Music
Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean: A Country Hit and a Miss
Dierks Bentley, whose sincere persona won over the Patriot Center crowd.
(Jim Cooper - AP)
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As country music stars go, Jason Aldean and Dierks Bentley make for a Goofus and Gallant pairing.
In his opening set at the Patriot Center on Saturday, Aldean, a hat act from Georgia, tried to go where Toby Keith has gone before. Aldean's smash "Hicktown," like some of Keith's bigger numbers, stressed the beauty of being drunk and dumb. Aldean, who lacks Keith's wiseacre charm, boasted about himself enough to make Hulk Hogan seem humble, and seemed more concerned about chart positions than a lost freighter captain would: "We've had not one, not two, but three Number 1 videos on CMT 'Top 20 Countdown!' " he yelped, as if the crowd was blessed to be in the same arena as a man so accomplished on cable TV.
Humility ain't a four-letter word to Bentley, however. The show-closer, a wholesome and hatless 31-year-old Phoenician, even thanked fans for allowing him to ride in a bus for a living. "Some people love trains, but I grew up loving tour buses. God bless you for giving us this life," he said before "Free and Easy Down the Road I Go," an ain't-it great-to-be-alive number.
Bentley also scored big whenever he dropped a "G". "What Was I Thinkin'?" "How Am I Doin'?" and the fabulous, anthemic "Lot of Leavin' Left to Do" all got folks out of their seats. And he sure did look like a man in love with his work, while voyaging into the nosebleed sections of the Patriot Center to duet with a fan during "So Long."
Aldean offered his new hit single, "Johnny Cash," a cliched workingman homage (the song's protagonist "flipped off the boss" while quitting his job) that has nothing to do with the title character, but still gives any Goofus the chance to drop Cash's credibility-saturated name. Aldean took the tune from writer John Rich, and as with most of the Music Mafioso's output, it owes more to 1980s hard rock than anything Cash produced.
Bentley, conversely, paid tribute to the real thing, with a version of "Folsom Prison Blues" that borrowed Cash's early rockabilly vibe. Bentley also confessed that his favorite singer was Hank Williams, and did a couple of verses of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" while the guitar vibrato set a swampy mood. Bentley's pedal-steel-drenched "That Don't Make It Easy Loving Me" reminded listeners of Waylon Jennings's many I'm-not-worthy numbers of the '70s.
Aldean's covers, bizarrely, came from the catalogue of Guns N' Roses, which he called "my all-time favorite band." His GNR mini-set concluded with a rendering of "Sweet Child o Mine" that was jaw-dropping in its lack of irony.
Bentley told the crowd that he'd taken a sightseeing drive around Northern Virginia earlier in the day "looking for some country," but never found any. Any quest for country while Aldean was onstage would have been equally in vain.
-- Dave McKenna
