Dierks Bentley is having quite a year. The country superstar returned with his ninth LP, the rustic 13-song set The Mountain, in June, which debuted at No.1 on the Top Country Albums chart and gave the singer the first highest week sales of his career. The LP’s euphoric lead single, “Woman, Amen,” topped the country airplay chart, and over Labor Day weekend, the 42-year-old launched his Seven Peaks Music Festival in Buena Vista, Colorado. He’s been leading the 2018 Mountain High Tour since May—which included a sold-out stop at Madison Square Garden in New York City—and now, he’s following all of that up with the music video for “Burning Man,” his scorching Brothers Osborne-featuring cut and current single.
The de facto mission statement of The Mountain, “Burning Man” sees Bentley embracing the competing facets of his nature. “I'm a little bit steady but still little bit rollin' stone,” he sings. “I'm a little bit heaven but still a little bit flesh-and-bone/Little found, little don't-know-where-I-am.”
As Bentley tells us of the meaning behind the song: “I just love the bigger themes with this. It’s a reflection on life and how I want my life to be.”
Bentley didn’t write the cut, that credit goes to Luke Dick and Bobby Pinson, but says he automatically felt compelled by the message. “I live in these two completely different worlds,” Bentley says. “I’m in my house in Nashville right now and I’m about to fly to San Francisco to do a show. And it’s not just physical, but also mentally I am always switching gears and trying to be successful in both of them. One day I’m doing something with [my] four-year-old with a bunch of their moms and the next I’m on stage.”
There’s a particular challenge, and reward to recording tracks you didn’t write, says Bentley, who penned 10 of the 13 songs on The Mountain. “It stretches you as an artist,” he says. “If you write something, it’s probably something around the edges of your identity that you’re exploring. But a song like ‘Riser,’ which I didn’t write, or ‘Burning Man,’ that’s so outside of you, it takes a lot to get comfortable with it and understand it. You stretch into a whole new realm.”
Originally, he recorded the song on his own, but eventually realized having a vocalist who was at a different stage of life involved would enhance the track’s meaning. “I’m knee-deep in adulthood,” Bentley explains. “I thought it would be fun to sing [this] with someone who doesn’t have three kids and isn’t as far along as I am or as old as I am.”
He enlisted his current tour mates Brothers Osborne (singer T.J. is 33, guitarist John is 36). “I texted them up and they immediately texted back, like within two minutes. ‘Fuck yeah, [we’re] in. Let’s go.” Two days later they walk into the studio by themselves. John’s carrying his guitar and his amp—there’s no airs! Just set it up, throw out some liquor and let’s start working on this song.”
For the clip, Bentley and frequent cohort Wes Edwards—he’s directed many of the singer and songwriter’s videos, including “Black,” “5-1-5-0,” “Riser,” and more—headed to the desert an hour outside of Palm Springs, California. “It was crazy hot,” Bentley says, recalling the late summer shoot day. “I’m from Arizona, and this was hot. I felt bad for everyone involved.”
When the sun dipped and the heat broke, though, Bentley says the energy shifted completely. “We went absolutely crazy,” he says. “It felt so good—we had the music cranking, we were in the middle of nowhere and the stars were coming out. The fun we were having was true to a fault, we didn’t have to fake that at all.”
They pair the footage with clips shot on the road, highlighting Bentley’s path to this moment in his career. “I wanted it to be about my own journey in music,” he says. “How many nights I’ve been on stage and the years I’ve put into this—who I am.”
