Jason Isbell vs. Dierks Bentley

[rlipps]

Jason's accusing Dierks Bentley of ripping off "In a Razor Town" for his new song "Home". Pretty entertaing back and forth between them on Twitter.

[Clams]

Cool. I love stuff like this. Does anyone have a link to the Bently song?

[Sirk]

Cool. I love stuff like this. Does anyone have a link to the Bently song?

The chorus is the exact same melody, phrasing, tempo etc.

http://youtu.be/wSJoZiB-UGY

[mwh]

The whole thing reminds me of Vanilla Ice claiming he didn't rip off Under Pressure. "It's not exactly the same"

[Jonicont]

Pretty funny. Who the fuck is Dierks Bently?

[Tequila Cowboy]

Never heard of Dierks Bently until about fifteen minutes ago, but Jason couldn't be more correct. The chorus is an excact rip.

[floorman]

Celebrity death match??
Settle it in the ring
In that clay animation world

[Smitty]

Dierks is actually one of the better, more original mainstream country acts - he's mentioned being into DBT in online interviews and on a spotlight feature on GAC, so it may have been a subconscious thing - calling hima douchebag when he didn't actually write the song was a bit much, maybe he'll cover "Outfit" and make Jason a few bucks.

Never heard of Dierks Bently until about fifteen minutes ago, but Jason couldn't be more correct. The chorus is an excact rip.

No doubt about it.

[dee dee]

What's it take to win a suit like this? A few years ago I remember Chris Robinson leveling a similar charge at Gretchen Wilson. Don't know what the result was, but this seems much more blatant than Robinson/Wilson.

[Jack Flash]

Dierks' grade school-level retorts tend to make me think he's either guilty of conscious plagiarism or an immature idiot. Possibly both.

[Smitty]

What's it take to win a suit like this? A few years ago I remember Chris Robinson leveling a similar charge at Gretchen Wilson. Don't know what the result was, but this seems much more blatant than Robinson/Wilson.

Gretchen ended up giving the Robinsons a songwriting credit - but I believe that was far more blatant.

Take a listen to this, while we're on the subject of "Jealous Again":

[Smitty]

not taking dierks side, cuz neither of these are half as blatant as home/razor town, but shit like that happens.
however, after seeing dierks (&his PR teams) rather condescending reaction, i support any way jason decides to handle it.

[Cole Younger]

Dierks Bentley is a deuche bag of the highest order. He's everything that I don't like about mainstream country.

I envy yall who were blissfully unaware of that ass clown until tonight.

Unfortunately, I know lots of people who have absolutely no clue who Jason is or who DBT are and they love stuff like Dierks Bentley.

[Smitty]

Dierks Bentley is a deuche bag of the highest order. He's everything that I don't like about mainstream country.

I envy yall who were blissfully unaware of that ass clown until tonight.

Unfortunately, I know lots of people who have absolutely no clue who Jason is or who DBT are and they love stuff like Dierks Bentley.

I've been a fairweather fan of Dierks since his first single, IMO he's actually been one of the better mainstream country acts - not necessarily his music, which while not as bad as most is nothing special, but his attitude - until this incident, I've never noticed anything remotely "douchebag"-ish about him. He's given props to DBT and Lucero in interviews, and he seems to have a little more integrity than most of the hat acts out there at the moment, even recording a bluegrass album a couple years back, which may not seem like much but is pretty damn remarkable for a mainstream country artist.
However, his reaction to all of this is making me take a second look at him -

[WSPDBT]

What's it take to win a suit like this? A few years ago I remember Chris Robinson leveling a similar charge at Gretchen Wilson. Don't know what the result was, but this seems much more blatant than Robinson/Wilson.

Basically, Chris Robinson shamed Gretchen Wilson into an early retirement and sued the shit out of her.

[Cole Younger]

What's it take to win a suit like this? A few years ago I remember Chris Robinson leveling a similar charge at Gretchen Wilson. Don't know what the result was, but this seems much more blatant than Robinson/Wilson.

Basically, Chris Robinson shamed Gretchen Wilson into an early retirement and sued the shit out of her.

Chris is merciless on the mainstream country acts. LOL. He was pretty vocal about how awful he thinks Taylor Swift is too.

[oxfordcrowe]

Chris is merciless on just about everything. He can ramble, but sometimes he makes a point and it's generally pretty sharp.

[LBRod]

Here's the only thing I know about Dierks.

[Duke Silver]

It was interesting watching this unfold yesterday. In between the insults, Bentley tweeted a link to an interview with Dan Wilson, one of his two co-writers on "Home". The ridiculousness of the fact that it took three (3!) adults to come up that corny, flag waving bullshit aside, there's this:

"Q: Logistically, how did you write it?

A: The beginning of the song was really an even give-and-take between the three of us. I had asked if we could write in a place with a grand piano, and that's really unusual in Nashville. Usually you write a song in the publisher's office with a printer humming next to your head and the phone ringing every once in a while. You're just sitting on somebody's couch, literally, in a little office. I have never really found that very inspiring.

So we got a place with a grand piano and we kind of talked for a little while and didn't really play any music. We talked for about 20 minutes and shot the breeze in a kind of general way.

And then Dierks got a phone call from his wife and he had to go out and answer it. It was about his car, and it was some little thing that he had to take care of. So he went out of the studio.

And I think Brett started strumming something and I might have played a chord on the piano, and in about five minutes, we had the verse melody, which was mostly Brett, but I think it was inspired by the piano.

He had told me that he never writes with people sitting at a piano. It's very unusual for him. And it was a strange and kind of cool new thing to do. When Dierks came back in, we played him this thing. And he said "when did you come up with that?" [LAUGHS]

Brett said, "We did it just now." Dierks replied, "Where did it come from?" And Brett said, "It fell from the sky." Then I think we kind of banged around on verse ideas. I'm pretty sure that I sort of announced boldly that the song sounded like a patriotic song, and it needed to have the word "America" in it.

Both Brett and Dierks were slightly horrified by the blatantness of putting the word in. But I kept waving that flag. Then Brett wrote what turned into the third verse. Then Dierks came up with the hook line of the song."

"Hook line" equals chorus, I would think. And isn't that the part in question? Way to implicate yourself, buddy.

[sg207]

I remember Bentley having a song I really liked about 8 or 10 years ago ("What Was I Thinking," or something like that). Never heard anything else by him. I didn't even realize he was still making music. I had him classified as a "1 hit wonder."

Anyway, from reading Twitter, it sounds like Jason is sueing him. Good for him, I hope he gets a ton off of it. This rip off shit that the mainstream artists like to pull (and I'm talking to YOU, Coldplay), is absolute garbage.

[RolanK]

This rip off shit that the mainstream artists like to pull (and I'm talking to YOU, Coldplay), is absolute garbage.

Just threw up in my hands!! Did you have really have to mention them??

[Zip City]

The only thing that makes me question this conspiracy theory is this: what are the chances that Dierks Bentley and some cookie-cutter Nashville songwriters have ever HEARD a Jason Isbell album?


EDIT: just listened to it. Yeah, it's pretty damn similar (though not 100%), but it's a pretty standard 3-note progression. Don't think there's much substance to this accusation

[brstigerfan]

The only thing that makes me question this conspiracy theory is this: what are the chances that Dierks Bentley and some cookie-cutter Nashville songwriters have ever HEARD a Jason Isbell album?

As it has been mentioned, Dierks is apparently a DBT fan. I would say it's highly likely that he has heard Sirens of the Ditch. The chorus is an exact rip off, and if Jason is really suing, he will win.

[Duke Silver]

The only thing that makes me question this conspiracy theory is this: what are the chances that Dierks Bentley and some cookie-cutter Nashville songwriters have ever HEARD a Jason Isbell album?


EDIT: just listened to it. Yeah, it's pretty damn similar (though not 100%), but it's a pretty standard 3-note progression. Don't think there's much substance to this accusation

That was my first thought, too, but doesn't Jason have a publishing deal with some group that shops his songs around to Nashville artists like Dierks? (Fame, or something like that? Smitty probably knows.) It's not completely out of the question that Dierks could have heard IART before on one of those songwriter demo thingies.

[sg207]

The only thing that makes me question this conspiracy theory is this: what are the chances that Dierks Bentley and some cookie-cutter Nashville songwriters have ever HEARD a Jason Isbell album?

As it has been mentioned, Dierks is apparently a DBT fan. I would say it's highly likely that he has heard Sirens of the Ditch. The chorus is an exact rip off, and if Jason is really suing, he will win.

I think this is the answer Zip. I can't imagine that Dierks hasn't heard it if he really is a DBT fan. Was it intentional? I would guess so, but no, I don't know for certain. Still, Bentley's response via Twitter is pretty low class, and doesn't make much sense.

[Clams]

I don't know what the legal standards are in a lawsuit for stealing someone's song. I'd imagine it's a tough case to win. That being said, the Bentley song sounds remarkably similar to Jason's. Not just the chorus but the whole damn song. It's hard for me to believe that the similarity is coincidental. Bentley's link to that interview about how his song was created does nothing to dispel the idea that the melody was stolen. To answer the question posed above, I have no doubt that a bunch of professional Nashville songwriters would know exactly who Jason is. Why wouldn't they? Jason's been around the alt-country scene for 10 years, he's always been highly regarded by critics, releases records pretty regularly, tours extensively, etc. He also opens and co-headlines with some pretty big and well regarded artists (Ryan Adams, JTE, McMurtry, Hayes Carll). People here are always saying that some big time country star could hit number 1 with a cover of Outfit - well instead of buying one of Jason's songs, someone's stolen one. That sucks for him.

[olwiggum]

His deal is through FAME. And FWIW, I'm pretty sure that one of the Hall fellas is a lawyer. I don't know for sure, though.
One of Rick Hall's kids, Rodney, has Jason's publishing. I think his brother is a lawyer.

[Cole Younger]

In the interest of being fair, I have to say that there are some songs on Here We Rest that, at least in terms of melody, remind me of other songs.

[Iowan]

In the interest of being fair, I have to say that there are some songs on Here We Rest that, at least in terms of melody, remind me of other songs.

Agreed. Codeine uses a very common chord progression (OCMS's "Wagon Wheel", "I'm Goin' Down" by The Boss, "Rebels"), but the meter of the singing is pretty different as is the actual melody.

But you could sing the chorus of that Dierks Bently song over the words to "In a Razor Town" and not miss a beat.

[blackwll]

His deal is through FAME. And FWIW, I'm pretty sure that one of the Hall fellas is a lawyer. I don't know for sure, though.
One of Rick Hall's kids, Rodney, has Jason's publishing. I think his brother is a lawyer.

Look at http://www.alabar.org to determine their status as a lawyer in Florence/Muscle Shoals (could be licensed in TN or elsewhere though). There is one lawyer Hall in Tuscumbia and one in Florence.

I think attorney John P. Strohm (formerly of Birmingham, now in Nashville) has represented some of the artists with whom we are familiar. He is a musician also. Blake Babies, Lemonheads, and solo. I like several of his solo albums a lot. Maybe he could hook Jason up with a lawsuit (if one is warranted).

I know there was a case involving John Fogerty CCR ripping off himself where he testified using his guitar as a demonstrative aid. I think that is the leading case in the Supreme Court but not sure. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-1750.ZO.html