Universal Universal Music Group Nashville Pressroom

DIERKS BENTLEY TO RELEASE SIXTH STUDIO ALBUM, HOME, ON FEB. 7th, 2012

‘Home’town Album Release Show Set For Feb. 2nd at the Ryman Auditorium

Nashville, TN – Nov. 14, 2011 – Award winning singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley announced today that his sixth Capitol Nashville studio album HOME will be released on Feb. 7, 2012. The upcoming album’s anthemic title single was released to iTunes last week and immediately shot up the Top 10.  It follows the disc’s “Am I The Only One,” which recently marked Bentley’s eighth career No. one hit.  Bentley will play a special album release show in Nashville at the historic Ryman Auditorium on Feb. 2.  Fans can purchase tickets beginning this Fri., Nov. 18 at 10:00A CT at the Ryman box office, on ryman.com and through all Ticketmaster locations.
  
“My home is in Nashville with my family, my home is on the road with our fans and my home is definitely in country music,” said Bentley. “This album is more than a year’s worth of writing, recording and testing out material on the road in front of our hard core fans. The end result is an album that runs through all the types of country songs and sounds I enjoy singing and playing. I can’t wait to share it with the fans!”
 
Bentley will perform “Home” on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this Thurs., Nov. 17 at 11:35P CT/12:35P ET. The inspiring track continues to garner the attention of critics across the country, most recently described by AOL as “sure to resonate with Americans facing challenges today.”
  
“The lyrics paint a picturesque portrait of our country’s beauty and strength, while the melody wraps around the listener like an autumn sunset…Bentley has crafted a song that acknowledges the nation’s struggles, yet resonates with hopeful optimism about the future.”    Billboard

Bentley will wrap the first leg of his headlining COUNTRY & COLD CANS Tour this weekend with shows in Nampa, ID (11/16), Bozeman, MT (11/17), Rapid City, SD (11/18) and Denver, CO (11/19). The tour will pick up in Feb. 2012 with dates already scheduled in Canada and Australia. For more information and a full list of tour dates, visit www.dierks.com. 

Lady Antebellum’s Own the Night has been certified platinum by the R.I.A.A. for sales of one-million copies…just four weeks after its release. The reigning CMA Vocal Group of the Year has now sold a total of seven-million albums worldwide. “It’s been a dizzying and exciting few months launching this album, but it’s also really energizing to see how the fans are reacting to some of the songs on our new record,” says Dave Haywood.  “The reaction both in the States and overseas has been a huge confidence booster.” Own the Night debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top 200 album chart in both the States and Canada in September, becoming the biggest first week debut by a country artist this year. “The theme that I’ve kind of seen throughout it is a lot of these songs are about very specific moments in time,” Lady A’s Hillary Scott says about the group’s latest album.

AUDIO: Lady Antebellum’s Hillary Scott discusses how Own The Night documents specific moments in life that shape the person you become.

Lady A (theme of OTN) OC: …who you are, you know? :20

HS: “The theme that I’ve kind of seen throughout it is a lot of these songs are about very specific moments in time. It’s not just an overall emotion or an overall feeling that’s portrayed in a song. It’s just very specific to moments that throughout your life end up defining who you are.”

In this week’s DBTV Episode 42, Dierks Bentley shares behind-the-scenes footage from his Wounded Warrior Project parties and reflects on the special meaning of “Home” in honor of Veterans Day.

Lady Antebellum arrive in stores with Golden Deluxe on Monday (November 11^th). Featuring all of the songs from Golden, the extended version features their new hit, “Compass,” plus two new songs – “And the Radio Played” and “Life As We Know It” – as well as three new versions of their previous hits, “Need You Now,” “Just a Kiss” and “I Run to You.”

“We’ve been gone a little while over the summer, why not come back with something kind of fresh and new and repackage the record,” says Charles Kelley. “I think we just live in a day and an age now where the fans want it now and we do too.”

“We’re always in forward motion; that’s the way we work, so when we find songs that we want you hear, we put ‘em out,” says Hillary Scott.

Golden Deluxe Bonus Tracks:
“Compass”
“And The Radio Played”
“Life As We Know It”
“Need You Now” (an iTunes Live Session Performance)
“Just A Kiss” (backstage acoustic session)
“I Run To You” (an iTunes Live Session Performance)

Lady A (Golden Deluxe repackaged) OC: …tour with. :21
CHARLES: “We’ve been gone a little while over the summer, why not come back with something kind of fresh and new and repackage the record? I think we just live in a day and an age now where the fans want it now and we do too. We’re excited about new music constantly, and we thought it would be great timing too with the tour starting and having such an energetic, kind of anthemic type of song too to kick off the tour with.”

Lady A (forward motion) OC: …put ‘em out. :07
“You know, we’re always in forward motion; that’s the way we work, so when we find songs that we want you hear, we put ‘em out.”

Lady Antebellum kick off their Own the Night 2011 Tour in Knoxville, Tennessee on Friday night (November 11th). The 21-city trek features Charles’ brother Josh Kelley, as well as a combination of Eden’s Edge and Randy Montana in the opening slot. “We’ve been looking forward to launching this tour for years and putting together our first arena headlining tour. We’ve been opening up and sitting side stage watching Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, all these guys, tour, so this is our first chance,” says Dave. “So, this is kind of our first shot at letting all these dreams culminate and come together, and couldn’t think of a better way to kick it off than ending this year after the CMAs doing it.”

The band, who picked up their third CMA Vocal Group of the Year award this week, is poised to hit the top of the country charts with their latest hit single, “We Owned the Night.”

AUDIO: Lady Antebellum’s Dave Haywood talks about launching the group’s arena tour, Own the Night 2011.

Lady A (launching arena tour) OC: …doing it. :30

“Well, we’ve been looking forward to launching this tour for years and putting together our first arena headlining tour. We’ve been opening up and sitting side stage watching Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, all these guys, tour, so this is our first chance. We’ve actually been building, working with a designer to build the stage, and video screens and stairs and elevator lifts and just fun stuff that we’ve always dreamt of doing. So, this is kind of our first shot at letting all these dreams culminate and come together, and couldn’t think of a better way to kick it off than ending this year after the CMAs doing it.”

AUDIO: Lady A’s Dave Haywood and Hillary Scott talk about the group’s ever-evolving live show.

Lady A (show evolves) OC: …a vacation. :55

DH “Our show has kind of been evolving, hopefully naturally. I don’t want to say we don’t enjoy and love playing intimate places, that’s the way we write anyway, just sitting around acoustic. I think everybody dreams of playing there songs in a big arena where thousands of people are there. We at least write with that in mind, whether or not it’s always going to happen in that way. I feel like we try to make our show bigger for some of these fairs and festivals, because some of these things are just giant fields literally, of fifteen or twenty thousand people and  there are obviously twenty other artists on the bill that day. But we will try to build it and try to sculpt an entire body of work that kind of goes through a process. I think for us, we have our stuff that we play, and I don’t know if we change it necessarily. (HS) “We took a lot of notes from playing with Tim McGraw and Kenny Chesney.  Being on tour with them, especially Chesney, he just sends people on a vacation.” 

Go behind the scenes of Luke Bryan‘s new video for “I Don’t Want This Night To End” and get insight from the major players in the piece. Luke takes on the role of a “country singer” who shows interest in a woman.

Ellen DeGeneres sent Luke Bryan to chat with all of the country stars on the red carpet before the Country Music Awards in Nashville on Wednesday night. Watch him catch up with Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Rascal Flatts, Darius Rucker and Reba McEntire right before the big event.

Lady A wants to thank YOU as they celebrate their win of Vocal Group of the Year at the 2011 CMA Awards! And they can’t wait to see you out on the road for their Own The Night Tour, kicking off Friday (November 11th).

Dierks Bentley will be celebrating Veterans Day in San Jose, California today, by holding a party prior to his show to raise awareness for the Wounded Warrior Project. Hepartnered with the organization and their Believe in Heroes initiative at selected stops on his Country & Cold Cans Tour, and has held these types of parties all over the country. Dierks feels we should honor Veterans every day,  not just one or two. ” I think what’s great about Veterans Day and the Wounded Warriors Project, which is something we’re working very closely with, is it’s not just about their ‘hurrah hurrah, we support  you guys.’ It’s about the long term hurrah,” Dierks says. It’s about being here for them when they come back and helping them come back…So, I think Veterans Day is something that happens once a year, but I think in the country community, it really is something that we are and need to be thinking about 365 days a year because those folks need us.”

Dierks is quickly climbing the country charts with his anthemic hit, “Home,” which is from his forthcoming album due in February.

Dierks Bentley (soldiers sacrifice) OC: …folks need us. 1:37

“The one thing I think country music fans and the singers, we all really can appreciate and think a lot about is the soldiers and their families. On the most basic level, I think, for me on the road, I just think about being gone two, three days, maybe a couple of week at a time, that seems like a long time when you have kids and families, but these soldiers, they’re gone months, years at a time. They’re doing 12 to 15 to 18-month deployments, three, four deployments in, they have family back home — that in itself is such a huge sacrifice, that’s just the beginning of it, that’s just scratching the surface with what these guys are doing every day — preparing for battle, actually being in battle, being wounded in battle, sometimes dying in battle, so this country, obviously, we would not exist without those courageous men and women and our future depends on them. And I think what’s great about Veterans Day and the Wounded Warriors Project, which is something we’re working very closely with, is it’s not just about their ‘hurrah hurrah, we support  you guys.’ It’s about the long term hurrah. It’s about being here for them when they come back and helping them come back…So, I think Veterans Day is something that happens once a year, but I think in the country community, it really is something that we are and need to be thinking about 365 days a year because those folks need us.”

Luke Bryan’s “I Don’t Want This Night to End” has topped the country iTunes chart this week. The track from his latest album, tailgates & tanlines, sold 50,000 digital downloads over the past week. The Georgia native takes a few minutes during a very busy CMA week to thank his fans and radio for making the single No. 1 download.