re in, having an attitude of gratitude and finding the positive in some of the rougher moments of life.” Highlights on the album include “Gold,” a title track of sorts that brings Bentley’s gravel-road metaphor to midtempo life, and the Ashley McBryde collaboration “Cowboy Boots,” which allows the two stars a chance to indulge in a good old-fashioned country duet. The album ends on a “High Note” as guitar virtuoso Billy Strings joins Bentley for a rousing romp about burning one down. Below, Bentley shares insight into several key tracks on *Gravel & Gold*. **“Sun Sets in Colorado”** “Part of what *Gravel & Gold* is about is coming back to Nashville and seeing the positive. I\'ve lived here for 30 years, and I\'ve been trying to get out of it for 30 years. I mean, it\'s a great town. I love Nashville. But I think there\'s a point after 10, 15 years where I kind of want to go back home to Arizona. That\'s where I\'m from. When the pandemic happened, I was already in Colorado, and we ended up just staying in a small town there for a year and our kids went to school there. It was kind of like catching up with a lot of stuff that I feel like I\'ve missed out on, which I know sounds crazy, because it\'s an amazing life. But I just missed out on doing random stuff like mountain biking and fly fishing and going on great hikes with my wife, and obviously skiing, pond hockey, and all this great stuff you can do in this mountain town.” **“Something Real”** “People might assume that I just love being onstage and I just love being in front of a crowd and I live for the applause. And it\'s really not the case at all. I mean, I really enjoy being alone more than anything else, just by myself somewhere in nature, either riding a bike or climbing something. But when I do step onstage, I assume that character, that role. And I do enjoy that a lot. Being present, it\'s not really a popular theme on country radio. We\'re always talking about going somewhere or memories of somewhere we grew up on a dirt road somewhere. So, some things you want to talk about necessarily aren\'t the most popular things to sing about.” **“Cowboy Boots” (feat. Ashley McBryde)** “There\'s not many people who could get away with singing that song. It\'s so good. And Ashley’s also a great performer. She was on tour with us all last year, just a great performer onstage, as far as talking to the crowd. And some people really have a great gift for that. My buddy Jack Ingram, one time we were playing Billy Bob\'s in Texas, and I\'ve had 10 or 12 No. 1s, and Jack had one No. 1. But he milked the intro to this song, it was so good. He told us a whole story about growing up, listening to Bob Kingsley Countdown and the 40. He was like, \'And there one day, all of a sudden, my song, it\'s at No. 40 in the Bob Kingsley Countdown.\' And he worked that song all the way down to the day that it was No. 1.” **“Gold”** “The song mentions, ‘It might be gravel, but it feels like gold.’ And I think it became a little bit of a life mantra—even though things aren\'t perfect, you can still find a way to look at it from a different perspective sometimes, and find the good in it. So yeah, gravel roads, we sing about them in country music a lot. And for some people, it\'s gravel. For other people, those roads are where the best moments of life happen. I think that\'s the overall theme of the record: just being present in the moment you\'re in, having an attitude of gratitude and finding the positive in some of the rougher moments of life.”

Dierks Bentley treats Gravel & Gold as something of a victory lap, celebrating the 20th anniversary of his 2003 debut album by demonstrating all the different kinds of country music he can do.