Dierks Bentley is sitting at No. 2 on the country charts with his latest hit, “5-1-5-0,” and you can thank Van Halen for the idea behind the song. “I was at a birthday party, a 13-year-old birthday party, for this friend of mine, and he had an electric guitar and I didn’t have an electric guitar…Went back to his room and used power cords and listened to Van Halen,” recalls Dierks. “I just immediately dropped everything, and he let me borrow one of his Hondo guitars and Cray amplifier and that’s all I really listened to for a while was that stuff. And they had an album called 51-50 and the album cover, or at least the t-shirts and stuff were all the guys in strait-jackets, and I kind of dug around and found out that was a police code for ‘crazy person.’” 

Dierks has been tapped to perform at the second annual Johnny Cash Music Festival in Jonesboro, Arkansas October 5th. Willie Nelson, Rosanne Cash and The Civil Wars are also scheduled to perform.

Dierks is set to take his “crazy train” to Davenport, Iowa on July 20th. 

AUDIO: Dierks Bentley talks about learning about the code “5-1-5-0,” and then writing his latest hit. 

Dierks (5-1-5-0) OC: …blown up. 1:09

“I was at a birthday party, a 13-year-old birthday party, for this friend of mine and he had an electric guitar and I didn’t have an electric guitar. Music had always been something I had kind of listened to and had never really participated in. Went back to his room and used power cords and listened to Van Halen. I just immediately dropped everything, and he let me borrow one of his Hondo guitars and Cray amplifier and that’s all I really listened to for a while was that stuff. And they had an album called 51-50 and the album cover, you know, or at least the t-shirts and stuff were all the guys in strait-jackets, and I kind of dug around and found out that was a police code for ‘crazy person.’ And one of my songs that I wrote by myself called ‘Country & Cold Cans.’ I had a line in there when I was in the studio called, I was like ‘Are y’all with me? Let’s get 51-50.’ And I told Jim [Beavers] about that, and he asked what 51-50 is and I told him. And the next day I saw him at the gym and he was saying ‘5-1-5-0, somebody call the po-po.’ So he came up with that line, and I thought it was just the stupidest thing I’d heard in my life but every time I’d see him, he’d sing that. He’d be like ‘Man, my kids can’t keep that out of their heads, it stuck. We got to write it.’ And so one day we were writing and we were stuck, and I was like ‘Alright, let’s pull out 5-1-5-0,’ and we wrote it, and it just kind of caught on. And Capitol picked it as a single so it’s doing pretty good so far; it’s kind of blown up.”