A Quote by Dierks Bentley

Country music is always changing but the Opry is always there to serve as a lighthouse for what country music really is. The past, present and future is all encompassed by not only the physical structure of the building but also the radio show.
When you go to the Opry for a show or hear it on the radio, you get the whole circle of country music.
Where I grew up in St. Louis, Saturday was country music day on television. We'd watch the Bill Anderson show, the Willie Nelson show, the Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner show, and always the Grand Ole Opry. My parents were fans of that music, and my friend's parents would pull the TV out and watch those shows on the porch.
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.
My mother has always been open about all kinds of music and entertainment. She wanted us to see that it was not just country music and the Grand Ole Opry.
I have always been infatuated with country music. Country music tells stories, and I've always loved to tell stories. I said that when I establish myself as an artist that can do pretty much anything I want to do in music, I'm going to make a country album.
I got to where I couldn't listen to country radio. Country music is supposed to have steel and fiddle. When I hear country music, it should be country.
I'm just another Opry entertainer. I'm not the start of the Opry, and I'm not the ending. I'm not the Alpha, and I'm not the Omega. It's been a pleasure taking part in the Opry and country music these many years. I'm part of a big operation.
Country music is just country. It's going to shift around a little bit, doing some different instrumentations, different production styles. But it will always come back to what you heard at the Opry. Nobody wants it to change.
Kitty Wells was the first and only Queen of Country Music, no matter what they call the rest of us. She was a great inspiration to me as well as every other female singer in the country music business. In addition to being a wonderful asset to country music, she was a wonderful woman. We will always remember her fondly.
We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better.... or else we think about the future, about what we're going to do.... But at this precise moment, you also realize that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it's Eternity.... It isn't what you did in the past the will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.
We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we're in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back from the present. That now is the creative point of life. So you see it's like the idea of forgiving somebody, you change the meaning of the past by doing that...Also, watch the flow of music. The melody as its expressed is changed by notes that come later. Just as the meaning of a sentence...you wait till later to find out what the sentence means...The present is always changing the past.
I got to Nashville on Labor Day weekend in 1972. And the Grand Ole Opry is still there, the Country Music Hall of Fame is still there. And the roots of country music are still there. It's where the authenticity and the empowering force lies.
We were so influenced not only by country music but by the rock bands of the '80s. Our focus was to bring in something different. Country music already had a George Strait and Alabama. We wanted to put some pop music in our show.
Country music has taken so many forms, and I've always contended that it does not matter if the casual listener falls in love with country music through Florida Georgia Line, Taylor Swift, Old Crow Medicine Show or whomever - just get in and start digging!
I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart.
Even though I've had 20-some country No. 1 records, I still have a hard time convincing a lot of these people in the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music that I love country music.
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