NAME:
Ronnie Dunn
ABOUT
“It’s what it’s always been: a Middle American cowboy perspective. It’s different from everyone else, because it defines how you’re made, what your DNA is. That’s where I come from: it’s all I am, and I bring it all.”
Ronnie Dunn is not kidding. The full-throttle vocal blowtorch who put honky-tonk on steroids in 4-time ACM/CMA Entertainer of the Year duo Brooks & Dunn doesn’t flinch when he talks about music, and he knows just where the sweet spot is. To him, you work from what you are, then you build out in sundry ways to make it more.
Of course, it’s easy when you’re the son of an Oklahoma wildcatter who was a hardscrabble honky-tonk singer on weekends and a deacon’s daughter who sought redemption the way her husband believed in Saturday night. Add the ferocious vocal chords and ability to eviscerate a song’s underpinnings – and Ronnie Dunn becomes the kind of authentic teXture that can’t be constructed, only rendered by living.
Beyond the ACM Song of the Year and CMA Single of the Year for “Believe,” the sold-out concert tours – including their legendary Neon Circus, dubbed by one critic Bubbapalooza – and 26 #1 hits, Dunn ignited a roadhouse revolution harnessing his life in and around Tulsa, as well as Bible college in TeXas, and putting it to song.
“That guy people keep talking about – that’s me,” he declares unapologetically. “That was me, and what you heard, that’s my life. You can’t separate who I am from what we did, just like you can’t take who I am out of the songs I’m writing now…”
“Sure, you grow and you change, but you remain the person you are – always. I’m gonna come with songs I feel are country, no matter what else is on the track or in the melody. I never saw coming out of Brooks & Dunn and being something radically different because I was me in that duo. How I sing, those songs – they were always me.”
“I’m hellbent on being a good singer! That song that isn’t hardcore or traditional, maybe when it comes up, it is. I know what sets me on fire, and that’s what I want to do.”
Dunn has always broken ground, done the unorthodoX, pushed the envelope. It can’t be done by formula – or assembly-line process. Instead time lets the music rise, but that doesn’t mean creating is a passive eXperience for the man who carved out the #1s “That Ain’t No Way To Go”, “She Used to Be Mine,” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” and “Neon Moon” before ever coming to Music City.
“I’ve been writing by myself,” he says of his current creative process. “All the early hits happened that way, before the road and the whine of diesel engines backstage and keeping up with a career made co-writing necessary. But I think it’s truer when you get the time and space to write on your own.”
He’s also been tinkering in his storied Barn, playing with unlikely things and seeing how his music can again push the envelope. A hip-hop song gets honky-tonked, a massive pop hit is given a classic old school bar-room jukeboX treatment. Laughing, he concedes, “I wrote one called ‘She Don’t Honky Tonk No More.’ It might have a steel guitar or some fiddle on it.”
Dunn tapped former Neon Circus tourmate Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) to team up for some sides, believing in collaboration, intriguing things can happen. If Rascal Flatts smooth power-balladry seems the antithesis of what Dunn’s about, the hybrid they’re creating is hitting a sweet spot.
“Our vision is very different, but he’s highly creative – and he’s got the chops,” enthuses Dunn, the man seeking to make his mark of his own. “But that difference keeps the room spinning in just the right way.
“Allison Jones (Big Machine’s SVP of A&R) threw it out early when we were talking about co-producers, and I was like ‘Let’s go slow, and let the songs dictate.’ But Jay’s got a great way of communicating to the players, and we’re getting a lot of energy out of HIS tracks. Getting the players fired up isn’t as simple as you think, and that’s been something Jay and I have been able to do. Crazy stuff, but it’s crazy good.”
Dunn’s neXt single “Damn Drunk” with KiX Brooks will be released on August 5 with his Big Machine Label Group debut album coming later this fall. Acknowledging, “Sometimes it’s undefined and eclectic, which leaves room for magic to happen. As a writer, I want songs that reflect the human condition and heartache.”
This follows his first single off the album, “Ain’t No Trucks In TeXas,” a more urgent misdirection on indifference in the face of heartache than John Waite’s classic “Missing You,” Dunn arrives. Evoking the talismans that defined Brooks & Dunn, including metaphors that aren’t obvious, but spot on, he shows songs are more than checklists and hooks. And always giving fans the uneXpected, the album will also include a cover of pop-sensation Ariana Grande’s hit “Tattooed Heart.”
“What is this is gonna be? We’re figuring it out. There’s so much I’m legitimately eXcited about, because it’s different enough from what I’ve done. That’s the part when you’re an artist: to grow and find new places, but stay true.”
“Beyond that, it’ll be a fast car with a fast singer coming at you hard.”
ExpandRonnie Dunn is not kidding. The full-throttle vocal blowtorch who put honky-tonk on steroids in 4-time ACM/CMA Entertainer of the Year duo Brooks & Dunn doesn’t flinch when he talks about music, and he knows just where the sweet spot is. To him, you work from what you are, then you build out in sundry ways to make it more.
Of course, it’s easy when you’re the son of an Oklahoma wildcatter who was a hardscrabble honky-tonk singer on weekends and a deacon’s daughter who sought redemption the way her husband believed in Saturday night. Add the ferocious vocal chords and ability to eviscerate a song’s underpinnings – and Ronnie Dunn becomes the kind of authentic teXture that can’t be constructed, only rendered by living.
Beyond the ACM Song of the Year and CMA Single of the Year for “Believe,” the sold-out concert tours – including their legendary Neon Circus, dubbed by one critic Bubbapalooza – and 26 #1 hits, Dunn ignited a roadhouse revolution harnessing his life in and around Tulsa, as well as Bible college in TeXas, and putting it to song.
“That guy people keep talking about – that’s me,” he declares unapologetically. “That was me, and what you heard, that’s my life. You can’t separate who I am from what we did, just like you can’t take who I am out of the songs I’m writing now…”
“Sure, you grow and you change, but you remain the person you are – always. I’m gonna come with songs I feel are country, no matter what else is on the track or in the melody. I never saw coming out of Brooks & Dunn and being something radically different because I was me in that duo. How I sing, those songs – they were always me.”
“I’m hellbent on being a good singer! That song that isn’t hardcore or traditional, maybe when it comes up, it is. I know what sets me on fire, and that’s what I want to do.”
Dunn has always broken ground, done the unorthodoX, pushed the envelope. It can’t be done by formula – or assembly-line process. Instead time lets the music rise, but that doesn’t mean creating is a passive eXperience for the man who carved out the #1s “That Ain’t No Way To Go”, “She Used to Be Mine,” “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” and “Neon Moon” before ever coming to Music City.
“I’ve been writing by myself,” he says of his current creative process. “All the early hits happened that way, before the road and the whine of diesel engines backstage and keeping up with a career made co-writing necessary. But I think it’s truer when you get the time and space to write on your own.”
He’s also been tinkering in his storied Barn, playing with unlikely things and seeing how his music can again push the envelope. A hip-hop song gets honky-tonked, a massive pop hit is given a classic old school bar-room jukeboX treatment. Laughing, he concedes, “I wrote one called ‘She Don’t Honky Tonk No More.’ It might have a steel guitar or some fiddle on it.”
Dunn tapped former Neon Circus tourmate Jay DeMarcus (Rascal Flatts) to team up for some sides, believing in collaboration, intriguing things can happen. If Rascal Flatts smooth power-balladry seems the antithesis of what Dunn’s about, the hybrid they’re creating is hitting a sweet spot.
“Our vision is very different, but he’s highly creative – and he’s got the chops,” enthuses Dunn, the man seeking to make his mark of his own. “But that difference keeps the room spinning in just the right way.
“Allison Jones (Big Machine’s SVP of A&R) threw it out early when we were talking about co-producers, and I was like ‘Let’s go slow, and let the songs dictate.’ But Jay’s got a great way of communicating to the players, and we’re getting a lot of energy out of HIS tracks. Getting the players fired up isn’t as simple as you think, and that’s been something Jay and I have been able to do. Crazy stuff, but it’s crazy good.”
Dunn’s neXt single “Damn Drunk” with KiX Brooks will be released on August 5 with his Big Machine Label Group debut album coming later this fall. Acknowledging, “Sometimes it’s undefined and eclectic, which leaves room for magic to happen. As a writer, I want songs that reflect the human condition and heartache.”
This follows his first single off the album, “Ain’t No Trucks In TeXas,” a more urgent misdirection on indifference in the face of heartache than John Waite’s classic “Missing You,” Dunn arrives. Evoking the talismans that defined Brooks & Dunn, including metaphors that aren’t obvious, but spot on, he shows songs are more than checklists and hooks. And always giving fans the uneXpected, the album will also include a cover of pop-sensation Ariana Grande’s hit “Tattooed Heart.”
“What is this is gonna be? We’re figuring it out. There’s so much I’m legitimately eXcited about, because it’s different enough from what I’ve done. That’s the part when you’re an artist: to grow and find new places, but stay true.”
“Beyond that, it’ll be a fast car with a fast singer coming at you hard.”
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