Brooks & Dunn

Country duo

Raised in Country Music’s Heartland

Teamwork Quickly Led to Stardom

High-Level Lyric Craft

Selected discography

Sources

Fine dance musicians and expert wordsmiths as well, Brooks & Dunn meld the guitar-driven kick of early 1990s country dance music with the elegance of lyric that has long been country music’s backbone. The duo’s first single release, 1991 ‘s “Brand New Man,” shot to the top of the charts, and Brooks & Dunn have proved to be consistent hitmakers with almost every subsequent release. In a typical country-oriented nightclub in 1993 and 1994, little time could pass before the band or disc jockey selected one of Brooks & Dunn’s compositions.

Brooks & Dunn’s success is testimony to how important collaboration can be in propelling popular musical artists to prominence. Before the two joined forces in 1990, Kix Brooks was a minor Nashville songwriter a few paychecks away from poverty, and Ronnie Dunn was a Tulsa-area dance band leader of purely regional repute. It was their teamwork that forged the tricks learned over long years of apprenticeship into the catchy, irresistible sound that took Brooks & Dunn to the top. Bob Guerra, an influential Los Angeles-area country radio executive, came closer than most music critics when he was asked by a Los Angeles Times writer to account for Brooks & Dunn’s success. “It’s their songs,” he answered. “It’s as simple as that. They’re just good songwriters, writing the kind of songs people like to hear.”

Raised in Country Music’s Heartland

Both Brooks (who acquired the nickname “Kix” as an energetic unborn baby) and Dunn were born into the Texas-Louisiana oil industry setting that in the early 1940s gave birth to honky-tonk dance music itself. Leon Eric Brooks was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1955; he grew up in a house on the same block as the boyhood home of country legend Johnny Horton. Ronnie Gene Dunn was born in the central Texas town of Coleman and grew up in Eldorado, Arkansas, just north of Shreveport. Both men were entertaining beer-hall audiences before they reached the age of 20. Brooks financed studies at Louisiana Tech University with his musical activities; the venues he played were so rowdy, he told a People magazine interviewer, that he sometimes had to quiet the crowd by shooting blanks from a pistol on stage.

Dunn, meanwhile, was ejected from a small Christian college for the sin of playing bass in a bar band on weekends. He moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and there joined forces with a group of musicians that had once backed rock music giant Eric Clapton (and that also included Garth Brooks’s sister Betsy on bass). The band enjoyed some local success, but Dunn was still

For the Record…

Leon Eric “Kix” Brooks (born May 12, 1955, in Shreveport, LA; married; wife’s name, Barbara; children: Molly, Eric). Ronnie Dunn (born June 1, 1953, in Coleman, TX; married; wife’s name, Janine; children [from a previous marriage]: Whitney, Jesse). Education: Brooks graduated from Louisiana Tech University.

Country vocal duo; partnership suggested by Arista executive Tim DuBois; formed in Nashville and signed to Arista Records, 1990; recorded Brand New Man, 1991, and Hard Workin ‘ Man, 1993; six Number One country singles, 1991-94.

Selected awards: Top vocal duet, Academy of Country Music, 1991 and 1992; album of the year, Academy of Country Music, 1992; single of the year, Academy of Country Music, 1992, for “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” ; vocal duo of the year, Country Music Association, 1992 and 1993; Grammy Award, best country vocal duo or group, 1993; triple-platinum record for Brand New Man, 1994.

Addresses: Management —Robert R. Titley & Associates, 706 18th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37203. Record company —Arista Records, 1 Music Circle North, Nashville, TN 37203. Fan Club—Brooks & Dunn Fan Club, P.O. Box 120669, Nashville, TN 37202.

forced to take a series of day jobs, including a stint as a liquor-store clerk, to support his wife and two children.

Brooks eventually moved to Nashville and began working his way up in the city’s hierarchy of songwriters. Though he wrote hit tunes for Highway 101 and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, among others, and eventually attained the position of staff songwriter with the giant Sony/Tree publishing concern, he too faced lean years. “I worked Manpower jobs,” he recalled in Country Americamagazine. “I’d go downtown with forty or fifty other guys and line up for work. It really opened my eyes to America, that’s for sure.”

Dunn’s fortunes turned upward in 1989 with a surprise first-place finish in the Marlboro National Talent Search contest—he didn’t even know that one of his band-mates had submitted his tape for consideration. He moved to Nashville in 1990 when Arista Records executive Tim DuBois selected his composition “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” for inclusion on a work by the western swing band Asleep at the Wheel. Brooks and Dunn were aiming toward individual stardom at this point, but a 1990 solo release from Brooks was a commercial failure. The two performers reacted coolly when DuBois, impressed by the strength of a group of songs they had composed together at his behest, suggested that they join together as performers too. “They both wanted solo careers very badly,” DuBois recalled in an interview with USA Today ’s David Zimmerman. “I think there was that element of letting go of that dream.” But let go they did. Brooks & Dunn’s Brand New Man album was released in August of 1991.

Teamwork Quickly Led to Stardom

Among the songs Brooks and Dunn wrote together were “Brand New Man” and “My Next Broken Heart,” which became the duo’s first two single releases late in 1991. Both rose to Number One on Billboard magazine’s country singles chart, as did the next Brooks & Dunn release, a reflective barroom lament called “Neon Moon.” The duo’s ascent to stardom was complete when the fourth single from Brand New Man, a bass-heavy, eminently danceable version of “Boot Scootin’ Boogie,” also climbed to the top spot. The recording crossed over to non-country dance clubs, and this resulted in the release of a dance remix of the song. Although they initially resisted the remix idea, Brooks & Dunn were responsible for inaugurating the genre of the country dance mix, or “club mix,” which attained considerable popularity in the following years.

Sales of the Brand New Man album mounted steadily, eventually reaching a total of more than three million copies. As Brooks & Dunn worked toward the release of their second album in early 1993, they were reluctant to tamper with a successful formula. “We thought it was kind of funny that a lot of the critics of the second album seemed to be real surprised that we continued with the same kind of music,” Brooks told a Music City News writer.

Critical reviews of Brooks & Dunn’s music are mixed, despite the duo’s success; some critics take them to task for what is seen as a lack of seriousness in their music. “Taken one at a time on country radio, these songs make for satisfying morsels. But when they’re over, you may want to devour something a little meatier,” wrote David Browne in Entertainment Weekly. But the public vindicated the pair’s decision to style the Hard Workin’ Man album after its predecessor. The assortment of up-tempo country dance-party songs was approaching double-platinum status in mid-1994. The “Hard Workin’ Man” single, driven by Dunn’s intense lead vocals, was a sort of rock updating of Merle Haggard’s 1960s hit “Workir Man Blues,” and “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” carried forward the club-mix technique.

High-Level Lyric Craft

Brooks & Dunn may have encouraged the impression that they rarely strive toward great depth in their lyrics. “We leave the profundity to Billy Ray Cyrus,” Brooks once explained in Newsweek, with a characteristic modesty that often borders on self-deprecation. In fact, “Hard Workin’ Man” is a good example of how skillfully Brooks & Dunn have mined long traditions of country songwriting and reconciled them with the high energy of contemporary country. Especially noteworthy in this regard is the fusion of religious and romantic imagery in “Brand New Man,” all unfolding against a backdrop of electric guitars and charged vocal harmonies: “I saw the light, I’ve been baptized/By the fire in your touch and the flame in your eyes/I’m born to love again—I’m a brand new man.”

Brooks & Dunn’s long-term prospects seem to depend on whether they can maintain the consistently high level of songwriting that characterized their first two album releases. By mid-1994 the duo were a well-established concert draw, with Brooks’s manic on-stage presence effectively complementing Dunn’s more restrained demeanor. Their image was enhanced by the release of a line of western wear bearing their names; a shirt with a red and black flame pattern sold particularly well.

In the first few years of their career, Brooks & Dunn backed up their image with songwriting substance, and if they continue to do so, they seem well on their way to admission into the longstanding pantheon of great duet acts in country music.

Selected discography

Brand New Man (includes “Brand New Man,” “My Next Broken Heart,” “Neon Moon,” and “Boot Scootin’ Boogie”), Arista, 1991.Hard Workin’ Man (includes “Hard Workin’ Man” and “Rock My World [Little Country Girl]”), Arista, 1993.

Sources

Billboard, May 22, 1993.

Country America, September 1993.

Country Music, May/June 1993; July/August 1993; May/June 1994.

Country Weekly, May 17, 1994.

Entertainment Weekly, September 18, 1992; February 26, 1993.

Los Angeles Times, January 3, 1993.

Music City News, August 1993.

Newsweek, October 19, 1992.

People, March 29, 1993.

Rolling Stone, May 13, 1993.

USA Today, March 10, 1993.

—James M. Manheim