“How Willie was able to stand up for the two-hour show and sign autographs for another two hours for everyone who gathered around the stage, just proves what a strong man Willie Nelson really is, physically and emotionally, after all he’d just been through.”
At the time, Willie had started his third family. Son Lukas had been born in 1988 and son Micah came along in 1990. Willie married their mother, Annie, in that same fateful year of 1991.
He had also reinvented himself as a recording artist. Alongside Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson, Willie had been touring as one of The Highwaymen since 1985. The four issued Highwaymen albums in 1985, 1990, and 1994.
Willie dislikes long hours in the recording studio, preferring spontaneous and live performances for his records. Thus, he is able to record multiple albums in a year.
“I like to know what I’m gonna do before I go into the studio,” he says. “I don’t like to spend a lot of time in there, because, for me, that makes it get stale. A lot of times, the first take is the best. With multiple takes, I feel like I lose it. So I just like to go in and do it.
“It might be the ninth Willie Nelson album this month. But they all seem to be doing pretty well. So as long as they are selling, I’m not gonna worry about it. I’m gonna keep puttin’ ’em out until they quit buyin’ ’em. I guess that’s what I’m supposed to do.”
As he approached his seventieth birthday, Willie picked up a Grammy and a Country Music Association (CMA) Award for his “Mendocino County Line” duet with Lee Ann Womack and had a number-one record with his Toby Keith collaboration “Beer for My Horses.” Both discs were issued in 2002. This American icon is still out there on the road, still singing, still writing, and still entertaining.
“I’m doing it as much for me as I am for them. Music is my medicine, my drug. And if I don’t get it, I get sick. If I don’t play music, I feel bad. You have to enjoy it more than you enjoy not doing it. And I do. I think going out and playing the guitar and singing releases some emotions, and that’s why I do it.
“I’d sing anywhere that I could. If I couldn’t find a job singing, I would sit in with someone [playing guitar]. I have to play music. And as long as I can, and as long as I’m healthy, I always will.”
29
Dating at the Opry
Singer-songwriter Dierks Bentley’s special Grand Ole Opry moments have all been connected with his courtship and marriage to his wife Cassidy.
“She’s really intertwined with my whole Opry experience,” says Dierks. “The second time she came to Nashville, I took her to the Grand Ole Opry down at the Ryman Auditorium. It was February, and Martina McBride was the headliner, so to speak. That was such an important date, because to take her to a show like that was to have her see the Grand Ole Opry, see the Ryman, and see what I was passionate about. That was a gigantic thing to us.”
Dierks dated Cassidy for more than a year before their marriage. During that time, the rising star became a member of the Opry’s cast.
“She was there the night that Marty Stuart asked me to become a member of the family, a part of the Opry. It was on the Sunset Strip at the House of Blues. She was there when Marty surprised me on that stage.
“And she was there when I was inducted, on October 1, 2005.”
Dierks and Cassidy grew up together. He was born November 20, 1975, and raised in Phoenix, Arizona.
“I met Cass when I was, I guess, thirteen. We both went to the same school and were in the eighth grade together back in Phoenix. I was attracted to her from the moment I met her. But I wasn’t cool enough to date her. So I dated her best friend. I was dating her best friend, and she was dating my best friend.”
After their high school graduation, they drifted apart geographically. Following her college education, Cassidy moved to San Francisco to work in advertising. He moved to Nashville at age nineteen, intending to pursue music.
In high school, Dierks had been “converted” to country after hearing Hank Williams Jr.’s 1990 recording of “Man to Man.” By then, he’d been playing rock electric guitar for about two years, but the listening experience completely changed his musical direction. Dierks is entirely self-taught, and he made it his business to study everything he could about country music and Nashville.
When he arrived in Music City in 1995, Dierks went to work at the Country Music Association, where he learned about the inner workings of the music business. At night, he immersed himself in the bluegrass music scene at the famed Station Inn nightclub. He didn’t perform there. He just sat and watched and listened.
His next day job was an education as well. Dierks was at The Nashville Network (TNN) working in the cable channel’s tape library for a miniseries on country-music history called A Century of Country. He researched footage of old Porter Wagoner, Johnny Cash, and Grand Ole Opry television shows.
The TNN office was next to the Opry House. As an employee, Dierks was permitted to go backstage at Grand Ole Opry shows. In fact, he used this privilege so much that he was reprimanded and chased off by Opry executives.
In the evenings, Dierks played at songwriter showcases and had a regular performing slot at a dive bar called Springwater, near Centennial Park. Then he graduated to the nicer Market Street Brewery in downtown Nashville. He was playing there one night when Vince Gill dropped in, came up onstage, and played for an hour and a half with Dierks.
“Truly unbelievable is the only way to describe it. I thought that if my music dreams never went any further, that would be alright, because I got to share the stage with Vince Gill.”
In 1999, he began recording his debut album. Don’t Leave Me in Love appeared in 2000 on his own, homemade record label. Even though he was a complete unknown, Dierks got help from a stellar group of bluegrass players on the sessions.
It was around this time that he began thinking of Cassidy once again. He tried to establish a long-distance relationship with her but was not successful.
“I always kind of kept in touch with her through the years. We tried to date when I was, like, twenty-three or twenty-four and working at TNN. I’d send her songs and stuff I was working on. We tried to date a couple of times, but it was just hard. The distance made it difficult. At one point, I just kind of gave up on it and just assumed we’d always just be good friends but never work out.”
Opry or no Opry, Ryman or no Ryman, it didn’t look like Dierks and Cassidy were going to make it as a couple. At least not then.
“Actually, I cared for her enough that I didn’t want her to be stuck. I just wanted her to be happy.”
He dated others but was mainly focused on furthering his career. Dierks Bentley’s drummer, Steve Misamore, took a copy of the homemade album to the Sony/ATV Tree Publishing office. Based on the tunes on the record, the company signed Dierks to a songwriting contract. Tree executive Arthur Buenahora teamed Dierks up with another Tree writer, Brett Beavers, and the new collaborators clicked instantly with one another. Brett began producing Dierks in the studio. The results were heard by the folks at Capitol Records, and the label signed Dierks to a recording contract in 2003.
The former backstage “pest” made his first appearance on the Opry stage on April 18, 2003. He introduced his debut Capitol single, “What Was I Thinkin’.”
Dierks Bentley was released as his debut Capitol CD on August 19, 2003. “What Was I Thinkin’” rocketed to number one. “My Last Name” and “How Am I Doin’” became his second and third hits. Superstar George Strait invited Dierks to be his opening act on the road in 2004. Romance was rekindled when Cassidy flew in to see her old flame at one of the shows.
“Her happiness, to me, most of all, was the most important thing,” Dierks recalls. “So I just wrote her off as something that wasn’t going to work out. That all changed on February 4, 2004. I was playing a show with George Strait in Las Vegas. She walked on the bus, and I just kind of knew, right away. I was like, ‘Wow! I have got to find a way to make this woman happy, because I don’
t want someone else making her happy. I want to be the guy.’
“We dated for a year. It’s weird how time flies. She moved to Nashville in August, and we got married in December.”
The wedding, held December 14, 2005, was a private affair and a surprise present.
“I got engaged in Las Vegas, but I got married in Mexico. We had a trip lined up at the end of that year, so we were already going to Mexico. I went online and checked out the place we were staying. It had a wedding chapel. When you’re passionate about something, you do things you otherwise might not have the guts to do. And that’s certainly the case with arranging a wedding, which I did online and on the telephone with a wonderful Mexican woman down in Cabo San Lucas.
“Something special kind of came from carrying the rings and planning this whole wedding behind Cassidy’s back. I’m not sure how I did it, but I guess when you’re crazy in love, you just do things that normally you don’t.
“I still think we did it the smartest way you could do a wedding. For us, it’s like a real personal thing, memories that we get to share privately and have that between us. When the whole ceremony becomes bigger than the actual story itself, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. It should be fun.”
Afterward, he said very little to the press about his marriage. One story stated that his mother was upset about his eloping, but Dierks says that isn’t true.
“My mom never had a problem with that. She always thought eloping was a great idea. She actually encouraged me to do that when I was younger. We shared the wedding with them through pictures we had taken while we were there.”
To this day, Dierks Bentley is not comfortable talking about his private life. He insists that the media focus on his music above all else. He turned down a spread in People magazine because he thought the magazine was more interested in his personal life than his music. He also turned down a Vanity Fair photo shoot, because the publication wanted a frivolous shot of him lassoing country singer Miranda Lambert.
On the other hand, Dierks was pleased when music journalists recognized his musical tip of the hat to the late Waylon Jennings in the sound of “Lot of Leavin’ Left to Do.” The 2005 single was the first from his CD Modern Day Drifter. As a child, Dierks was a big The Dukes of Hazzard TV fan, and Waylon’s “Good Ol’ Boys” theme song was the first single he ever bought.
In 2005–2006, “Come a Little Closer,” “Settle for a Slowdown,” and “Every Mile a Memory” became his second, third, and fourth number-one smash hits. He won the 2005 Horizon Award from his old employer, the CMA.
After he played “Come a Little Closer” on the Opry stage on October 1, 2005, Dierks was joined by Marty Stuart and Opry manager Pete Fisher. “As country music has changed and grown through the years, the one thing that has remained steady is the Grand Ole Opry,” said Marty. “I am proud to introduce the newest member of the Grand Ole Opry, Dierks Bentley.”
“This here is the ultimate backstage pass,” Dierks said to Pete, referring to his history with the executive. Then Jake came running out from the wings and jumped into his master’s arms. The dog is well-known to country fans, since he often appears with Dierks at events and in videos. Dierks humorously describes his white, furry, mixed-breed pet as “half Spitz and half one-night stand.”
Dierks Bentley cherishes his Opry membership and plays the show often. That is all the more impressive when you realize that he is one of the most aggressive touring artists in America. He spent three hundred days on the road during his first year of stardom. Even now, playing two hundred dates a year is not uncommon. He says that perfecting his live show is “an obsession” and admits that this might be hard on his bride.
“Being a ‘road widow,’ that’s tough,” Dierks comments. “I guess that’s the truth, though. But Cassidy comes out with me sometimes. We try to do no more than three days apart. That means she’s got to ride the bus. For a long run, she might fly out to meet us somewhere, do a couple of days on the road, and go back home.
“It’s tough, because when I get off the road and get back to Nashville, that’s when the work begins. I have to get up early and get stuff done, whether it be writing songs, meeting with the Web site people, meet with the record label. It’s busy when I’m in town. But we try to schedule quality time together, like vacations.”
Being married has brought stability to the singer’s life. When Dierks was single, he and Jake the dog lived on a small houseboat anchored at a lake outside Nashville. The interior was about the same size as the space inside his tour bus—tiny bathroom, tiny kitchen and all. Now Dierks, Cassidy, and Jake live in a real house. A second dog, George, joined the family in 2006.
Dierks Bentley’s female fans were up in arms when his “Long Trip Alone” video premiered in January 2006. For his role in the video as a prisoner, Dierks cut off his trademark halo of blond curls. He was shocked by the reaction and surprised that his image meant so much to them. “It’s only hair!” he protested.
He’d much rather talk about music. “Free and Easy” became his fifth number-one hit in 2007. Dierks was so happy, he paid for a party at the Nashville Predators professional ice-hockey rink. He wanted to thank the Music Row community as well as have fun playing hockey with his buddies.
“It’s not just a celebration of a number-one song,” he told the party attendees. “This town is about community and relationships. It’s so meaningful. I hope you guys take just as much pride in this as I do.”
Although his style is thoroughly modern, Dierks loves traditional country sounds. Even before his debut CD was released, he enthusiastically signed up to sing the classic “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby” with Harley Allen on a 2003 tribute CD to The Louvin Brothers. His own records have featured appearances by bluegrass stars such as the Del McCoury Band and The Grascals. He went out of his way to befriend traditional stylists such as George Jones.
“All those guys have different forms of advice. I got the standard money-management speech from Buck Owens. I got the lecture. I felt like I was going into an elite club when I got that speech.
“George’s advice was to hit it while you’re hot. He sees the money that people are making now in country music, and I think he sometimes gets a little bummed out about that. All the touring he did, it was a different deal. It was before money really entered the picture. I think his thing is always try to figure out where the music comes from. But also, hit it while it’s hot and have fun out there.
“For a while there, I was so militant about country music and bluegrass music, I wouldn’t listen to anything else. I really closed my mind off to anything other than those two genres. Cassidy has helped me open up my perspective a little bit to hear other music and other ideas.
“I feel like I know a lot about certain genres. But she knows a lot about music in general. She knows more about music than I do. She just loves music. She’s one of those people who just gets moved by music of any kind.
“That is huge. I love that, because I learn from her. And she learns from me. I got to teach her about the Grand Ole Opry and teach her about the guys in country music whose music I love. I don’t really see her as a Hank Jr. type, but she’ll listen to him just to figure out why that music has an effect on me, why that music turned me on to country music. In return, I’ll listen to her music.”
The dedication on his 2006 CD Long Trip Alone reads “To Cassidy, whose smile I rest beneath.” Dierks Bentley is a man in love.
“There’s a lot of men I look up to,” he comments. “They’re the strong ones, the powerful ones. And those are always the ones who have a great love in their life, whether it be Johnny Cash or Bono of U2. Those are the guys that I respect the most. Those have always been the people I’ve looked up to. Having that great love, that’s sexy and powerful to me. And it’s tough to do.”
DIERKS BENTLEY ISN’T THE only member whose love was with him for his Opry cast induction. Josh Turner’s was not only there, she was onstage. That’s because Jenn
ifer Turner is the keyboard player in her husband’s band.
Josh and Jennifer met when both were students at Nashville’s Belmont University, majoring in music. Josh only went there to please his parents and because he knew the school was next to Music Row.
Born on November 20, 1977, Josh Turner was raised in Hannah, South Carolina. When he was fourteen, his mother signed him up to sing the Randy Travis hit “Diggin’ Up Bones” at a church social. His impersonation of Randy was so perfect that many in the audience believed he was lip-synching to Randy’s recording. To this day, Josh refers to Randy as “the man who taught me how to sing.”
Galvanized by the applause he received, Josh decided he wanted to become a country performer. Guided by his grandparents’ record collection, he studied the style and learned about its classic artists. When he was in college in South Carolina, he yearned to move to Nashville to pursue his dream. His parents wanted him to stay in school, so he transferred to Belmont.
Meeting Jennifer wasn’t the only big event that took place while he was a Belmont student. Josh was so enthralled with the music of Johnny Cash that he drove his truck to the superstar’s suburban home. The gate was open. He knocked on the door, and to his astonishment, there stood his idol. Although ill, Johnny spoke briefly with the infatuated youngster. After the encounter, Josh was so overcome that he broke down and cried in his parked truck.
The song that changed his life also came to him while he was a Belmont student. Josh listened to a boxed set of Hank Williams music in the library one evening. While walking home in the dark, he had a vision. Once he got to his room, he sat on his bed, and out poured the song “Long Black Train.”
Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain Page 32