Makin’ Tracks: Dierks Bentley Brings His Gravel to the Shiny, Optimistic ‘Gold’
When Dierks Bentley sings the earthy hook to his new single, “It might be gravel but it feels like gold,” one could argue that it’s an assessment of his own scratchy voice.
But it’s actually a return to an increasingly familiar theme in his work: the importance of living in the moment, rather than worrying about the future or fretting about the past.
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“It’s a message for me more than anybody else,” he says. “I try to write stuff sometimes that I get a chance to sing myself onstage every night and remind myself of something. And if it resonates with me, I’ve learned it’s probably going to resonate with my core fans.”
The message in “Gold,” though, only came about because the writers in the room — Bentley, Luke Dick (“Don’t Come Lookin’,” “Burning Man”), Ashley Gorley (“She Had Me at Heads Carolina,” “Take My Name”) and Ross Copperman (“Beers on Me,” “Half of My Hometown”) — embraced a simple musical idea. Dick came in with a brisk, basic two-chord guitar pattern that provided an enthusiastic atmosphere for the appointment, a strummed acoustic foundation similar in tone to Queen’s “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Proud Mary” and Rod Stewart circa 1972.
“Sometimes I come in and I feel prepared for a write, and sometimes I don’t feel prepared and I just try to do something before I walk into the room that feels good,” Dick says. “You don’t know if what you came up with is going to move anyone else. So I just played what I came up with — and Ashley, Dierks and Ross liked it, and then we all turned it into a song.”
Bentley had driven his 1994 Chevy pickup to Music Row for the appointment. It’s the same truck he used to move to Nashville from Arizona 28 years ago and also references in “I Hold On.” The rust around its edges came into play, providing inspiration for a lyric about embracing imperfection on life’s journey. With the music rolling steady in the background, they brainstormed several ideas, landing on the contrast between common gravel and shiny gold.
“We’re going back-and-forth and kind of had this ‘gold’ idea and ‘gravel,’ ” Bentley recalls. “Working with Ashley is so fun, just watching how he’s able to spin that into something and hammer that into ‘might be gravel but it feels like gold.’ When he said that, there was like, ‘Oh, that’s it. That’s the hook.’ It didn’t feel like it was a hit single or anything. It’s just, ‘OK, that’s definitely the angle’ — and then creating a story around that.”
That story recognizes people’s tendency to diminish the value of their current circumstances while focusing on future success. The first verse suggests that we frequently are surrounded by rainbows even as we strive for the pot of the gold at their end. And the second brings the recognition that the atmosphere on the ground is the same as in the blue sky that seems so far away and unattainable.
“There are moments of heaven here,” Bentley says. “It’s hell here, too. A lot of people are [experiencing] hell on earth, going through terrible things on a daily basis around the world. Life can be just a frame of mind, just reframing something, looking at it from different angles, realizing that the moment you’re in right now, this could be it. It’s happening right here.”
Copperman and Dick shaped the demo as they went, building on top of the acoustic guitar rhythms that inspired “Gold.”“Me and Luke just start vibing out,” Copperman says. “We threw an acoustic out there, and then I remember we maybe found a slide laying around. We really needed a hook on these turns, and Luke just grabbed a slide and [popped one out]. I was like, ‘Oh, my God. I love that.’ And that ended up being the foundation of the whole damn thing.”
They beefed up the groove with four eighth-note drum beats that lead into the next measure. “It’s hard to call that a hook, but it is,” Dick says, “and I feel like we were chewing off it a bit.”
Amid the song’s life philosophy, they brought a girl into “Gold” on an optimistic bridge, focused on the “silver linings in the clouds” and “rose-colored Ray-Bans.”
“The song’s called ‘Gold’ — we got to find some silver,” Bentley says. “And put those John Conlee rose-colored Ray-Bans on and look at the world through your ‘Rose Colored Glasses,’ which is one of my favorite songs of all time.”
They recorded the final version of “Gold” with Bryan Sutton, Danny Rader and Charlie Worsham handling the driving acoustic guitar sound in bulk at the Ocean Way studios on Nashville’s Music Row. And drummer Aaron Sterling brought an extra edge to the beat. After the session, Bentley enlisted Jon Randall (Parker McCollum, Miranda Lambert) for co-production during overdubs with Bentley, Copperman and F. Reid Shippen.
“I’ve got all these old references,” Randall says. “When I’m talking to players, I’ll bring up some random guitar sound off of a record that’s like 40 years old. That’s when I get pulled in, like, ‘Hey, man, we need some of that.’”
They brought in mandolinist Sam Bush, who helped brighten some of the shadings around the heavenly lyrical references. And Copperman worked specifically at his home studio to get Bentley’s breezy, gravelly vocals, which include a hard “D” on the word “gold” at the close of every chorus — appropriate for a metal substance. “I just wanted it to be obvious,” Copperman says. “That line kind of hangs out there, and you could easily not have a ‘D’ on that word.”
The end result was a cheery, big-sounding single with a valuable philosophical observation delivered in a unique way. “It’s such a cool hook and such a cool song,” Randall says. “It was one of those you knew that once you heard it mixed and shiny, the label was probably going to go, ‘Yeah, this is the single.’ ”
Indeed, Capitol Nashville released “Gold” to country radio through PlayMPE on July 28. It rises to No. 35 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Sept. 3.
“It’s about the climb, the journey,” Bentley says. “Like the song says, it’s not about the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. It’s about being in the rainbow. And a lot of time we don’t recognize the moment we’re in.”
