Nashville, TN – Jan. 6, 2014 – Each of singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley‘s six previous albums has a unique sound reflecting his creative state of mind at that particular moment in time.  The story continues on Feb. 25th, 2014 when Bentley will release RISER, a country project grounded in lyrical substance with a new sonic power that spotlights Bentley’s distinctive gravelly voice, one of the most original and recognizable in the genre.

“I named the album RISER because the lyrics in that song perfectly articulate who I want to be, who I try to be,” Bentley explains. “There’s a lot of really intense material on this record, but there’s also a lighter side that is equally important in telling the story of the last two years of my life.  When I first started writing for this album, I was in a place of grief over the loss of my dad, but over the course of the next 18 months, my wife and I had our son Knox, and I ended in a place of real joy and gratefulness.  Both sides of that coin are what country music has always been about, and I hope that my fans can feel how much of myself I put into this project. It’s all out on the table, for sure.” 

To assemble the new album, Bentley enlisted producer Ross Copperman and executive producer Arturo Buenahora, Jr.  Together, the trio mixed the immediacy of old-school live recording techniques with the experimental nature of new technologies.  Buenahora matched Bentley with the right co-writers and songs. The result is RISER – an album with a heightened depth, an increased vulnerability and a greater sense of purpose in every word.

To watch a behind the scenes video of the making of RISER, click here: www.dierks.com/videos.html

RISER’s driving lead single “I Hold On,” a song that deftly pins spiritual questions to material symbols, is currently climbing the radio charts.  Written by Bentley and Brett James, the track is drawing attention from other artists, critics and fans for its authenticity and emotion with Music Row calling it a “song that shakes you,” and American Songwriter comparing the track to U2 with Bentley “rocking a little harder than most of contemporary country’s crooners.”

For more details about RISER as they are unveiled over the course of the coming weeks, visit www.dierks.com.

Dierks Bentley (Riser album) OC: …to fail. 1:18
“I think with all my records, I’m always searching for new, but I don’t want to lose all the work and time I’ve gone into developing a sound or a style or something like that. There are songs on the record that kind of correlate to certain themes I’ve had in the past. Certainly the lonesome stuff is on there. I’d say ‘Bourbon in Kentucky’ is an example of that, but just try to do that better or differently or find a new way of doing some of that lonesome sounding stuff. And then some stuff that’s made for consuming a cold beer. ‘Drunk on a Plane’ would be one of those; ‘Summer on Fire’ would definitely one of those songs, and ‘Pretty Girls Drinking Tall Boys’ is definitely one of those songs. I feel like that song is taking a new approach to getting to the same destination of we’re all having a  good time and partying and having fun, because the vibe of that song is so different than anything I’ve ever recorded, so there’s that element of it. And then there’s kind of a third layer to the album, which would be songs like ‘I Hold On,’ ‘Riser,’ ‘Here on Earth’ that really show where I’m at in my life as a dude, as a man, as a husband, father, you know, my dad passed away, so that’s all kind of tied into it. And [I’m] just kind of taking a look at the world around me and making observations on that, and that’s definitely a new theme. I feel like I kind of needed to have a new sound to go along with the new album, so working with a different producer, new engineer, new players, just going for stuff and not being afraid to fail.”