Dierks Bentley
I'm not going to lie. Songs about whiskey, jail, trains and mama have never been my obsession, or even a casual curiosity. I have neatly fenced off country music from my scope of artistic understanding all my life. When someone would ask me what sort of music I liked, I'd coyly answer, "Anything, really. Anything but country," and thought that defining what I didn't like would sketch a more accurate picture of my personality than what I did like.
Last night I saw Dierks Bentley, of "What was I Thinkin'" fame, in concert at the Winnebago county fair. It was on the same dirt and gravel that had hosted a tractor pull the night before. Only a couple thousand people were there. A good portion of them were country folk, most were wearing cowboy hats, and all the girls were wearing white tank tops (including me, to my great tacky shame). We were 8 rows back, close enough to see the expressions on the performers faces, and to feel the bass resonate in our chests. It wasn't a conversion or a life-changing event... but I'm willing to reconsider country music after experiencing it. Dierks is a good performer, giving everyone in the audience a fuzzy down-home feeling, like he's playing for a big crowd of house guests. He seems to be less confident on stage than most famous artists. He makes self-conscious comments like, "well, this is my first time playing this song in uh, public..." and he seems a little bashful when he's talking instead of playing. All the songs were better live than the recorded versions, making me more than a little disappointed that I'll never get to hear what I heard last night again. But maybe that's what makes live music infinitely more moving and thrilling than recordings... It's a moment instead of an object. An event in itself instead of an element in the environment.
Last night I saw Dierks Bentley, of "What was I Thinkin'" fame, in concert at the Winnebago county fair. It was on the same dirt and gravel that had hosted a tractor pull the night before. Only a couple thousand people were there. A good portion of them were country folk, most were wearing cowboy hats, and all the girls were wearing white tank tops (including me, to my great tacky shame). We were 8 rows back, close enough to see the expressions on the performers faces, and to feel the bass resonate in our chests. It wasn't a conversion or a life-changing event... but I'm willing to reconsider country music after experiencing it. Dierks is a good performer, giving everyone in the audience a fuzzy down-home feeling, like he's playing for a big crowd of house guests. He seems to be less confident on stage than most famous artists. He makes self-conscious comments like, "well, this is my first time playing this song in uh, public..." and he seems a little bashful when he's talking instead of playing. All the songs were better live than the recorded versions, making me more than a little disappointed that I'll never get to hear what I heard last night again. But maybe that's what makes live music infinitely more moving and thrilling than recordings... It's a moment instead of an object. An event in itself instead of an element in the environment.