Dierks Bentley – “Sideways”

In that picture, Dierks looks like he just read this review.

This is the only song on Feel That Fire that I really don’t like, so of course it becomes a single…

I can’t help comparing it to Darryl Worley’s song from a few years ago with the same title:

http://tinyurl.com/bvzbsp

While I agree with you that this song is merely radio fluff, and dont particularly care that much for it, I find myself doubting some of your points validity. I can hardly see Dierks Bentley and Brett Beavers sitting in the studio saying “HEY! If we had a bunch of people scream with us during the chorus, thatd make everyone feel like they were apart of a party, which would make them like it that much more.” Sometimes I think we give artists a little too much credit, I think.

Worley’s “Sideways” could be better for some folks (including me), but not because it’s deeper. It’s also a pretty fun song, albeit with a slightly different slant to the lyric and, to my taste, mo’ better music. But either way, there’s nothing wrong with being a fun song and no more.

Too, having to matter after dropping off the charts sets a high enough bar for being a good song, in my opinion, that an awful lot of country hits fall under it. Curling up for an evening or two with Whitburn’s singles chart book, even for someone who listened to country radio pretty regularly 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, is pretty educational in that regard.

Nice review but I don’t mind this song actually. It’s not single material though. I do hate the canned audience effect, like on Brad P’s radio edit of “(The Fishing Song)”…that’s more likely to make me dislike a song than enjoy it.

Thank God! I’m not the only one! I haven never been able to understand the Dierks craze! He sings in such a monotone, and to top things off, only about 1 in 5 of his songs are any good.

“this is the music Dierks Bentley wants to be making right now? Really?”

Evidently not. If this gets added because Dungan feels the audience will want more ‘fun’ songs and not the more serious stuff Dierks originally planned to record, than this is not the music he wants to make. In which case I wonder why the fans should want to listen…

Having heard the album now, I can now add I believe “Feel That Fire” is Bentley’s most mediocre album to date.

I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of his music, as I feel he too often styles his tracks after legendaries (especially Waylon Jennings) and also is too calculative when it comes to appealing to all the stereotypical facets of the contemporary country fanbase, but with his debut self-titled release, as with “Modern Day Drifter”, you can sense at least a little variety in the sounds and themes he tackled, and on “Long Trip Alone” he even somehow got the Grascals (for those who may be unfamiliar with them, they’re an acclaimed bluegrass outfit) to play on the album’s closing track. But with this new album, it strikes me that Bentley isn’t even trying anymore to make him appear even fractionally unique among his fellow contemporaries, and simply resigning to toe-tappin’ anthems. In fact, the only track I really enjoyed upon my first listen was the closing track “Last Call”. Even his duet with Patty Griffin felt unremarkable to me.

Even if it weren’t for those two eleventh-hour track listing revisions, I doubt this album would have been any more memorable. (shrug)

It’s just you, LeeAnn.

Well, ok, probably not, but there aren’t many folks in the bluegrass world who would call them boring, especially when it comes to their live shows. That’s why they’ve won the IBMA’s top Entertainer of the Year award in two of the past 3 years. I point that out not to disparage your taste, but to underline that it’s not widely shared among bluegrass artists (who vote on the awards) or core fans.

But I’ll freely admit my bias there, since all of them are friends and colleagues, some very close, and Jamie Johnson in particular has been a friend, a sometimes bandmate and one of my favorite singers for almost 20 years now – that is, long before either of us moved to Nashville.

Which brings me around to what I had originally wanted to post – namely, that Dierks “somehow” got the Grascals to appear on his album because he and Terry Eldredge and Jamie Johnson are all friends, too. In fact, Terry sang harmony on a couple of cuts on Dierks’ first album. And the McCourys played on Dierks’ recording of a Del song (“Good Man Like Me”) on another one of his albums. And Dierks sang on the Grascals’ second album. And Dierks appeared with the McCourys at Delfest last year (there’s some dandy video of them rehearsing here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=34153990). And so on.

These things don’t just happen, and they don’t even happen just because someone had an idea. They happened, and they’ll continue to happen, because the Nashville country & bluegrass & Americana community is more, er, promiscuous than folks who look at the music through preconceptions might otherwise think. That Dierks hung out at the Station Inn in his early days in town isn’t some PR person’s invention; it’s a fact, and lasting friendships came out of it. I don’t see him down there very often any more, but it was only a couple of years ago that I was on stage with the Sidemen (including Grascal Terry Eldredge) and within ten minutes of each other we had both Dierks and John Prine up to sing one or two. Things are a lot looser here than some folks seem to think, and often times fans are more focused on differences than the musicians are.

And yes, I know none of that has anything to do with whether you like the music or not, about which I don’t particularly care. It was the “somehow got the Grascals” that tripped me off…

Jon, I’m well aware of Bentley’s association/connection with bluegrass music. I love bluegrass music and have given the Grascals a fair chance. I don’t mean to be negative about your friends and I’m fully aware that they are an acclaimed group,but they just don’t do anything for me, even if that calls my taste into question. I’d rather listen to the SteelDrivers, Dailey & Vincent, Alison Krauss and Union Station…

Yeah, that’s how I feel about them. I know they’re talented, my guy, Vince Gill has sung with them, but they generally don’t hold my attention.

O right, I see that now. Sorry. For the record, I do like that song quite a bit.

I don’t agree with this review. I think Sideways is a fun song and I like the album. I also think you are unfair in your criticism of Mike Dungan. To say “he is banking on the fact that the listening pubic isn’t discerning enough to care” is a statement made by someone who doesn’t know Mike Dungan at all. Mike is one of the most ethical people in the business and always puts out music that is the highest quality in the business. He never takes his audience for granted and believes that they should (and do) expect more out of every album released.

Wow i wish people who post reviews about Dierks songs should just keep it to themselves because it is rude. I know people have their own opinions but i like good reviews better.

MAKE ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

ok honestly it may not be the most meaningful song in the world, but at least it has some melody, and people are having fun with it. It’s a lot better then the rap and pop that has less meaning then this, or has much worse meaning, and then there are the songs that dont even require a melody. Let people have some fun with it, it may not be the best song in the world but it’s decent.

Wanna be rappers? Did you not notice the hip hop flavor of the video with the dancers? There’s nothing country about the video, and there’s nothing country about the song. It’s actually quite annoying and obnoxious.

It’s sad too, becuase Dierks is above this kind of novelty crap.