Story Behind the Song: Dierks Bentley, ‘Draw Me a Map’

Dierks Bentley and Jon Randall have been buddies for nearly 20 years now: They write songs together, hang out together and with their families and share a strong, mutual love of bluegrass. That mutual admiration led the two to co-write numerous songs for Bentley's 2010 bluegrass album, Up on the Ridge, including one of its singles, "Draw Me a Map."

The tune was released in August of 2010 as the second and final single from Up on the Ridge, which Randall also produced. It peaked just outside the Top 30 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart (No. 33). Below, Randall tells The Boot about how "Draw Me a Map" came to be.

We were just throwing around some ideas, and I can't remember how we came up with the words "draw me a map that leads me back to you" at first ... maybe we were talking about traveling, I don't know. But we approached it from this groove that we both really love: It's by that band the Shins ... it's almost a bluegrass groove, but it's the way that that acoustic drives that whole track, and we started playing around with that.

We needed something in that slot on [Up on the Ridge]; we didn't have anything like it. So we just started playing with these melody ideas, and Dierks threw out the first line, and there you go, you just start writing. It's kind of like we wrote ourselves into that chorus. And it sounds like Dierks.

That line could be funny, really, but when you put it in a serious context and make a love song out of it, it's pretty strong. I think it works from both sides, too: I think guys really relate to that, that, "Hey, what did I do? I don't even know what I just said?" But I think women want to hear that, too; they want to know that you're trying.

What I like about it is, most ideas have already been written, but I hadn't necessarily heard this idea before. Maybe it has been done before, and I'm sure someone's approached it, but I thought it was a really different angle for a song.

This story was originally written by Lorie Hollabaugh, and revised by Angela Stefano.

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