Dierks Bentley’s Daughter Is Dating + His Reaction is Unexpected

Believe it or not, Dierks Bentley‘s oldest daughter Evie, is 16 — and yep, she’s dating.

Watching a teenage daughter start dating boys is a big milestone for any dad, and not always a fun one. Bentley himself sang about the kind of father who sits out on a porch mean-mugging his daughter’s love interest in his early-career hit, “What Was I Thinking.”

But is he ready to pepper anyone’s tailgate? Short answer: No.

Bentley was recently a guest on Taste of Country Nights, where he told host, Evan Paul, “You know, I always thought I’d be the dad, on the porch with the shotgun, you know, cleaning it off,” as he asks the kid what his name is.

But Bentley explained to us that he is kind of the opposite.

“I kind of find myself being a little different,” he muses. “You know, these kids are on their devices a lot, they’re Snapchatting a lot, I’m more like, ‘Okay, let’s get the ball rolling here, you know, let’s get some action here.'”

In other words, he’s just happy to see her living her life in real time — not through her phone.

“I look back at what I was doing back then, I don’t want them doing all that stuff, but I definitely want them to be living their lives,” the singer elaborates. “The phone is such a time killer and a life killer and I want them to be out there doing stuff, even if it means their getting a little crazy.”

But there is one unexpected downside to Evie’s dating life — it gets in the way of Bentley’s beauty rest.

“You know, the hard thing now is…like, my daughter had this really nice boy over the house the other night, they watched a movie upstairs, and it’s like 11:30p, and I’m like, ‘dude, I’m ready to go to bed,'” Bentley goes on to say.

But he didn’t want to interrupt their time together before the movie ended, so he just stayed up and waited for the boy to leave, and never questioned them.