Country Enjoyable With Dierks Bentley at Madison Square Garden / August 28, 2025 – The Aquarian

A Dierks Bentley live performance is decidedly totally different from live shows by different nation music artists. Like most touring musicians, Bentley’s live shows lean closely on previous hits and anecdotal tales, intertwined with a number of songs from the newest album. His Broken Branches Tour got here to Madison Square Garden and lit stage with a colourful visible manufacturing that averted lots of the present conventions of live performance staging. Bentley’s present featured no B-stages within the viewers, no pillars of fireplace and smoke rising from the stage, no fireworks and no confetti cannons. Not that these extras are unhealthy, he simply didn’t want them, because of a energetic and human-oriented presentation.

As a matured showman, Bentley selected to not depend on outdoors results to realize his purpose of entertaining his followers. His live performance was distinctive in that, along with the mighty musical preparations, Bentley, his musicians, and his crew intermittently engaged in comedian frivolity to lighten the ambiance and provides the viewers a number of giggles. Whether it was the way in which he launched his proficient musicians, and even the way in which the musicians jostled and cavorted with one another mid-song whereas enjoying their devices, the enjoyable on stage was real sufficient to turn into infectious among the many followers scattered throughout the big enviornment.

Not that this system slacked within the music division. Bentley’s Broken Branches Tour is a touring good-time high-energy occasion. The Band Loula, led by Malachi Mills and Logan Simmons, two lifelong pals from a small city in northern Georgia, carried out a fast-paced half hour of earthy, soulful nation music that even noticed them countrify a canopy of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” From Sunnyside, Washington, Zach Top, whom Bentley later praised as the way forward for nation music, carried out a extra traditional-sounding set of hook-lined, bluegrass-influenced originals. Both of the assist acts acquired sturdy approval from the New York City viewers. After intermission, Bentley and his band members opened their set with an brisk opening medley of “Well Well Whiskey” and “Up on the Ridge.” Yes, this was occasion time but once more.

Now 49 years previous, the Arizona-born and Tennessee-based Bentley has spent half his life as an expert musician, releasing his debut album in 2001. Scoring primary nation songs even together with his first album, Bentley had a deep properly from which to attract songs at Madison Square Garden, considerably greater than the primary time he headlined the sector in 2018. This time, he and his band revisited a number of of his greater hits, together with “What Was I Thinkin’”, “Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go)”, “Am I the Only One”, “5-1-5-0”, “I Hold On”, “Drunk on a Plane”, “Say You Do”, “Somewhere on a Beach,” and “Living.” The set additionally included two songs, “She Hates Me” and “Standing in the Sun,” from Bentley’s twelfth and most up-to-date album, Broken Branches, which he launched this previous June 13.

Confident within the capacity of his seasoned musicians, Bentley incessantly highlighted their contributions by fading backwards and giving them the highlight. They carried out instrumental solos and even sang covers of classic nation songs. Bentley additionally invited The Band Loula to affix him on stage to harmonize with him on a memorable cowl of a Del McCoury Band nation gospel track, “Get Down on Your Knees and Pray.”

The fundamental set ended with considered one of Bentley’s best-known singalong songs, “Drunk on a Plane.” As the track started, he donned a pilot’s jacket and cap. (Bentley holds a personal pilot license, owns a Cirrus SR22T and flies a Cessna Citation CJ4.) At the track’s conclusion, because the viewers cheered for an encore, he and his musicians secretly went backstage to alter outfits.

The encore started with a video parody of tv’s The A Team. The musicians reappeared on stage as Hot Country Knights, Bentley’s ‘90s country parody band. With the musicians wearing wigs and vintage wardrobe, the show reached its highest level of hilarity with an animated medley of country covers. The audience sang, laughed and cheered as the encore concluded Bentley’s live performance with a ridiculous full-tilt honky-tonk dance occasion.

The Broken Branches Tour is greater than a music live performance. It is a fun-filled evening of leisure. Nobody in nation music does it in addition to Dierks Bentley.

Setlist

1. Well Well Whiskey / Up on the Ridge
2. Burning Man (with TJ Osborne)
3. She Hates Me
4. Somewhere on a Beach
5. Gone
6. Living (Dedicated to ‘Superfan’ Matt Durham)
7. I Hold On
8. Free and Easy (Down the Road I Go) / Mountain Music (Alabama cowl)
9. 5-1-5-0
10. Standing within the Sun (Dedicated to his spouse (in attendance))
11. Say You Do
12. Get Down on Your Knees and Pray (The Del McCoury Band cowl, with The Band Loula)
13. Am I the Only One
14. Callin’ Baton Rouge (The Oak Ridge Boys cowl, with Charlie Worsham on lead vocals)
15. Freeborn Man (Keith Allison cowl)
16. What Was I Thinkin’
17. Drunk on a Plane