Dierks Bentley photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville.

Sept. 30, 2009 — Dierks Bentley was the only country artist on the list this summer when Forbes magazine named 10 people most likely to break from stardom into superstardom. But if he’s ever tempted to take himself too seriously, he needs only look to his past to keep his feet on the ground.

Dierks took a lot of odd jobs to finance his life before he found his way in the music business, and one of those required him to clean 250-gallon septic tanks on houseboats at Lake Powell in Arizona.

“[One day] I was working these levers and suddenly the guys I was working with jumped back in horror,” he told The Orange County Register. “I had done it wrong, and the waste was just shooting out all over everything. I got nailed by it, and I just ran off the end of the dock and into the water. That was definitely a dirty job.”

It certainly makes opening for Brad Paisley a lot more attractive. They appear this weekend, along with Jimmy Wayne, in Phoenix, San Diego and Irvine, Calif.

Dierks’ annual Miles & Music For Kids charity motorcycle ride and concert takes place Oct. 11 in Nashville with guest appearances by Wynonna, Heidi Newfield, Darius Rucker, Eric Church and Michelle Branch.

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