Over last weekend I was hovering at the bar at a birthday party when a mutual friend reintroduced me to someone I hadn’t seen for the best part of fifty years. ‘When last we met,’ he began ‘ you told me you didn’t like country music.’ It was true I confessed. ‘I was young and was very, very stupid. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t like it, I just had only heard bad examples and never got close to the good stuff.’

It’s a common enough story. Willy Vlautin told me much the same thing when we first met. He associated country music with the red-neck guys he despised in his local scene until his brother introduced him to Willy Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger or Shotgun Willie albums.

I was reminded a little of this as my youngest son is currently residing in the house before he moves into his new pad. We were heading to The Highlands ten years ago for our October holiday and such was the accumulation of luggage and children that we took two cars. At one point my son laughed at his sisters having to share the ride in my car. ‘Ha ha’ he scoffed, ‘Country music for three hours.’ In actual facts the cars got swapped and reluctantly he accompanied me and became my CD opener and general helper as I sifted through a pile of new releases. (In these days we got sent a pile each week) I remember his vague sarcasm (even at the age of fourteen) as he began examining the Dierks Bentley offering. Even his name seemed like a weird hybrid sports car and certainly didn’t register as a serious artist to the young lad. As the music progressed however I could detect a certain respect without ever admitting it might be a record he would play himself. Cut to ten years later and I’m at home in Glasgow while he’s somewhere in London sending me a George Jones playlist. You don’t sneer when you get the good stuff.

The album we were gently enjoying all thise years back was probably Riser. The title track alone is worth the purchase money. Since then I’ve followed Dierks’s career with interest as he’s veered between the the broodier songs from the album that succeeded that album, Black, to his love of Bluegrass and his enjoyment of cornball country pop songs. The great thing about Dierks music is if you don’t love a song then you simply fast forward to the next track because you’ll probably find one to melt your heart sooner or later.

In the second hour of this week’s AC we will play lots of Dierks Bentley classics punctuated by a conversation with the man himself we recorded on the first day of C2C back in March. We’ll talk about songs, collaborations and his love of bluegrass over a hugely successful twenty five year career. It’s a conversation you can hear from eight o’clock this coming Tuesday evening on BBC Radio Scotland or BBC Sounds. Join me if you can.