SCOTTSDALE β Country superstar Dierks Bentley was βon the road, the vacuum, the darkness of the road, the cave that it is,β when he heard the news: 19 firefighters from Prescottβs elite Granite Mountain Hotshots perished battling an 8,400-acre inferno on Yarnell Hill.
βI can tell you where I was in the moments afterwards,β the Arizona native said last week as he joined the cast and crew of βOnly the Braveβ at The Phoenician Resort in Scottsdale. βJust being on the bus, away from home. When something happens you just want to be home. I just wanted to be back in Arizona badly.β
Three weeks later, Bentley came home and hosted the fundraising concert βCountry Caresβ in Prescott for the families and for the town. The Grammy-nominated artist brought along Nashville friends The Band Perry, Randy Houser and David Nail.
βI met a lot of the families. I met Brendanβ McDonough, the lone survivor of the Yarnell Hill fire, Bentley recalled. βIt was a really emotional night for everybody but a very needed night for me personally, just to do something.β
The concert raised nearly $500,000.
Perhaps it was his connection to Arizona or that concert that brought Bentley to the attention of the βOnly the Braveβ filmmakers. About a year ago, Bentley, who grew up in Scottsdale and now lives in Nashville, was invited to an early screening and then given a proposition: would he come in and finish the movieβs theme song, βHold the Light,β which was a work in progress?
Bentley jumped at the chance, which is his first time performing on a movie.
βIt was a great song. They could have finished it without me,β said Bentley, the father of three who has been performing on a national stage since 2003. βIt needed a bridge. It was almost all the way there, but they let me come in and participate in the writing and do something at the end of it and obviously sing it. They teed me up pretty good.β
Writing for a movie is different from writing for a record, Bentley said, βbut itβs even harder writing a song for a movie that has this much importance to it.β
βIf you care about the story, if you care about these families, you care about these guysβ legacies, then itβs important to write a song that does that,β he explained. βEvery word matters. Every line matters. The way the lines work together matters. Youβre writing a song from the standpoint of these guys who are no longer here, what they are trying to say across the lines of time, the boundaries of time, to their family members who are here.β
βHold the Lightβ comes on at the end of the movie, when the credits roll with the actors pictures beside the firefighter they portrayed. Itβs a moving tribute that Bentley said accentuates what he was trying to convey in the song.
βThe idea is hold the light. You are in the depths of darkness youβve never known before. Just find that ray of hope and hold onto that,β he said. βThe power of music is real and I hope this song has an impact primarily for these families of these guys and possibly beyond that.β
Bentley last week attended a red carpet premiere of βOnly the Braveβ with his mother. What did he think?
βThis is like βTop Gunβ meets wilderness firefighters. It wasnβt what I was expecting at all, but it is. These guys died in this fire and itβs so tragic, but their lives werenβt tragic,β he said. βYoung guys running around in vans and mooning each other, doing all the stuff we do on the (tour) bus: picking on each other, listening to AC/DC and out there rocking it and living it. Itβs a view to their world that we donβt know much about. I like that the movie is like that. It has that spirit and ultimately you walk away with that spirit.β