Dierks Bentley: Can You Feel Me?

What was going through your mind when you sat down with Rodney Crowell to write for Feel That Fire?
I went to his house and I was a nervous wreck. I had an idea for the song, “Pray.” The idea was complicated but I knew he’d help me get through it. The idea being that, you spent two years with someone and you think, “It is real. At least it felt real at the time.” And then when it ends, all there is, is like a complete vacuum. There isn’t anything left; it’s just hatred or animosity. It’s almost insulting, the idea of love, and you think, “All that was fake?” You think, “Two years of my life were completely wasted. That doesn’t even count.” And that’s not the way it should be, because you know it was real at the time.

When the relationship is over and the scab wears off, how do you not only find a window of forgiveness, but expand that even to the point where you say, “I want you to be happy?” If you can get to that place, it justifies all the realness of the relationship. That’s the way it should be. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It didn’t work out.

It’s a complicated thing to say, but I had it in my mind at Rodney’s place. I said my hallelujahs before I crossed the threshold into his house. We sat down in his kitchen and it was one of the coolest things ever. We wrote the song in his kitchen. We went out for lunch and had some Mexican food and a couple of cervezas at a local Mexican joint. I knew we had something there [with the song] but it wasn’t totally finished.

I have a playlist of about 100 pieces [of songs] like that on my iPod and Cassidy, my wife, likes to take my iPod and go jogging to it. That’s how she found “Free and Easy,” which was a Garage Band thing I had done, and she said that was pretty cool. And the same with “Pray.” She said, “This is an amazing song. You guys have got to finish this.” So I finished it, cleaned it up and sent it back to Rodney. I still have the e-mail. He said, “Wow, I had no idea what we had written that day. This completely exceeds my expectations.” And now Rodney is a friend and I plan on writing a lot more with him, because I can. A lot of people can’t. He doesn’t write with everybody.

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