Tag: catalog

Dierkscography

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

In 1994, a not yet 20-year-old Dierks Bentley threw all caution to the wind when he packed up his dorm room at the University of Vermont with hopes to never return. Bentley’s relocation would not only forever change the course of his life – it would go on to catalyze his tremendous impact on roots music at large.

After a trip with his father to Nashville made quite the impression, Bentley decided to complete his college degree at Vanderbilt, dedicating his studies to English (the major most proximal to songwriting). After graduating, Bentley continued to foster both his musical education and career; his day job entailed archiving old country performances at The Nashville Network (in fact, his diligent field work even got him banned temporarily from the Grand Ole Opry), while his evenings were filled with bar gigs and songwriting sessions. After five years of grunt work, 2003 saw Bentley release a self-titled album with Capitol Records. His first single, “What Was I Thinkin’,” made waves on the country charts. Since then, Bentley has been responsible for the release of 20 No. 1 country singles and 10 additional studio albums, the latest of which, Broken Branches, arrived in June.

While Bentley’s career has seen major commercial country success, his deep respect for expansion and immersion has made him a beloved fixture within bluegrass, as well.

Of his instrumental move to Nashville, Bentley has shared, “I moved to Nashville in 1994 – I was trying to find that seed of truth, that authenticity, that thing ‘country music’ that I had in my head. And I got here and it was definitely different than I expected it to be. It’s big business, a lot of money.

“Luckily, for me, I found a little bar called the Station Inn where bluegrass music existed – and I found what I was looking for. Just the sound of a five-piece bluegrass band blew my mind. And they’re not trying to take meetings all the time and meet producers, and get their foot in the door. It’s funny, I moved to Nashville looking for country music, but I found bluegrass.”

Whether it’s his proclivity for cross-genre conversation, songwriting prowess, or patinaed tenor delivery, Dierks has proved himself a mainstay favorite for country, Americana, and bluegrass fans – here at Good Country and BGS, and beyond. In honor of his recent album release and his huge Broken Branches tour with Zach Top and the Band Loula concluding this month, we present you with our Dierkscography, a non-comprehensive compilation of more than 15 songs meant to show off some of our favorite Dierks gems from across genres sampled from the many years of his remarkable career.

“Never You” featuring Miranda Lambert, Broken Branches (2025)

Dierks’s new album, Broken Branches, arrived fresh off the press with a slew of impressive collaborators, from Riley Green to Stephen Wilson Jr. Dierks fondly calls the record a “special” display of “making music in the studio with our buddies.” Country giant and longtime collaborator Miranda Lambert joins Bentley on this banjo-driven track, with the pair’s velvety duet vocals imbuing tenderness and warmth into one of the album’s only love songs.

“High Note” featuring Billy Strings, Gravel & Gold (2023)

This rip-roaring tune off of Bentley’s tenth studio album features a whole handful of bluegrass greats. Not only does Billy’s high tenor soar above Dierks gravelly tones during choruses, his famous flatpicking joins the likes of Sam Bush, Bryan Sutton, and Jerry Douglas for a superjam ending.

Of the collaboration, Dierks recalls, “Bryan Sutton first tipped me off to Billy Strings about seven years ago, mentioning that the future of bluegrass was in good hands. I was totally blown away the first time I saw him. I’ve cut songs like these since my first record, and I knew I wanted to have him on this one, I’m such a huge fan. It was a lot of fun to have him, Jerry, Sam, and Bryan all passing licks around – having them all on this record means a lot to me personally.”

“American Girl” (2024)

Who doesn’t love an Americana “American Girl”? Bentley delivers this country-fied Tom Petty classic alongside some BGS favorites, including Chris Eldridge on guitar and Noam Pikelny on banjo. Dierks reprised the hit single joined by Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, Sierra Hull, and Molly Tuttle on stage at the 2024 CMA Awards, bringing down the house.

“For As Long As I Can Remember,” Broken Branches (2025)

The country canon has seen its fair share of heartache, murder, trains, and drinking. Also on his latest release, “For As Long As I Can Remember” shirks these motifs in favor of something a little more wholesome – a warm and adoring ballad dedicated to the strength of enduring familial bond. An ode to his brother and father, Dierks reminds that respect and love can be country, too.

“Train Travelin’,” Dierks Bentley (2003)

With many of his nascent Nashville days edified by nights at the Station Inn and in the surrounding bluegrass scene, iconic bluegrass family the McCourys quickly became repeat collaborators for Dierks. Their features pepper many of his earlier albums, dating all the way back to his debut self-titled release in 2003. “Train Travelin’” would become the first of many, with other gems such as Good Man Like Me (Modern Day Drifter, 2005) and Last Call featuring Ronnie McCoury (Feel That Fire, 2009) dotting the road to Bentley’s eventual bluegrass-centric album, Up On The Ridge.

“Up On The Ridge,” Up On The Ridge (2010)

The titular track off of Bentley’s bluegrass-inspired album is thrumming with energy, both quickly-paced and haunting with its descending melodic hook. Up On The Ridge was Bentley’s fifth studio album, featuring a star-studded list of bluegrass collaborators including Alison Krauss, Punch Brothers, Chris Stapleton, Tim O’Brien, Sam Bush, and beyond. Del McCoury even joins forces with Bentley and Punch Brothers to deliver a deliciously grassified cover of U2’s “Pride (in the Name of Love)” further evidencing the album as a culmination of both tradition and innovation.

“Freeborn Man,” (Live, 2025)

Another of our favorite timeless covers, Dierks has been adorning his Broken Branches Tour this summer with his vigorous take on “Freeborn Man.” This rendition includes a fiery feature by Zach Top, nearly toppling the stage with talent.

“Hoedown for My Lowdown Rowdy Ways” featuring Dierks Bentley, Lowdown Hoedown (Jason Carter, 2022)

With Jason Carter fiddling his heart out on Dierks’ records since 2003, it’s of course a polite roots custom for Dierks to return the favor. Released as part of Carter’s second solo album, Lowdown Hoedown, “Hoedown for My Lowdown Rowdy Ways” has Dierks singing harmony and strumming away on the bluesy breakdown. Lowdown Hoedown also features a tender Jamie Hartford number, “Good Things Happen,” that Dierks Bentley covered on his 2005 album Modern Day Drifter, yet another frame of conversation between the two artists.

“Prodigal Son’s Prayer” featuring The Grascals, Long Trip Alone (2006)

This acoustic tune features the bluegrass sensibilities of the Grascals, a long-running group lauded for their instrumental prowess. The song loosely follows the parable of the prodigal son, ultimately centering themes of repair and reconciliation. The song also features the stomps and hums of incarcerated individuals from Charles Bass Correctional Complex, who had been in Bentley’s producer’s Bible studies course at the time.

“Free and Easy (Down The Road I Go),” Long Trip Alone (2006)

From the same release, this breezy banger remains a hallmark of Bentley’s career, even after nearly two decades since it dropped. The fifth of his singles to top Billboard’s Hot Country charts, “Free and Easy (Down The Road I Go)” lures in listeners with its fast-paced country twang and life-affirming sentiment.

“Beautiful World” featuring Patty Griffin, Feel That Fire (2009)

No stranger to incredible collaborators, Dierks Bentley asked iconic folk and country singer-songwriter Patty Griffin to accompany him on this track, gushing, “Her voice is one of a kind and she’s such an important figure in the American music scene… She’s just amazing. And so I asked her.”

The result is a tender homage to the beauties of the world, largely inspired by his wife, who was pregnant with their daughter at the time of the song’s conception. “You hear people sometimes say, ‘Man, I can’t imagine bringing a child into this world. It’s so bad.’ That’s just such a negative outlook,” Dierks says. “You cannot live your life with that viewpoint of the world. Yes, there are a lot of things that are wrong, but it is a beautiful world, and you need to find the positive in it.”

“Heart of a Lonely Girl,” Home (2012)

From Bentley’s sixth studio album, Home, comes this spirited, emotionally deep number. The narrative song was penned by the infinitely talented Charlie Worsham, who would go on to join Bentley’s touring band a decade later – and you can currently see him on stage each night during the Broken Branches tour.

“Trip Around the Sun,” featuring Dierks Bentley, I Built a World (Bronwyn Keith-Hynes, 2024)

Fiddler Bronwyn Keith-Hynes first connected with Bentley through Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, the popular bluegrass group that opened for him several times on tour. She’s also married to Jason Carter, so Dierks wasn’t just a professional collaborator, but a member of her personal Nashville network, as well. It’s no surprise, then, that she’d end up on stage with him at the CMA Awards and, in the same year, he would guest on her acclaimed and GRAMMY Award-nominated album, I Built a World.

“Mardi Gras” featuring Trombone Shorty, Black (2016)

Soaked in Louisiana charm, this tune was inspired by Dierk’s 2015 galavant on a Mardi Gras parade float. Featuring the indelible hornsmanship of Trombone Shorty, the track grooves along with bluesy undertones. “Getting Trombone Shorty to do his thing on it, what a great guy. I love working with him. He is so laid-back and so good at what he does,” Bentley boasts of his collaborator.

“Travelin’ Light” featuring Brandi Carlile, The Mountain (2018)

Featuring the powerhouse vocals of Americana giant Brandi Carlile, this tune appears on Bentley’s 2018 album, The Mountain. The collaboration between the two icons came to fruition after Bentley saw Brandi perform at Telluride Bluegrass Festival, inspiring him to approach her about dueting on the track.

“Sun Sets in Colorado,” Gravel & Gold (2023)

Written reflecting his pandemic move to Colorado (though he has since returned to Nashville), Bentley released this tune on Gravel & Gold. The song shouts out New Grass Revival and Telluride in a verse: “Sing an old new grass song with me/ Telluride along with me,” while also featuring New Grass Revival founding member Sam Bush on mandolin. Bryan Sutton also joins in on the studio recording, yet another sparkling collab with bluegrass greats.

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Photo Credit: Robby Klein

Tyler Childers: The Backstory (In Songs)

Posted on by Justin Hiltner

Tyler Childers has taken an unlikely path to the top via live performance, not radio singles. He’s become an improbable arena-level star by ignoring typical Nashville bromides – equal parts Patterson Hood’s working-class Southern blues, Chris Stapleton’s bluegrass bonafides, and Woody Guthrie’s progressive populism. After all, you’re not gonna call your touring band The Food Stamps unless you lean left, at least a little.

Like Billy Strings, Childers has become enough of a sensation for his appeal to extend beyond the Americana-adjacent world, too. Last year, he even turned up onstage for a live cameo with pop star Olivia Rodrigo in his Kentucky stomping grounds to do his song “All Your’n.” It went over like a house on fire.

Since country radio is finally, belatedly catching on with “Nose On The Grindstone,” lead single to Childers’ fine new Rick Rubin-produced LP Snipe Hunter, let’s take a look back to where he came from.

How’d this happen, anyway? Like this.

“Hard Times,” Bottles and Bibles (2011)

Going back to the beginning, “Hard Times” was the song that opened Childers’ full-length debut Bottles and Bibles. It’s an actual hillbilly elegy that definitely sets a tone, with finely detailed lyrics that unfold like a short story. Simultaneously stoic and emotional, Childers’ quavering vocal about a holdup gone wrong makes him sound like a protagonist who somehow regrets both everything and nothing at all: “And if the Lord wants to take me, I’m here for the taking/ ‘Cause Hell’s probably better than tryin’ to get by.”

“Long Violent History,” Long Violent History (2020)

Bluegrass roots and of-the-moment progressive activism makes for an unusual combination, but here we are. “Long Violent History” is the title track to a bluegrass album and it’s the only original and non-instrumental track on the record. Evoking “Faded Love” at the outset and “My Old Kentucky Home” on the outro, it’s a rural Southern score for the Black Lives Matter protests that swept America in 2020.

“It’s the worst that it’s been since the last time it happened,” Childers sighs at the outset, resigned to the inevitability of violence happening again. For good measure, Childers made a supplemental spoken-word video (below) explaining the necessity of BLM: “If we didn’t need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.”

“Jersey Giant” – Elle King (2022)

If Childers ever records his own version of “Jersey Giant,” he’ll have to hustle to top Elle King’s cover. As with the similarly themed “Me and Bobby McGee” (written by Kris Kristofferson, but owned for the ages by Janis Joplin), King just completely inhabits the song’s bittersweet, longing anguish. “I left town when we were over… Just didn’t feel the same” – the way she pauses a beat between lines is just chef’s-kiss perfection. There are numerous cover versions of “Jersey Giant” out there, but this is the one that’s going to linger.

“Luke 2:8-10,” Rustin’ In The Rain (2023)

Remember the big pivot-point moment of truth in the classic holiday cartoon A Charlie Brown Christmas – the “Lights, please” speech that his friend Linus makes? Childers must have grown up with that, too. Linus spoke these Bible verses, Luke 2:8-10, which Childers transposes to the key of honky-tonk in this song with his drawl in full effect. You can almost imagine the “Peanuts” dancers doing a two-step to it.

“Purgatory,” Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? (2022)

Childers’ ambitiously wide-ranging 2022 album Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? featured eight gospel songs, each done in three different versions dubbed Hallelujah, Jubilee, and Joyful Noise. The latter category tricked each tune up with samples and remixes, which might be the closest Childers has ever come to hip-hop electronica (at least so far!). In this guise, the title track from his 2017 project Purgatory cuts the sort of groove you’d expect to hear in New Orleans.

“The Heart You’ve Been Tending,” Harlan Road – NewTown (2016)

What does it mean that so many of the best covers of Childers’ songs are by women? Who’s to say, but here’s another great one, from the Kentucky band NewTown’s Harlan Road album. “The Heart You’ve Been Tending” is in waltz time, with fiddler/singer Kati Penn’s vocal shining bright as a lighthouse cutting through a foggy mountain breakdown.

“In Your Love,” Rustin’ in the Rain (2023)

Another multimedia project of sorts, this song from Childers’ Rustin’ in the Rain started out as a relatively conventional devotional love song. Then he enlisted collaborators including his fellow Kentuckian, author Silas House, to make a video that casts “In Your Love” as a sort of country music version of Brokeback Mountain set in coal-mining country. As beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

“Matthew,” Country Squire (2019)

Childers has always been wildly eclectic and this song from his Country Squire LP is a prime example. “Matthew” is yet another working-class waltz, with enough bluegrass savvy to drop bluegrass legend Clarence White’s name in the lyrics – plus an actual sitar as oddball sound-effect mood-setter at the beginning of the song. Somehow it makes perfect sense.

“Bottles and Bibles (Live),” Live on Red Barn Radio I & II (2018)

With or without a band, Childers has always been a riveting performer. This live version of the title track to his 2011 studio debut closed out 2018’s Live on Red Barn Radio I & II and it’s just voice and guitar. All the better to focus on the tale of a preacher as wayfaring stranger pondering the difficulties of keeping to the straight and narrow: “But they ain’t had to walk with the weight that you’ve hauled/ They don’t know you at all, but they think that they do.”

“Coal,” Bottles and Bibles (2011)

What might Bruce Springsteen have been like if he’d grown up in a Kentucky coal-mining family? You can imagine him turning out like the narrator of this song, which sounds way too timeless to have originated in this century. It’s pure working-class desperation: “We coulda made something of ourselves out there, if we’d listened to the folks/ That coal is gonna bury you.”

“Oneida,” Snipe Hunter (2025)

To be a Childers fan is to accept that he does have some idiosyncratic boundaries. There are songs from his live shows he’s never recorded, like the previously mentioned “Jersey Giant”; or popular recorded songs he has sworn off playing live, including the now-widely-seen-as-problematic “Feathered Indians.” For the better part of a decade, one of his unrecorded orphans was “Oneida,” a longtime fan favorite that’s like a Harold and Maude for the country set. Lo and behold, a recorded version finally surfaced as one of the best songs on Snipe Hunter. Dreams do come true.

Find more of our Artist of the Month coverage of Tyler Childers – including our Essentials Playlist – here.

Photo Credit: Sam Waxman

Epiphanies: A Joni Mitchell Deep Dive

Posted on by Editor

Joni Mitchell’s 75th birthday provides a great excuse (as if one is needed) for an examination of her catalog. A recent listen to her albums, in order, from the 1968 debut Song to a Seagull through 1979’s Mingus, was entrancing and revelatory.

Through these albums, motifs emerge: mechanical and technology metaphors (“Electricity,” “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” “Just Like This Train”), the allure/elusiveness of a free spirit (“Carey,” “Coyote”), the road as freedom and/or the illusion of freedom (“Refuge of the Road”), seemingly countless cafe and bar tableaus, each one vividly fresh (“Barangrill,” “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” “The Jungle Line”). And musically there’s the vertiginous vocal constructions, the ascending modal chordal guitar climbs, the preternatural classicalism of her piano and, of course, the mystique-filled harmonics of her idiosyncratic guitar tunings.

But the real motif throughout is that of the restless spirit: Just as you think you’ve got her pinned down, she’s going to bolt. This is, after all, the woman who, in her most radio-friendly pop song, “Help Me,” followed the domesticated joy of “we love our loving” with the wildcat escape clause, “not like we love our freedom.”

It’s also a catalog full of epiphanies, even for those intimately familiar with it, if approached with open ears. With each album there seemed to be one song that had gotten by in the past without making a full impression, but now grabbed the ears and mind in full, startling engagement, often standing out as different from anything else on its album, in some cases different from anything else Mitchell had offered. It’s Joni as Rorschach test, revealing as much of the listener by the response as it reveals of Mitchell the artist.

Try it yourself. See what grabs you. With commentary below the playlist, here are the songs that did that now for this writer.

“I Had a King” (from Song to a Seagull, 1968)

Never mind the “next Dylan” tag applied to every singer-songwriter of that time. The opening song of Mitchell’s debut album, produced by David Crosby, might make one wonder if she could have been the next Stephen Sondheim. The sophistication of the song is considerable, both the music and the words, a yearning soliloquy that could have been more at home on a Broadway stage than in a Village coffee house.

“The Fiddle and the Drum” (from Clouds, 1969)

The astonishing overdubbed harmonies. The indelibly idiosyncratic guitar tunings. The spritely dulcimer. The vivid close-up imagery and emotions. The sonata-like piano. None of those Mitchell signatures are on this song. Rather, this is a little coda for Joni Anderson, Canadian folkie. It’s just a solo, unaccompanied voice in an anti-war plaint, a song that she wrote but could easily pass for an English lament from centuries past. No wonder that among the several cover versions of it, one was by English singer June Tabor. As atypical a Mitchell song as it is, it’s resonated through the years with various versions, not least in its use as the title tune for a 2007 ballet conceived by Mitchell with Jean Grand-Maître of the Alberta Ballet Company. “This is a song I wrote for America, as a Canadian living in this country,” she said, introducing it on a 1969 Dick Cavett Show performance.

“Rainy Night House” (from Ladies of the Canyon, 1970)

“She went to Florida and left you with your father’s gun alone…” The tale is startling in its starkness, the melody deceptive in its plainness (relatively), but it’s the brief bits of “upstairs choir” harmonies illustrative in the middle and elegiac at the end that bring the light to these shadows.

“The Last Time I Saw Richard” (from Blue, 1971)

It’s a full minute into this song before Mitchell sings, as if she needed the time to consider whether to tell the story of dreams held and lost or just to keep it to herself while sitting and playing the piano. “All romantics meet the same fate someday” — as Joni a line as there is.

“Judgment of the Moon and Stars (Ludwig’s Tune)” (from For the Roses, 1972)

The middle instrumental section comes almost out of nowhere, Mitchell’s piano turning angular and fragile before being joined by waves of voices, flutes and strings, and then goes away just as suddenly, as if a tease for a concerto she was holding inside her. The title parenthetically evokes Beethoven, but the music suggests some of the 20th century’s great composers.

“Car on a Hill” (from Court and Spark, 1974)

Anticipation as palpable as it comes, first in the pure joy of it, but then full of anxious worry. You can picture Mitchell peeking out the window, checking her watch, trying to check her rising fears, waiting…. waiting… waiting….

“The Jungle Line” (from The Hissing of Summer Lawns, 1975)

Not only is there nothing else like this in Mitchell’s catalog, there is nothing else like this anywhere. Burundi drummers roil, punctuated by blatting synth lines, as Mitchell paints an account of another cafe scene with renewed vividness.

“Song for Sharon” (from Hejira, 1976)

On paper, musically at least, “Song for Sharon” would seem to be the plainest of the songs among the electric-guitar texture explorations of Hejira (not a piano or acoustic guitar to be found here), nearly nine minutes long. But patience pays off as line after line startles, shocks, an account of wanderlust, of suicide, of searching, of revealing resignation as she writes to a childhood friend: “Well, there’s a wide wide world of noble causes / And lovely landscapes to discover / But all I really want right now / Is, find another lover.” And keeping her company, a doo-wop chorus of Saskatchewan ghosts, though it’s unclear whether she’s carrying them with her or running from them.

“The Tenth World” and perhaps “Dreamland,” as the two are something of a piece (from Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, 1977)

The shifting landscapes of the 16-minute “Paprika Plain” is this album’s masterpiece, perhaps, but “The Tenth World,” six minutes of dense and intense Afro-Latin percussion laced with barely perceptible chants and chatter, may be the most unbridled expression in all of Mitchell’s work, the sound of total, joyful abandon. And it leads right into “Dreamland,” also just percussion and voice (in a very different way than “The Jungle Line”), which carries that joy from fantasy to reality. Bonus on the latter: Chaka Khan’s soul-moan counterpoints.

“The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey” (from Mingus, 1979)

A low detuned guitar string buzzes and roar while wolves — real wolves — howl as Mitchell casts a dark, wary, jaundiced eye on a two-legged lupine predatorily prowling the Hollywood Hills. It’s an odd side-trip on this album, nothing really directly to do with the honoree. Maybe that says something about the wolf that lives in Joni Mitchell.

Photo credit: Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for The Music Center — (L-R) Jorn Weisbrodt, Charles Valentino, Joni Mitchell, Sauchuen, and James Taylor celebrate onstage at Joni 75: A Birthday Celebration Live At The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on November 7, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.