Tag: american girl

Dierks Bentley Shines with Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes on CMA Awards

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

A big night for country music ended up being a big night for bluegrass as well when Sierra Hull, Molly Tuttle, and Bronwyn Keith-Hynes joined country star Dierks Bentley on the CMA Awards stage for a show-stopping performance. The quartet, backed by Bentley’s band (including the evening’s winner of Musician of the Year, Charlie Worsham) played a rousing rendition of Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” a huge single for Bentley this year from the compilation album, Petty Country.

Bentley has released plenty of ‘grassy and string band tracks across his career, especially on his 2010 album Up on the Ridge, and he is close friends with many bluegrass musicians and legends. He used to haunt the World Famous Station Inn in Nashville well before his fame and recognition – and well after, too. He’s even gifted commemorative hit records to the bar (which still hang on the walls today) and he’s appeared at the divey listening room dozens of times. He’s also a friend of the McCoury family and has collaborated with Del and sons on multiple occasions. In addition, he’s brought Tuttle and her band Golden Highway out on the road as an opening act repeatedly, and he guested on Keith-Hynes’ now GRAMMY-nominated album, I Built a World.

Tuttle even shared an image to social media from a past MerleFest where Bentley can be seen braving the North Carolina rain to catch her band’s mainstage set in the very front row of the VIP section. It’s no surprise that he would tap Hull, Tuttle, and Keith-Hynes for the CMA Awards, even if the context feels a bit out-of-left-field for diehard bluegrassers.

“American Girl” was truly a highlight of the star-studded awards show, which despite more than a few perceived flubs and snubs highlighted plenty of Good Country, Americana, roots music – and yes, bluegrass! Here’s to plenty more primetime television moments in the future highlighting incredible bluegrass pickers such as these.

 

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, ‘American Girl’

Posted on by Editor

I didn’t grow up in a small town. I came of age on the streets of New York City, with Central Park as the nearest green patch, and in Boston’s Back Bay. But for whatever reason, I often fantasized about being that girl I always pictured lived in the land of a country song: It seemed romantic and foreign, to spend your nights out in some sun-kissed field, with soil under your nails, not city dirt. I wondered what it felt like to want to get away from where you were from and not be in a place — like New York City — where life was a constant battle just to be heard.

When I discovered Tom Petty, I found a different girl altogether. The person at the center of “American Girl” felt not like a fantasy, but someone I knew — someone who looked at dreams like a child at a giant ice cream cone, ready to tackle what’s ahead but nowhere near certain of where to start. I remember dancing to that song in my mother’s apartment that overlooked 65th Street with some friends who had come in to visit from my camp in Maine. We were from all over the country, towns big and small, but we all knew what it felt like to be “raised on promises,” as Petty sang. And we all loved a good melody that you weren’t afraid to dance to. This one didn’t just feel danceable; it felt cathartic. We were all American girls and boys with different hopes and ideas, and somehow Petty knew how to soothe our souls and fuel our fantasies without ever talking down to us. The song is “American Girl,” but it didn’t feel exclusive to gender. It was just … all of us.

I put this song on the day after Petty died, dancing around with my four-year-old son. He loved the melody, of course, but sang it as, “he was an American girl,” with a little young-kid lisp and a smile. The gender didn’t matter. He’s an “American Girl,” too.