Dierks Bentley announced he will release his upcoming ninth studio album, The Mountain, in early 2018.

The impetus for the album’s creation was Dierk’s June 2017 performance at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in the town of Telluride in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado. Dierks returned to Telluride a short time later for a week-long retreat with fellow songwriters Natalie Hemby, Luke Dick, Ross Copperman, Jon Randall, Jon Nite and Ashley Gorley and wrote the bulk of the album’s songs, including the title track.

“Telluride just makes you want to reach for your guitar,” says Dierks. “We all went out there and got completely off the grid . . . out of our normal element and the grind that happens on Music Row and it was, from the very get-go, magic. We’d wake up every morning, grab a coffee, take the gondola up, watch the sun come up over the mountains, and by 8:30 we were writing. We just wrote nonstop.”

Two months after the writing session, Dierks returned to Telluride with musicians and his production team—including producers Ross Copperman and Jon Randall and executive producer Arturo Buenahora—to record the album in a small studio atop a mesa outside of town.

“Obviously, the songs were written and recorded in the mountains,” says Dierks. “But it’s the mountain that we’re all faced with every day, and the struggle to put one foot in front of the other even when things are hard, that we all have in common. Looking back now, I think we were all searching for hope and optimism when we were writing this music.”

Watch a preview of the album’s title track below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsoNWGSXpRI