Dierks Bentley Is The Drone Slayer

Dierks Bentley’s current hit is “Drunk On a Plane.”  But Dierks has a more sober interest in aircraft. He flies planes himself.  He’s not only a licensed pilot, but he also flies remote-control model planes.  He talked about his new hobby with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton:

So what’s this we hear you’ve gotten into remote-control planes: My tour manager Tom has a drone that he’s flying, buzzing around our heads all the time, so I got a $150 remote control airplane, it’s pretty amazing, it’s a big Styrofoam thing, that flies pretty fast, I call it the Drone Slayer, I was going to try and take Tom’s drone out of the sky, which is pretty impossible.  So he & I have been going back and forth.  But I got into remote control planes through Luke Bryan.  He’s a huge fan of remote control planes, so we’re going to try and get them out when we’re at Soldier Field in Chicago on the 31st. It’s just something to do when you’re stuck in a venue all day, trying to have fun, and do stupid things.  There’s a DBTV episode on my web site on it.

What does your tour manager do with the drones? They’re amazing, you can get overhead views of the venues.  I was given a drone and we were flying it in Phoenix, when I was playing a show there, I was flying it from 1000 feet above the venue, into the venue, under the roof to the stage, then flew it back out.  I started buzzing one of our lighting guys, and it got out of control, smashed into a pillar, sheared off the camera, but it still flew without the camera.  Then the next day I was in San Diego, I flew it into a tree, and now it’s gone.  Luckily I’m a better real pilot than I am with a toy plane. Don’t let that scare you.  I’m better flying an actual airplane.

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Category: Audio, VIDEO