It’s been 25 years since Dierks Bentley left Phoenix for Nashville to pursue his dream of launching a career in country music.

And given the fact that he’s headlining Ak-Chin Pavilion – again – in support of “The Mountain,” his fourth consecutive release to top the Billboard country charts, it's safe to say the move turned out to be a pretty solid plan.

But as the country superstar was preparing to dive back into the creative process for his latest record, he started wondering if time had come to step outside the comfort zone he’d found in Nashville.

“I’ve been here a long time,” the Phoenix native says. “And it’s a lot of fun. But I am always looking for new ways to be inspired. And working in the same studios, writing in the same buildings, driving on the same roads, how am I supposed to create something new when I’m going through all these same channels?”

'Something about the mountains'

He already knew where those same roads would lead and it seemed like time to “bring the element of fear back into the creative process, just trying to trick your system into recreating that first-time feeling. That’s the key. And you can’t fake that. You’ve gotta chase down that original sense of joy and wonder and be present in that.”

Colorado was his wife’s idea.

“There’s something about the mountains,” she said, suggesting a writing retreat with his friends in Telluride.

At the time, Bentley says, he was finishing up a string of dates out west.

“I was kind of skeptical, thinking, ‘Man, it’s just more time away from my kids.' But it was really special. And it was the start of the journey.”

Bentley's journey had begun in earnest at the 2017 Telluride Bluegrass Festival and continued through the writing and recording of "The Mountain" to the launching of a three-day Seven Peaks Music Festival, which took place on Labor Day weekend.

Reflections on a Phoenix childhood

"As a kid, that was the place we would leave Arizona to go," he says of Colorado. "My parents had a small condo in a big building. We’d use the heck out of it. We were there for Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, Presidents weekend. That’s just where we went."

The man has always loved mountains, having grown up climbing Camelback from the time he was just 4 years old.

"I lived with a mountain in my backyard," Bentley says. "And I looked at that mountain every day."

In Nashville, Bentley says, there are no mountains.

"It’s one of those things I think about all the time, moving back where there are mountains," Bentley says. "A little bit too much sometimes. I have to remind myself that there’s some beauty in not being home because you never for a second take it for granted."

Take an Arizona sunset

"When I’m out there to hang out with my buddy Brian (Frakes) in his backyard on Indian School, you’ll see an Arizona sunset and I’m just like, ‘I can’t take my eyes off it.’ He’s like, ‘Another sunset. Big deal.’ But to me, it’s like, 'No, look at that. That’s amazing! Look what it’s done to the clouds. The whole sky has changed color."

There's a piece of duct tape on a backpack sitting by the door in Bentley's Nashville home. It says “The West.”

That's his "West" backpack, Bentley says. "So I can grab a pair of boots, a sack of clothes and get the hell out of Dodge. I look at it every day ‘cause one day, I will grab that backpack and be headed back to somewhere. But for now, I’m here."

When you live in a city as big as Nashville, Bentley says, "you lose your connection to nature. And for me, there’s no better place than the mountains. You talk about NAU and that part of Arizona or even down south in Sierra Vista. That’s where I connect."

When his wife first suggested inviting songwriting friends to Colorado, Bentley was convinced they'd never go for it. "And when I started putting the feelers out there, they were like, 'Telluride? For four days? Are you kidding me? Yeah.'"

When they got into town, he says, he took them on a hike and explained what he was after.

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

"I said, 'The last two years I’ve been on the road and heard so many stories at meet and greets of hardship and people going through tough times and how the music inspires them and I need this cathartic release, I need to feel whatever this feeling is right here.'"

And they were all "super-inspired," Bentley says, co-writing 14 songs in four days.

"We’d get up in the morning at 6, have some coffee, watch the sun come up around 7 o’clock and we’d be writing by 8:30. We’d write throughout the day, just bouncing around three little apartments or houses."

It was a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity, he says, to "go back and pretend you’re going to the University of Colorado, which I didn’t get into, and pretend I was living on campus somewhere in a house with six friends, drinkin’ beer and whatever else every evening, just watching the sun go down and talking, getting ready to do it all again the next day. It was like a bunch of grown-ups getting a chance to pretend they’re 17 again."

The album title was his wife's idea.

"Looking back at it now," he says, "I mean there’s other albums out there called 'The Mountain,' but at the time, we were like, 'Oh my God, 'The Mountain.' This is unbelievable!' It’s like the music industry and my career, you’re climbing, you’re falling off, the struggle. We must’ve been drinking wine because we thought it was the best idea ever."

Once he'd wrapped his mind around the concept of "The Mountain," Bentley says, the album started taking shape.

Preserving the art of the album

Making albums that hold up as albums is an ideal Bentley feels he's been pursuing since at least as far back as 2014's "Riser."

"With 'Riser' and every album since then," Bentley says, "I haven’t worried about tours or attendance or anything. It’s just about making great albums. I’m proud of every album I’ve made but these last three or four, that’s all I’m thinking about. I’m trying to basically make a book in musical form, that has chapters and has this standalone quality to it."

"The Mountain" leaves you with a chapter Bentley didn't write, a song called "How I'm Going Out" about a stage in his career that hasn't happened yet.

In the opening line, he sings, "Someday somebody's gonna stop and look or scratch their head and say 'What happened to him? It's been a while since I heard that name.'"

His manager begged him not to put it on the record, he says, with a laugh.

"But I do think about that," Bentley says. "You know, spoiler alert, at some point, it is gonna end. And I want to walk away feeling great about what we’ve done. I’ve seen so many people go through this thing like a meat grinder where they come out the other side and it just seems like they’ve lost so much."

He'd rather just look forward, Bentley says, to whatever journey lies ahead.

"Like the line in the song says, 'Some left too soon / Some didn’t know when to leave.' And I don’t want to be one of the ones who didn’t know when to leave. I feel like right now every year is better than the one before. The vibe from my band and my crew on the road, it just feels like we’re still on the way up, which is a good feeling."

Bentley pauses, then adds, "At some point, maybe it won’t be like that. And when that time comes, I’m not gonna be digging my fingernails into the dirt. I won’t be screaming, 'Don’t take me away from it.' I’ll be ready. Right now, I’m still a long way from that, But at some point, it’s gonna end. And when it does, I want to be good with it."

With a laugh, he adds, "I’ll be back on Camelback Mountain, climbing it every day like I used to."

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Dierks Bentley

When: 7 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 29. Brothers Osborne and LANCO open.

Where: Ak-Chin Pavilion, 2121 N. 83rd Ave., Phoenix.

Admission: $39.25-$99.

Details: 602-254-7200, livenation.com.