Dierks Bentley (CD - 2003)

Personnel: Dierks Bentley (vocals); Bryan Sutton (acoustic guitar, banjo); Steven Sheehan (acoustic guitar); J.T. Corenflos (electric guitar); Mike Johnson, Rusty Danmyer (steel guitar); Jimmy Carter (bass); Steve Brewster (drums); Russell Terrell, Wes Hightower, Iona Heins (backgrround vocals); The Del McCoury Band.

Recorded at Station West and Ocean Way Studios, Nashville, Tennessee.

This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.

Personnel: Bryan Sutton (acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin); Steven Sheehan (acoustic guitar); James Mitchell , J.T. Corenflos (electric guitar); Mike Johnson (steel guitar, dobro); Russ Pahl (steel guitar, banjo); Rusty Danmyer (steel guitar); Randy Kohrs (dobro); Rob McCoury (banjo); Glen Duncan, Jason Carter , Shad Cobb (fiddle); Steve Brewster (drums); Del McCoury, Lona Heid, Ronnie McCoury, Terry Eldredge, Wes Hightower, Russell Terrell (background vocals).

Recording information: Ocean Way, Nashville, TN; Station West.

Photographer: Juan Pont Lezica.

There is apparently no limit to the number of Opry-friendly, down-home, good-looking crooners that Nashville can wrap in jeans and put forth in any given year. Like most of these, Dierks Bentley seems amiable enough, and, on this debut album, he makes each required stop on the stardom trail: rascally, boot-scoot humor ("Bartenders, Etc."), gauzy nostalgia ("My Last Name"), honky tonk swagger ("I Bought the Shoes"), boozy self-pity ("Whiskey Tears"), goofy outtake endings ("How Am I Doin'"), and, in "Distant Shore," an actually fairly complex purée of romantic revenge, poetic intoxication, and Biblical allusion. Aside from strident patriotism, which somehow slipped through the net, that pretty much covers all the bases. Bentley pulls it all off with a rawboned delivery that skims the surface of the genre without leaving a ripple of individualism in its wake. The last number, "Train Traveling," provides an unexpected jolt by pairing Bentley with the Del McCoury Band, whose intensity is evident from the artful accelerando that kicks off the song. But on every other track, Bentley is backed by competent and undistinguished players who know how to breeze through songs that value the deft lick and clever wordplay more than suggestions of depth or insight. This young singer clearly deserves whatever success he achieves for making all the right moves and offending no one aside from the odd disgruntled critic. ~ Robert L. Doerschuk

Though the front cover of country singer/songwriter Dierks Bentley's debut album finds him posing with a floppy-eared dog and looking like a prime-time TV star, he's considerably hipper than that image might suggest. For one thing, he doesn't employ the members of the Nashville studio mafia who seem to crop up on virtually every major-label country album. For another, he's no pre-fab artist; he co-wrote almost every song here, and for outside material he turned to estimable country mavericks Buddy & Julie Miller ("My Love Will Follow You"). The production is kept agreeably low-key, and there are no Journey-with-steel-guitar power ballad abominations. Bentley shows his true colors most plainly at the album's end, closing with a self-penned bluegrass-flavored tune where he's backed by none other than the legendary Del McCoury Band. Let's see how that one plays on CMT. minimize