Dierks Bentley photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Conventional wisdom says that in the music business, once you achieve a certain threshold of success, caution should be your guide. You've come this far, you're told by everyone around you. Don't surprise your audience too much.

But trepidation will not be part of Dierks Bentley's legacy. At every turn in his career, he's done his own thing, whether that meant touring with jam bands, playing rock venues or recording with bluegrass all-stars on platinum country albums. Now Dierks steps forward with his most artistically daring project yet - the all-acoustic Up On The Ridge - a powerful, beautiful album steeped in the bluegrass and roots music that moved Dierks Bentley to be a country musician in the first place.

His fifth album for historic Capitol Records, Up On The Ridge is a document of an artist who's using some well-earned freedom to write in a fresh vein and cook up collaborations with the musicians who fascinate and amaze him most in the world. It's the way all albums should be made - built on an idea and an artist-driven vision - as opposed to formulaic packages of eleven songs with four radio singles.

Dozens of talents have contributed in some way to this project. Besides the five co-written by Dierks himself, the songs come from such varied sources as Bob Dylan, Buddy and Julie Miller, U2 and Kris Kristofferson. The monumental Kristofferson is here as a guest vocalist as well, on his own song, along with a slate of today's best traditional country singers, including Alison Krauss, Vince Gill, Jamey Johnson, Miranda Lambert, Sonya Isaacs and Chris Stapleton of the Steeldrivers. And then there are the players, recruited from the top echelons of bluegrass and acoustic music. Among them: Chris Thile and the Punch Brothers, the Del McCoury Band, the legendary Sam Bush, dobro player Rob Ickes, guitarist Bryan Sutton, fiddler Stuart Duncan, and mandolinist Ronnie McCoury.

All this energy was corralled by producer Jon Randall Stewart, a singer/writer/picker whose track record in roots and country music Dierks admires as much as anyone. He and Stewart agreed they had to avoid the trap of making a contrived-feeling "Dierks Bentley And Friends' album by creating groups and settings that would let everyone work at the top of their game. They matched songs with pickers and guest singers masterfully. They dreamed up a few crazy ideas and pulled them off. It was a genuine creative adventure made possible only by the fact that Dierks established his credibility in bluegrass circles more than a decade ago.

"This record's not a departure for me at all,' says Dierks. "It's really just going back and reclaiming something I feel like I do have some ownership of, which is the acoustic music scene in Nashville."