Is Dierks Bentley Blake Shelton's latest role model?

It sure sounds like it in this radio interview from Sunday (April 26) when Shelton played the Stagecoach festival in California.

"Right now, I'm at an absolute zero," Shelton told KUZZ/Bakersfield, California, of his level of drunkenness. "I hope to get somewhere within the realm of a Dierks Bentley. Dierks was having a good time."

Bentley played Stagecoach Saturday night, along with Shelton's wife Miranda Lambert.

"Maybe I won't go quite that far, because I don' know if I have enough alcohol to get where he was," Shelton said. “But I'm gonna try."

He said he hadn't played the country music festival in a few years, and that the last time he had, he was opening for Lambert.

"I was giving her crap yesterday. I said, 'You know, in a way, you're actually opening for me.' She didn't see it that way and didn't laugh at all," he admitted.

Later in the interview, when he does some word association, Shelton calls his debut song "Austin" the beginning.

"If I do a show and don't play 'Austin,' I can get on Twitter and it's like, 'I'm never going back to see him again. The only reason I came was to see “Austin.”'

“I love that," he said of the enduring popularity of his 2001 answering-machine hit. "I'm still so proud of that record."