Dierks Bentley reaches an impressive career milestone this week, as “Gone” becomes his twentieth #1 single of his career. 

The Arizona native points out that it’s also been an appropriate transition out of the COVID-19 pandemic, back into finally being able to play live shows again.

“We’ve been starting the show with ‘Gone,'” he explains, “just acoustic, and then the full band comes in. And it’s a good way to kind of quickly get back from, you know, being in this weird [situation], in this room all together: No one’s wearing masks, and we’re on tour again, and we’ve been ‘Gone.'”

“And then we just get right back into the show and it just feels like nothing’s happened. So I’m thankful for the song and the video that those guys put together,” he adds.

The ACM-nominated “Gone” video finds Dierks reenacting multiple outrageous classic TV scenarios, and he’s pondering making it a bigger part of his set when he launches the Beers on Me Tour in August.

“I was actually thinking it’d be kind of funny to start the tour with — or have some part of the show — where you see that video, ’cause the video ends with me walking out the door,” he says. “Maybe you can see what happens after I walk out the door, maybe I’m shedding all the clothes and getting into my stage clothes and walking up on stage. I don’t know. That could lend itself to a nice segue into something.”

“[It was] just really fun making the video,” he reflects. “And that stems from having a great song that some of my friends back in Nashville wrote and allowed me to record.”

“Gone” is the lead single from Dierks’ forthcoming follow-up to 2018’s The Mountain.

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