Country star Dierks Bentley has a reputation as a fun guy. He hosts cocktail parties backstage every night on tour, and there’s a party atmosphere onstage too. After all, this is the guy who had a hit about turning an airline flight into “Mardi Gras up in the clouds” with “Drunk on a Plane.”
In 2019, Bentley and his wife Cassidy decided to take a break from drinking. “You don’t get to do this as long as I do without being smart,” Bentley says. It turns out that what was in a red Solo cup at those pre-show parties was sometimes water, allowing him to stay focused and stay social. (Bentley is a pilot and flies his crew to their shows — another reason to abstain.) “It’s like lifting the Wizard of Oz curtain.”
Cassidy was shopping at White’s Mercantile in 12South and bought a couple of bottles of WithCo, nonalcoholic mixers that can be used on their own or combined with liquor. They were a complete game-changer. “It was an eye-opener for me," Bentley says. "I could take a long break and still be part of the party with a drink in my hand."
Soon Bentley added WithCo to his artist’s rider, making sure the beverages were stocked backstage. That was a surprise to WithCo's Joshua Ellis. He and Bradley Ryan launched WithCo from the trunk of a car in 2017, making mixers with botanicals and juices and no additives. In January 2020, Ellis quit his job to focus on WithCo full-time. A few months later, the pandemic made mixing cocktails at home a very popular pastime.
“We outgrew three warehouses in a year,” Ellis says. “We were doing the revenue we used to do annually in one month.”Â
In addition to being stocked at small shops like White’s Mercantile, WithCo is sold online and at national retailers, including Target. Ellis wanted to expand into bars and restaurants, believing that places that have a shortage of bar backs and bartenders would appreciate the opportunity to cut back on stocking and squeezing fresh limes. (In Nashville, WithCo is already available at 1 Hotel, The Listening Room Cafe, Layer Cake and others.) To do that, he needed an infusion of cash.
Ellis is a Nashville native. WithCo is headquartered in East Nashville and is manufactured in Dickson. But Ellis wasn’t a country music fan, and wasn't familiar with Bentley’s music. He had already decided he didn’t want a celebrity spokesperson — that wasn’t the vibe WithCo was going for. But the brand name is short for “with company,” so when Ellis heard that Bentley was a fan who was using the product exactly as intended — sharing with company before a concert — he knew he needed to reach out. He Googled the name of Bentley’s agent.
“I did not want a celebrity-beverage deal — that does not feel authentic,” Ellis says. But within an hour of meeting Bentley, they had a deal — not for Bentley to be a spokesperson, but to be an investor and a strategic partner. The deal was announced this month, and already Bentley’s contacts have proven useful. Bentley flew Ellis to Arkansas for a meeting with the CEO of Walmart about getting WithCo in those stores. And conversations to stock WithCo at the bar at Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row are taking place.
Bentley’s break from alcohol is over (his favorite spirit is bourbon in Kentucky, as expected from one of his song titles), and he’s still drinking WithCo, with or without spirits depending on the occasion. His favorite is the Agave Margarita, which he combines with a nonalcoholic tequila. And for him, teaming with Ellis is using a different part of his brain. “It keeps the other side writing songs, because you aren’t stuck in one gear,” he says of the creative outlet.
The two have a common goal, whether it is through drinks or music. “My main thing is bringing people together,” Bentley says.Â
