Every performance has to be a challenge, both for him and his audience. "Every night before I go on stage, in front of me, there's a mountain that has to be climbed. There's no easy way around it, I have to make the climb."

For a guy who spends some 120 days a year touring, it's exactly that kind of challenge that keeps the process exciting for him, night after night. "It's never been about 'putting on a show,'" Bentley says of playing live, "it's about going through this metamorphosis."

A different set of challenges faces him in the recording studio. But as he found out with his most recent album Riser, that can also be extremely rewarding.

The work he put into that album obviously paid off. Not only has it been chock full of strong songs ("I Hold On" and "Drunk on a Plane" both reached No. 1, and "Say You Do" is getting close), it earned an Album of the Year nomination at the 2015 ACM Awards, one of seven Bentley received this year.