Dierks Bentley announced as Winstock 2010 Friday night headliner

Not so many years ago, Winstock 2010’s recently-announced Friday night headliner Dierks Bentley was singing for tips in Second Avenue bars and soaking up country music history at his day job working in the videotape library of the late, great Nashville Network. Today, Bentley is among the most successful and relevant country singers in the business. They say Nashville doesn't work like this anymore - that talented strivers with no connections don't stand a chance. But Bentley proved that Music City’s engine still runs and that as a place for education, inspiration and validation, it has no parallel.  Critics find him credible. Fans pack his shows.  There are precious few new artists recording hits today about whom that can be said.

Bentley’s kind of country has never been straight-up-the-middle. Instead, the Arizona-native grew up on a potent hybrid of honky-tonk, bluegrass, singer/songwriters, classic country and modern rock & roll, forging his own sound along the way.

“I love the feeling of combining the best older stuff with the edginess of newer, more progressive sounds,” said the prestigious CMA Horizon Award winner.  “ I try to take the real life connectedness of the stories and songs of Hank Williams and Buck Owens, and then try to put a fresh modern sound to it.”