Full Transcript for #702 - Ronnie Dunn on Brooks & Dunn’s Biggest Hits, Rumors of Tension with Kix Brooks & Why He Almost Turned Down Morgan Wallen

guys, but they've started this tech company. 00:02:45 Speaker 1: I got them from you, by the way. Oh, is that right? Okay, so you know. 00:02:48 Speaker 2: I won't say his last name. I've already screwed up by saying his first name. 00:02:51 Speaker 1: We'll bleep out his first name. We'll bleep it out. 00:02:53 Speaker 2: Axel. Yes. I told you, I said Axel. So, anyway, Janine and I were pulling into the driveway, and the phone rings, and it's on the speakerphone of the car. And it's him, and he goes... It's Axel. And he goes, and this is, hey, old Mary, if ever there was one. He said, we're buying a guy out of a company. And this was Wednesday. And he said, I need $ 150, 000, whatever, by Friday. And I look at Janine. She's looking at me about like, you are, like, really? And since then, Axel has been such a great guy with the stalker stuff, and I like him. Do you like him? 00:03:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, I love him because it's a very vulnerable time. We had a similar stalker situation, and that's when you recommended them. 00:03:46 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:03:47 Speaker 1: So, yes. 00:03:47 Speaker 2: So, anyway, she said, just give it to him. And I'm like, her deal's like family and money, friends and money. Just give it to him. So, anyway, I just happened to have a friend who is way up in the tech business. security tech business for a huge, huge company. And so I called him real quick. And we had done, we'd been out to Utah and this place called Mustang Monument doing a photo shoot with him and his daughter and some other stuff. Just been up there just killing time when we were in Vegas. 00:04:23 Speaker 1: Anyway, I called him. 00:04:24 Speaker 2: And I said, would you check this guy out for me? Would you make a call? 00:04:27 Speaker 1: I said, no. 00:04:28 Speaker 2: I said, it's not to Hail Mary, but I said, here's the scenario. And he said, yeah, I'll call him. So at He calls me back in about five minutes quick, and he goes, okay, I got the rundown on it. He says, if you don't do it, I'm doing it in spades. So I just went, okay. And then a year later, they called, and it was a 10x return on that money. 00:04:55 Speaker 1: That's a pretty good one. 00:04:56 Speaker 2: Pretty good. 00:04:57 Speaker 1: I didn't get a call. I'd like to have that call. 00:04:59 Speaker 2: I'm going to call you. 00:05:00 Speaker 1: That business call, like we got a deal. 00:05:01 Speaker 2: I got some ideas. Okay. 00:05:06 Speaker 1: I have a list of celebrities I wonder if you've ever met. Because like I said, you guys run together. Britney Spears. 00:05:13 Speaker 3: No. 00:05:14 Speaker 2: Okay. I'm going to be real boring. 00:05:16 Speaker 1: Michael Jackson. 00:05:18 Speaker 2: No. 00:05:20 Speaker 1: You were more animated with that one. No. 00:05:22 Speaker 2: I mean, it's cool big. That's as big as it gets. 00:05:26 Speaker 1: Judge Judy. 00:05:27 Speaker 2: No. It's just a traffic ticket. 00:05:36 Speaker 1: Chuck Norris. 00:05:37 Speaker 2: Chuck Norris, no.

00:05:38 Speaker 1: You haven't met Chuck Norris? 00:05:38 Speaker 2: No. Okay. 00:05:41 Speaker 1: Any member of the British royal family? 00:05:45 Speaker 2: Oh, no. Okay. Janine Dunn is a history freak. I mean, any of that stuff. She's there. And we have some other friends. We just live vicariously through our friends. 00:05:59 Speaker 1: Have they met them, your friends? 00:06:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, they just came back from fishing. with King Charles. 00:06:07 Speaker 1: No, you have friends that went fishing with King Charles? 00:06:09 Speaker 2: I swear to you, last week. 00:06:10 Speaker 1: Is your friend famous? 00:06:11 Speaker 2: Last week. 00:06:12 Speaker 1: Is your friend famous you're talking about? 00:06:13 Speaker 2: No, he's real rich in the oil business. Okay. Business. 00:06:16 Speaker 1: Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan, no. 00:06:18 Speaker 2: Okay. You'd think I would. 00:06:20 Speaker 1: Snoop Dogg. Snoop, yeah. I know, I swear to. 00:06:24 Speaker 2: God, no. No, no, no, no. 00:06:26 Speaker 1: No, for real. Okay. 00:06:27 Speaker 2: Okay, so the Grammys years and years ago. So, you know, we're at that spot where they put us on the front row. I mean, back up. We're going in. You got to go through metal detectors. Kicks goes, just as we get ready to go through, he goes, I've got a flask in my boot. And he said, I'm going to get caught. And I said, he goes, put this in your boot. I said, what? 00:06:53 Speaker 3: What? 00:06:54 Speaker 2: Anyway, I did it. Put it in. Got through security. And, uh, You go inside, and they set us on the front row. And then maybe a minute or two later, Snoop comes down and sits down beside me. So I kind of introduced myself, and he introduced himself. He's a cool dude. And then the show starts. And about 15 minutes into it, I go, I'm smelling stuff, and Snoop's going, like, what is that? It was whiskey reeking up. It was upside down, the flask. And the top was loose and my boot was full of whiskey. It's like, dude, I don't know how I got through with security. But anyway. 00:07:40 Speaker 1: Good one. 00:07:41 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:07:41 Speaker 1: I got two more. 00:07:42 Speaker 2: Come on. 00:07:43 Speaker 1: Bob Barker. 00:07:44 Speaker 2: Oh, no. 00:07:46 Speaker 3: Okay. 00:07:47 Speaker 2: No. 00:07:49 Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian. 00:07:51 Speaker 2: Oh, no, no. 00:07:52 Speaker 1: Okay. That's my whole list. 00:07:54 Speaker 2: Paris Hilton, except by her, on the flight. 00:07:57 Speaker 1: On a flight? 00:07:58 Speaker 2: From Nashville to L.A. Yeah. 00:08:02 Speaker 1: How was she? 00:08:02 Speaker 2: I didn't say a word to her. She didn't say a word to me. I wasn't going to do it. We were all sitting and showed up at the airport, Airbnb, and there's photographers everywhere. And you don't see that, you know, here. And, man, there were presses all over the place. So I knew one guy, and I said, what's going on? He goes, Paris Hilton's, like, coming in. I'm like, you'd think the president was coming in.

So I go ahead and get on the plane. I'm sitting there in first class and getting ready to back out, it felt like. And there was one seat left in first class. And a lot of people that were up there knew what was going on. So then this entourage comes on. One guy's holding a dog, you know, a little bitty dog, you know, and some other stuff. And they all go to the back. And sure enough, here she comes and sits down. And I'm sitting on the aisle. And she goes, no, I'm sitting next to the window. And she goes, I think you have my seat. I'm like, okay. So I move and let her get by the window and then sit there on the plane. I got back. Everybody up there was snickering, you know, looking over and going, okay. all these stuff, man. Get back, didn't say a word to her. I was like, no, I'm not going to do this. Not going there. 00:09:31 Speaker 1: Did you want to say anything to her? 00:09:33 Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. What would you say? 00:09:34 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:09:35 Speaker 2: You know, yeah, I'm like, I'm cool. 00:09:38 Speaker 1: That's a good story. 00:09:40 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:09:41 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:09:41 Speaker 2: That's all I got. 00:09:44 Speaker 1: Your wife texts my wife a picture of you watching this show. 00:09:47 Speaker 2: Yeah. Did she really? Yeah. Ha! Ha! 00:09:52 Speaker 3: Ha! 00:09:55 Speaker 2: Okay, so they got a little conspiracy going. 00:09:57 Speaker 1: No, I'm just saying. my wife showed me a picture of you watching this show and I said how did you get that she said Janine just texted it to me and I said that's why I. 00:10:06 Speaker 3: Like to see support I appreciate that that's so funny no it's funny I do I get I mean it's really good the shows you do great with people obviously so it's. 00:10:19 Speaker 1: Cool um That wasn't AI. That was you watching the show. 00:10:23 Speaker 2: That was me watching the show. I appreciate that. 00:10:26 Speaker 1: Okay, here's what I have because we've never done this before. I have made a list of my favorite 10 Brooks and Dunn songs of all time. Rarely do I get to count down a list with the person. And when I tell you the song, tell me what comes to mind each song. We'll walk backward through it. Like a story. It could be anything from writing it, performing it, anything cool that's happened because of it. No rules. At number 10. on my list of greatest Brooks and Dunn songs, my next broken heart. 00:10:56 Speaker 2: Second, second song we wrote when I met kicks and went over to a guy, I didn't Don cook, uh, songwriter. And, and eventually let me produce the first record for us. We didn't know what we were. We were, we were a duo or, or we were just writing for, for Tim Dubois over there. So he had, he had parents up to go, go right. And so kicks had been working with Don and, uh, Don threw out that title, and I took off on what he laughed. He said, it's like the Oklahoma Shuffle kind of deal, Texas-Oklahoma deal. And there was that. 00:11:32 Speaker 1: Whenever you guys were paired together, because we've talked about it and I've heard the story, did you feel like there was any chance of you guys being an entity, or did you think maybe it would be just a songwriting duo? I don't remember. 00:11:48 Speaker 2: I know that Tim had played— And we learned stuff about one another, and I think we maybe told you this before, in interviews. You know, just, oh, really? You see, you did that. Anyway, no, I don't remember. I did not feel like we were doing a duo deal at the time. Like I said, those were the first, like Brand New Man was the first song. And then Working On My Next Broken Heart was the second. And I just kind of thought it was like a little throwaway country ditty, you know. Was. 00:12:20 Speaker 1: Was there something that creatively clicked with you guys? Did you feel that? 00:12:27 Speaker 3: No. 00:12:28 Speaker 2: I'm still waiting for that to happen. No. I had never co-written, so it's just like I'm sitting there deer in the headlights just going, whoa, I don't know how this works. And Don had been around forever. He had been here for, I don't know, 20 years maybe. Kix had been in Nashville for 12. And they were well into the co-writing process. And anyway, it worked out okay. 00:13:00 Speaker 1: Number nine, Boot, Scoot, and Boogie. Do you think it'd be higher? 00:13:05 Speaker 3: No. 00:13:06 Speaker 2: Okay. No, no. 00:13:07 Speaker 1: Where do you put that in your list? 00:13:08 Speaker 2: Boot, Scoot, I don't know, three, four, top five, you know, somewhere in there. 00:13:13 Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you write that one by yourself? 00:13:16 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's actually one of the first I wrote. I sat down one time in Oklahoma before I moved here, realized I had been playing clubs forever. And just like everybody would do here, you're waiting to write. I realized that it wasn't the business money that was going to come to me, and I was going to have to write songs. Because no one's just going to hand some guy playing in a bar a song. So I started writing. And I wrote seven songs. Within two weeks, I just decided I was going to sit down and grind it out. I sat down and wrote seven that became number ones. 00:14:01 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:14:03 Speaker 2: I'd play them around the house. No one said anything. I get it, but it's such a different head game. They hit the radio and become hits. You go, hey, listen to this great song I wrote. And everybody, you get about three lines into it, and people start, they just. 00:14:20 Speaker 1: Walk out of the room. 00:14:20 Speaker 2: We're good. 00:14:22 Speaker 3: Like, ah. 00:14:24 Speaker 1: But no. With that song, Boots, Good and Boogie, in your mind, was it some kind of line dance? 00:14:32 Speaker 4: No. 00:14:33 Speaker 3: No. 00:14:33 Speaker 2: We would get up on stage and watch people line dance on the breaks between stuff back then when they were starting in those big clubs. But line dancing was not a part of it, other than it was just part of

the culture at the time. But I wasn't thinking of line dance, so I did it. Hank Jr. had come out with Born a Boogie. I listened to a lot of that stuff, and it just kind of boot-scoot. It was a term that a buddy in college threw out one time. They had a band. They were going out. We saw cross paths in the parking lot. I said, where are you going? He said, we're going to play this boot scoot in Sanford, some little VFW, you know, on the weekend, which is what everybody would do. And he used that term, boot scoot, and it always stuck with me. This has been years, though, before, you know. So I wrote Boot Scoot Boogie, played it for the first time. And I was going from the dressing room back up to the stage, and this girl stopped and called me over. She said, would you play that song? I don't know the name of it. Y'all just played a few minutes ago about this Baboot thing and did it. But that's the only one that, you know, without being a cover song, that wasn't a radio hit, that we.... 00:15:52 Speaker 1: Do you think you've played that song more than any other song? 00:15:55 Speaker 3: Close. 00:15:56 Speaker 2: Close. Close. 00:15:59 Speaker 1: That song, did it put you guys into the pop world a little bit? Did it cross over a bit? 00:16:06 Speaker 2: They did a club mix. I think it was the first club mix. 00:16:11 Speaker 1: Of a country song? 00:16:12 Speaker 2: Yeah, it came out in Asheville. 00:16:13 Speaker 1: Was that weird? 00:16:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:16:15 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:16 Speaker 1: We didn't know who to call. 00:16:18 Speaker 2: We went through all this process of trying to find an engineer or someone who could get the kick to do what it does and hip-hop songs and all that stuff. 00:16:26 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:16:28 Speaker 2: We did it. A guy named Brian Tankersley did it. 00:16:34 Speaker 1: Number eight, you're going to miss me when I'm gone. That's a good one. 00:16:39 Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. Kix and Don had written that? No, no, no. 00:16:48 Speaker 1: No, we were on a bus. 00:16:51 Speaker 2: Headed somewhere, and Don was out with us. And we just knocked that one out. 00:16:58 Speaker 1: What do you mean knock that one out? 00:16:59 Speaker 2: Well, someone throws an idea out and you start strumming the guitar and throwing out ideas. But it's random. When there's a three-way, to me, writing with more than two, it's kind of confusing. You kind of don't know where everyone's going until maybe toward the end it starts taking shape and doing something. 00:17:21 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:17:22 Speaker 2: And Don and Kix were so close. They had their own little communication thing going. I wasn't locked out or felt like that, but it's like, okay, they've got their process that they go through. 00:17:34 Speaker 1: Kix sings that one, right? 00:17:35 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:17:36 Speaker 1: How come he got that one? 00:17:40 Speaker 2: That's a good question, Bobby. Kix, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's... I think it was one that he felt

comfortable singing. 00:17:53 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:17:55 Speaker 2: I mean, we're working on a new record now after, after what, 20 years or so. And, and he, he wrote a song that has written it that, man, I think it's a hit. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: It's, it's killer. 00:18:06 Speaker 2: And his voice works with it. 00:18:09 Speaker 3: No. 00:18:09 Speaker 2: And, uh, so when we were writing, uh, uh, red, red dirt road, uh, I remember we were kind of sitting there quietly after we got through it, like listening to it. And, uh, I'm going, he goes, yeah, you sing in this one. He says, this is radio stuff. You sing this. So it's been good. You would think there'd be turmoil, but there's not. 00:18:32 Speaker 1: I wasn't saying that. I was just asking how it gets picked who sings what. Yeah. 00:18:38 Speaker 2: It just happens. 00:18:39 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:18:40 Speaker 1: We watched on YouTube a concert that you guys did in Tulsa. It's fully up, the whole concert. 00:18:46 Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. 00:18:48 Speaker 2: Cain's Ballroom. 00:18:48 Speaker 1: Cain's. And I've played Cain's a couple times, and it's super legendary. But when I played it, it was tough. It was tough. 00:18:56 Speaker 2: I lost my voice. 00:18:57 Speaker 1: That show? In there, yeah. Because you were having to yell so loud? 00:18:59 Speaker 2: Yeah, I came back and did it, cleaned it up, yeah. 00:19:03 Speaker 1: It's a really great show that we watch. Me and all my family, we watched it when Caitlin's parents were in town. And it was really cool. It was probably shot, I don't know, late 90s, early 2000s? 00:19:13 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It was a full production. Just stuff everywhere. 00:19:19 Speaker 4: Yeah. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. And we're back on the Bobby cast. 00:19:35 Speaker 1: Why did you guys pick that spot to invest in? 00:19:37 Speaker 2: Because it's just legendary. It's just one of those places, and it's small enough. It's the right size to get the right amount of people in there without a big house. 00:19:50 Speaker 1: Number seven on my list, Believe. That one's hard for me to sing even in the shower. 00:19:56 Speaker 2: It's hard for me to sing in the shower too. 00:20:00 Speaker 1: Anywhere. 00:20:02 Speaker 2: It's got that proverbial high E. It seems like every song that really pushes you is a high E. It's just, you know, Bible-y. I was talking all night with a buddy downtown last night. He came in from out of town, so I can't do it. But, high ease. Craig, I was in my barn studio. Craig Wiseman, famous, famous songwriter. Probably the most notorious songwriter of this era, I think. Don't you? 00:20:35 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. 00:20:36 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:20:37 Speaker 2: Comes over. And it just shows up out at the barn. And he goes, I got this idea for a song. And he goes, I raise my hands, bow my head, you know. And I just pushed stop. And I said, let's go down. Let's go to the coffee table and sit down and write it. And got it

off the ground. But everything I would throw out was real intimidating with Craig because he's, He's real opinionated about how he wants to go about it. And it was a real writing lesson. I'd say something, you know, hey, what about someone on the first lines? Oh, man, I'd rather live in that White House. And he says, first of all, everything I threw out was wrong. He says, I don't want it urbanized. I don't want it like bigger than life universal or whatever. He says, I want to hone it down to a small town vibe. And I'm like, okay. The only small town I could really reference was in Arkansas, El Dorado, from my grandmother's house. Both grandmothers lived not a block away from one another. So I'd get in trouble at one's house, and I'd run through the vacant lot and go down to the other one. Get taken care of or whatever. So anyway, I started describing that neighborhood. Every house had a front porch swing or a back porch swing. It had a screened-in porch, all that stuff. And I started telling them that. We could hear in the revivals at night, way off. If the wind blew the right way, you could hear these black gospel choirs and organist stuff, just that Pentecostal kind of like, just insane. So we took some of that stuff and put it in the song. 00:22:30 Speaker 1: Are there songs that you record and then you get out on the road and you're, Like, man, it's a really hard song to sing every night. 00:22:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:22:37 Speaker 1: Is that one of them? I call them strippers. 00:22:39 Speaker 3: Why? 00:22:39 Speaker 2: Because they strip your throat. There's other strippers too, but not that one. 00:22:45 Speaker 1: Is Believe one of those songs? 00:22:47 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:22:48 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:22:48 Speaker 1: Is it the hardest song you've seen? 00:22:50 Speaker 2: You have to be on for it. It's not the hardest. No. The hardest song? What would be the hardest song? 00:22:58 Speaker 1: Which one pushes you the most? Or if you're a little bit sick, you don't do it? 00:23:03 Speaker 2: Oh, it'd be Hard Working Man or Hillbilly Deluxe. 00:23:07 Speaker 1: Oh, man. 00:23:08 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:23:09 Speaker 1: That's a hard one to sing? 00:23:10 Speaker 2: Hillbilly Deluxe. You know, you got to get on the gas and that stuff. And I don't sing soft. So it's like, you know, it's a rock country band, you know? 00:23:21 Speaker 1: My wife, that might be her favorite. I'm going to tell you, it didn't make my list. But let me see if she'll answer. It might be her favorite song because she sings Hillbilly Deluxe on a random Tuesday afternoon. Like just doing nothing. And I'm like, what are you singing? 00:23:39 Speaker 2: Am I in trouble? 00:23:40 Speaker 1: No, I'm with Ronnie right now. And so you're on right now. But I was just telling him what Brooks and Dunn song that you enjoy way more than I do. I like it, but you enjoy it and you really feel it. Which one is it? I told you. I told you. Why are you laughing? We were just talking about, you know, what songs are hardest for him to sing. And he was mentioning that song. And I said, that's one of your jams. 00:24:08 Speaker 2: Oh, good. 00:24:08 Speaker 4: And I love when he switches it up and says, pick them up, trucks. 00:24:15 Speaker 1: Instead of just pick up trucks. Pick them up, truck. 00:24:18 Speaker 2: All right. All right. 00:24:19 Speaker 1: That's all. I just wanted you to verify. All right. He says hello. 00:24:23 Speaker 2: Hello. 00:24:24 Speaker 3: Love you guys. 00:24:25 Speaker 2: Bye. Bye. 00:24:26 Speaker 1: We're hard at work. 00:24:27 Speaker 4: See? 00:24:28 Speaker 1: Paying the rent. She loves that song. That's funny, man. I think it's funny, too. 00:24:33 Speaker 2: You know, it didn't just race up the charts. I think it stalled at like six or something like that. But I can remember being in different places. Younger guys at the time would walk up and go, dude, I love that song. Because it was a little cutting edge for us. Just a hair, you know? 00:24:49 Speaker 1: We went to your show a few weeks ago, maybe more than that. We couldn't buy any merch. 00:24:54 Speaker 2: That's good to hear. I know. 00:24:55 Speaker 1: I texted you. I was like, everything is sold out. 00:24:57 Speaker 2: Well, actually, it's even better to hear. 00:24:58 Speaker 3: Right. 00:24:59 Speaker 1: I was like, we tried to buy everything, and they only had like small or 5X. 00:25:03 Speaker 3: Huh. 00:25:04 Speaker 1: And so you were about to play, so you didn't text me back until the next morning. And I thought you'd say something like, well, what did you want? I'll get it for you. You didn't say that. You just said, oh, that's great to hear. Ha ha ha. 00:25:18 Speaker 2: Maybe I was just waking up. 00:25:19 Speaker 1: I don't know. Yeah, I just thought that was like the hint. Like we tried to buy stuff and it wasn't. Yeah, just send me your list. 00:25:26 Speaker 2: I'll send you a box of one or two of everything. 00:25:28 Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. 00:25:29 Speaker 1: Whatever. All right. My number six song is Brand New Man. 00:25:34 Speaker 2: Yeah. Brand New Man was the first song we wrote. Ever? Yeah, you and I were together. 00:25:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like you and Kix. 00:25:42 Speaker 2: Me, Kix, and Don Cooke. 00:25:44 Speaker 1: First song. 00:25:44 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:25:45 Speaker 2: I had this hook going in my head. We were living in the cabins outside of National up in Gallatin. Johnny Cash had a little enclave in June. But I remember thinking, Janine and I had just been married. I mean, when we moved here, we hadn't been married a month, I don't think. And she'll call me out on that if I'm not right. But I had this hook about I'm a I'm a changed man. And I was telling Kix as we were walking into Don's house to write, I said, I got this, I think I got an idea. And he goes, how about brand new man? And we walked in and told Don and then took off on it. And that was the first one. 00:26:32 Speaker 1:

At number five, Red Dirt Road. 00:26:34 Speaker 2: Red Dirt Road. Oh, man. That's just me and Kix talking about growing up. you know, me and, and, and South Arkansas, uh, for that one. And my cousins live five miles down the road on East Maine. So the, the blacktop would end and it turned into a gravel road. And then you go down there for four or five miles and you turn left on this, this red dirt road to go down to their farm. And, uh, you know, all the shenanigans we pulled about, I was talking about that. And he said, Kix was going, well, you, you have a sensibility, uh, of, when you write to put little like religious or spiritual nuggets in them. And it's kind of, I don't think about, you know, really want to do it or did it. And so we talked about that. And I wrote the chorus down on a napkin and gave it to him. And we got on the buses after we landed. He's got another story, but it's close enough. And it's always his truth and my truth. But anyway, the next day I'm thinking, okay, we'll get together and write it. Well, he comes over to the bus and, I mean, he looks like he's been in a wind tunnel and just been beat up all night or hadn't had any sleep. And he lays the paper out on the floor and he starts playing guitar and plays the verses and stuff. Man, it was killer. I said, that's the one where he said, you sing this one. So, yeah. 00:28:12 Speaker 1: I think the loudest a crowd yells a line at your show, just for me, having been to a bunch of them, is, that's where I found Jesus. 00:28:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:28:21 Speaker 1: The whole place screams that one line. So, I mean, it's a concert. I think I said this after I went to you guys' last show. It's a show that I knew every word to. There's only been like three in my life where I knew every word to every song at a show. You guys have one of those shows. And even then, knowing every word, when the That's when I found GE's, the whole place screamed it. 00:28:41 Speaker 2: Crazy. 00:28:42 Speaker 1: It's crazy. 00:28:43 Speaker 2: I know. That's how it is everywhere we go. We've been out, well, last year, the year before that, with Morgan on those stadium shows. And it's like crazy. 00:28:56 Speaker 1: Do you think if you played that to a bunch of Buddhists, they would yell that line? 00:28:59 Speaker 3: No. 00:29:03 Speaker 2: What is, what is, who, what, who is Jesus in the Buddha? 00:29:08 Speaker 1: Buddha. That's where I found Buddha. 00:29:11 Speaker 2: That's where I found Buddha. 00:29:12 Speaker 1: We'll try it. I'll get back to you. Okay. Let me know. 00:29:17 Speaker 2: I'll be waiting for that one. We're running across the screen. Read the, read the lyrics. Okay. 00:29:21 Speaker 1: That's where I found Buddha. All right. Number four, hardworking man. 00:29:28 Speaker 2: Hardworking man. 00:29:28 Speaker 1: Uh, you write that one by yourself? Yeah. 00:29:31 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:29:31 Speaker 2: Um, And just thinking of the guys in the pipelines around where my dad worked and

stuff like that. Just what they have to do and go through. And just kind of threw all the icons out there on the table. The hard hats and the steel hammers. Or the steel hats. Steel hard hats. And the hammers. And paint. You know, metaphorically. And threw it all together. When you rhymed paint and can't. How'd you feel about that? Well, I felt pretty okie. Doing okie, that's not creative. That's pretty normal, right? I ain't, you know. 00:30:10 Speaker 1: Well, you wrote that one. Was that in your batch of the seven songs that you did when you wrote by yourself? 00:30:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:30:16 Speaker 1: Man, that is a heck of a batch. 00:30:18 Speaker 2: It's crazy. 00:30:20 Speaker 1: I'll come back to that. At number three, it's the only song I think that I have on this list that you did not write at number three. Do you know what song I'm talking about? 00:30:30 Speaker 4: No. 00:30:30 Speaker 1: It's a cover song. 00:30:32 Speaker 2: Oh, Maria? 00:30:33 Speaker 1: My Maria. 00:30:33 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:30:33 Speaker 2: I did not want to do that. 00:30:36 Speaker 1: What do you mean? 00:30:36 Speaker 2: Well, I went to school in West Texas, in Abilene. So B.W. Stevenson's version was a big hit in that area. So I just assumed that it was like a national hit. So Don brought it up, Cook. And he said, what do you think about doing that? Because I played around just goofing off in the studio. Sometimes I'd just go, you know, boot scoop boogie or whatever. And that was a big part of B.W. 's deal. And I wasn't sure I could sing it. So I did it, started it, and I kind of whole hummed through it. I put my hands in my pockets and went through the motions. And kicks came out, bless his heart. He said, it's something wrong, Keith. They said, we need to take it up even higher. And sure enough, once we did, it locked. And then there it is. 00:31:35 Speaker 1: Was there any part of you that did not want to put a song out that you guys didn't write? 00:31:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, we were afraid. At that time, we had never done a cover. And the consensus was from Tim Dubois and everyone at the label was like, you've got to write your own stuff. It used to frustrate the heck out of us. No one would send us songs. We couldn't get outside songs. 00:31:56 Speaker 3: Why? 00:31:56 Speaker 1: I don't know. 00:31:57 Speaker 2: I mean, now, of course, I've been here for a long time, and I know a lot of people, so it's just, I mean, my phone goes off all the time with song ideas. It's fun, actually, just kind of see what little nugget is there. But we didn't get songs. I think, I don't know, but I think Don really wanted everybody to write their own songs. There was three of us, two of us, and that first record, Because he and Kix had had their thing going with a duo, and it had gone through two or three gyrations of different people involved in it before I landed in it. And I heard through the grapevine that had it not worked with me, Leroy Parnell was going to be the

next guy. Brooks and Parnell? 00:32:50 Speaker 1: Brooks and Parnell. Brooks and Parnell. I don't know. 00:32:54 Speaker 2: But we landed on Brooks and Dunn because we went through a notebooks of everything you can think of. 00:32:59 Speaker 1: Like other band names? Like other duo names? 00:33:00 Speaker 2: Oh, like the Cactus Brothers. I mean, just ridiculous stuff. You know, trying to place it out west, you know, west of Mississippi. All that. No. 00:33:08 Speaker 1: Uh-oh. 00:33:10 Speaker 2: Leroy. I'm not sure how that word landed. 00:33:14 Speaker 1: But who knows? Were you surprised that song was a hit for you guys because you really never wanted to record it to begin with? 00:33:18 Speaker 3: No. No. 00:33:21 Speaker 2: No, it didn't. 00:33:23 Speaker 1: Is that song weird to you still? 00:33:25 Speaker 2: Is it what? 00:33:25 Speaker 1: Yeah, is that song weird to you still? 00:33:27 Speaker 3: No. 00:33:28 Speaker 2: Oh. Uh-uh. No, it did well. 00:33:30 Speaker 1: You have a good relationship with it? 00:33:31 Speaker 2: Uh-huh. 00:33:32 Speaker 1: Okay. Just making sure. 00:33:33 Speaker 2: No, and people enjoy it. Yeah, they do enjoy it. 00:33:35 Speaker 1: They're number three here. 00:33:36 Speaker 2: They'll go like, what's your favorite Brooks and Dunn song? Well, it's like, okay, Mamma Maria. 00:33:42 Speaker 1: Does it bother you if that's their favorite Brooks and Dunn song? 00:33:44 Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. 00:33:45 Speaker 1: Now we're talking. Let's get honest. You want to go deep, huh? 00:33:48 Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. 00:33:49 Speaker 1: Now we're talking. 00:33:49 Speaker 2: You're going to go Dr. 00:33:50 Speaker 1: Phil on me. Yeah. Okay. I'll tell you how I really feel. 00:33:56 Speaker 3: All right. 00:33:56 Speaker 1: And number two, I love this song. I think it is, to me, probably the song that evokes more emotion than possibly any song of my entire life. This song and maybe Coldplay Yellow, those two. It's Cowgirls Don't Cry. 00:34:11 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:34:12 Speaker 1: And it's after you put Reba on it, that song, that story, that song, her coming in, like all of that just kicks me in the heart. 00:34:22 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:34:22 Speaker 1: It's a great song. It's a lifetime song. 00:34:25 Speaker 2: It's one of those targets you're at your heart's dream. I mean, your heart's dream deals. And it's all about redhead girls, you know, our daughters. And Terry McBride and I wrote it on the bus, again, not on the road. But he's got a redhead little girl. And my youngest, my redhead in there is Haley, my youngest. She's redheaded. And my oldest daughter's a redhead, too. And then Reba comes in, and guess what? She's a redhead, too. 00:34:56 Speaker 1: Did you guys want to write a story song before you did that song? Or was it just you're just talking? 00:35:00 Speaker 2: We were talking about horses. I was going through that dance with Haley. You know, you buy one horse and, you know, they ride it for a little while. And

as they work through, you might get to go through this. Are you going to buy some horse? 00:35:15 Speaker 1: Don't be surprised. Are you going to buy some horse? If I'm still alive. Billy's first horse? 00:35:20 Speaker 2: Sure. Yeah. 00:35:22 Speaker 1: The first one. 00:35:22 Speaker 2: The first one is the cheapest. 00:35:24 Speaker 1: Okay. 00:35:25 Speaker 2: So as you move up the rung, they start miraculously getting more expensive. No. No. And so you get the first horse and the second horse and all this stuff, and I don't know that much about horses. I can get around, but I'm not an expert. But since I travel so much, it didn't sit right with me. I mean, I felt like I needed to be there to be around horses, you know, because Janine's, she's, I don't know if they pay attention as much. But I'm hypervigilant with that stuff. I'm way anal about it. Don't get behind the horse. My dad was a stable boy at Calumet before he went into the Air Force, whenever he was a young guy. But he would tell me stories about horses, and there was always some crazy half, crippled quarter horse in the backyard, wherever we were, that they were trying to heal to become the next world champion. 00:36:22 Speaker 1: How'd that work out? It never worked out. 00:36:26 Speaker 2: Nothing, man. He had the craziest ideas, man. 00:36:28 Speaker 1: When you finished that song, Did it feel like you wrote something? 00:36:35 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:36:36 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:36:36 Speaker 2: No. Yeah. 00:36:37 Speaker 1: That's like when you finished that song. That's a personal. That's just personal. 00:36:40 Speaker 3: Yes. 00:36:41 Speaker 2: That and Red Deer Road. I mean, that's as personal as it gets. You know, you're writing about your little girl and horses. We'd break the dads down, the big tough cowboys down. Just watch this guy. Watch this one right here. You know, when you die. When the dad dies. 00:37:00 Speaker 1: Don't spoil the song. Some people may not have heard it. Spoiler alert. Dad dies. I'm going to tell you right now. Disclaimer. All right. 00:37:09 Speaker 2: Number one. 00:37:11 Speaker 1: This is my number one. This is probably everybody's number one. You know what it is? 00:37:14 Speaker 4: No. 00:37:16 Speaker 1: You do. No. What do you think is the greatest Brooks and Dunn song? 00:37:21 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. 00:37:23 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:37:23 Speaker 2: I should have known that. 00:37:26 Speaker 1: What do you mean? It's the song. 00:37:28 Speaker 2: Well, It's doing good. It's doing great. Yeah. It's kind of become like, yeah, our biggest hit. 00:37:38 Speaker 1: Now it feels massive. Has it always felt massive since it came out, or is it something that in time has created a new life of its own? 00:37:44 Speaker 2: I remember being at the ACMs in like 1993, maybe, when it came out. It could be 1993 or 1994. And Mike Dungan, who was the vice president of sales for Airstack, came up to us. And as we were all sitting down, he goes, hey. we just dropped

Neon Moon today. And he said, dude, it's on fire. He said, sales have even taken off. And he had had a big argument with Clive Davis about shipping too many records. That's back when everyone was shipping CDs and cassettes. I mean, you'd ship a million. Day one, boom, there's a million sales. And Clive was like going, I don't feel good about this. And it blew up, took off, and Some people think it's a love song. Yeah, he gives this big spiel in every show about it. It's a guy sitting in a bar in a corner by himself. It must be the music. Music must tell another story while the lyrics are saying something else. 00:38:47 Speaker 1: The Bobbycast. We'll be right back. The Bobbycast. This is the Bobbycast. I have a running joke that I do with guests where I try to bring up the fact that you sang that at my wedding with every artist in some way. I try to find a way to bring it up. And we're currently building a montage of all of them. Because if I get any sort of string, I'll be like, yeah, you know, Ronnie Dunn sang that at my wedding, Neon Moon. I'm sitting there like, what? 00:39:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. 00:39:20 Speaker 4: Really? 00:39:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. So we've got quite the... the video resume of it going. 00:39:26 Speaker 2: You did it right. It's been a work in progress for a long time. No one said anything about a neon moon actually dropping from the ceiling. We dropped one. 00:39:34 Speaker 1: Come on. Until it did. 00:39:35 Speaker 2: And there it was. 00:39:36 Speaker 1: No, man. 00:39:37 Speaker 2: That was a cool moment. 00:39:39 Speaker 1: It was a cool moment for us because you performed and you gave it to us. It wasn't that cool for you. You sing all the time, right? 00:39:45 Speaker 2: Yeah. But it's when you're in an environment where it's like you're around friends and people that you know. It means something. You get to see it in real time then. 00:39:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess. 00:39:56 Speaker 2: Instead of on the radio. 00:39:58 Speaker 1: We still really appreciate it. And my wife obviously loves you, but loves Janine more, if I'm being honest. 00:40:04 Speaker 2: I'm good with that. Everybody does. Yeah, if it weren't Janine, I don't know. I'd be driving a milk truck, thinking of milk. 00:40:13 Speaker 1: That's not milk. It's water. I don't know. It's mini-milk. It's a carton of water. We used to have a milkman in Mountain Pine, though. Like, I was at the last of the milkmen. We had a milkman who drove around and put milk on the porch. 00:40:28 Speaker 2: I remember that. 00:40:29 Speaker 1: Did you guys ever have one of those growing up? 00:40:30 Speaker 2: Yeah, you're younger than me, but I remember that for sure. Yeah, and they'd leave it on. 00:40:35 Speaker 1: Your front porch. Glass bottles. 00:40:36 Speaker 2: Yep. You recycle. 00:40:38 Speaker 1: Yeah, and then when it was empty, you put it back out there. They'd pick it back up and bring you more milk. Had the paper top. 00:40:42 Speaker 4: Yeah. 00:40:42 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:40:44 Speaker 1: That and ice cream trucks. We had an ice cream truck. 00:40:46 Speaker 2: We had that, too. You'd hear them from miles away. 00:40:49 Speaker 1: Kids would all scramble. 00:40:51 Speaker 2: In to get, what, 15 cents a quarter or whatever. 00:40:55 Speaker 1: Those were the good old days, I like to say. 00:40:56 Speaker 2: It was really crazy. That's Arkansas stuff for me. 00:41:02 Speaker 1: You get to claim like three places, though, as home. 00:41:05 Speaker 3: I know. 00:41:05 Speaker 2: I know Caitlin was giving me grief. Through Janine. Janine was going, Caitlin says you can't be an Okie, and you're not going to the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, and whatever, if you weren't born in Oklahoma. I said, okay, fine with me. Whatever you say. But I'm going in tomorrow. No, it's funny. Just busting my chops. I'll tell you something else she's going to be excited about. I met the guy who started Sonic. 00:41:34 Speaker 1: Yeah, you sent me a video in a red jacket. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:41:36 Speaker 2: In that pink jacket? Yeah. 00:41:38 Speaker 1: I am colorblind, so yeah, I remember red. 00:41:40 Speaker 2: I am in the right situation, but no, I'm not colorblind. 00:41:44 Speaker 1: Did you talk to him? 00:41:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, and I told him about the girls and how they all love their big styrofoam cups, and we went into a long discussion about the nugget ice. 00:41:53 Speaker 1: Did you get a gold card? 00:41:54 Speaker 2: No, no. I think I took him by surprise or something. 00:41:59 Speaker 1: Oh, you took him by surprise? 00:42:00 Speaker 2: What do you mean? 00:42:02 Speaker 1: The Sonic guy. Yeah. You went to him? 00:42:04 Speaker 2: No, no. He was one of the, I don't know, one of the executives on the board or whatever. 00:42:11 Speaker 1: And you didn't ask him for any sort of Sonic? He didn't offer a gold card or anything for life? 00:42:14 Speaker 2: No, no. Dang. 00:42:16 Speaker 1: That'd have been cool. 00:42:17 Speaker 2: I'll get my chance again. I'll see him. So where are you from? I was born in Coleman, Texas, which is south of Abilene. And we lived there for a couple of years. And my dad was a little ranch foreman, was managing a property for a guy out there. And my mother's story is that one day she looked out and there was just like a stone house I lived in. It's in the middle of nowhere. She said, look down this long, long dirt road. And I see the cloud of dust. I know somebody's coming. This guy came up and introduced himself as George Burroughs. He was a fiddle player. And they had a band that played on the Abilene radio station. What is it? K-R-B-C. I don't know. Sounds good. 00:43:04 Speaker 3: Yeah, whatever. 00:43:07 Speaker 2: And he said, I heard that your husband sang and played guitar. I don't know where. I wouldn't. And sure enough, they did. Started this band called the Fox 4 or 5, which had something to do with the radio station. And it was like the big state jamboree. And then you

had the Louisiana Hayride and the Opry. But they were trying to do that kind of deal with it. 00:43:36 Speaker 1: When did you move to Arkansas? 00:43:38 Speaker 2: Back and forth. Arkansas was always kind of home turf because that's where all the grandparents were. So my dad was doing pipeline stuff, so it would end. It was kind of like, okay, where do we live now? 00:43:49 Speaker 1: Did you think you would do the pipeline ever? 00:43:52 Speaker 2: No, it's not something that I aspired to do. 00:43:55 Speaker 3: No. 00:43:56 Speaker 1: It's too much like real work. 00:43:58 Speaker 2: I would come back from college down to South Texas and do it in the summers. Yeah, that's real work. That makes you appreciate what we're doing now. 00:44:10 Speaker 1: How close were you to being a preacher? 00:44:14 Speaker 2: As soon as I learned you had to stand in front of a crowd and talk, I knew it wasn't for me. I'd made a mistake. Oops. I was 17. I had a tent revival with my mother. And I sat down in front and said, I'm going in, all in on this one. And next thing you know, the preacher in the local church, Port Isabel, he goes, yep. In order to get your license, there's a process in order to get your license for a Baptist minister or whatever. 00:44:43 Speaker 1: You had to get a license to be a minister? 00:44:44 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I don't think that, I'm not sure after what I see on TV today and hear that they have to do anything, but be nuts. 00:44:56 Speaker 1: So you didn't, that wasn't your dream for long? 00:45:00 Speaker 3: No. 00:45:00 Speaker 1: To be a minister? 00:45:01 Speaker 4: No. 00:45:03 Speaker 2: No, I did it for, I went to Hardin Simmons Baptist University in Abilene. And then there's a McMurray Methodist school there and then Abilene Christian, which is Church Christ. But I was maybe a year and a half, two years at Hardin-Simmons. And then I transferred because everything I do would always gravitate to music. I played bass. I could play by ear. So guys would call me, hey, we're going to go do a weekend gig somewhere. You want to go make $ 15? Just to do that. So that's what we would do. But, you know, did I answer your question? Probably not. 00:45:44 Speaker 1: If you're home and you're going to pick some music to put on, what do you put on? 00:45:49 Speaker 2: I've got a really eclectic playlist. I mean, all the way to R & B, to, I mean, Metallica. 00:45:57 Speaker 1: What's comfortable to you to put on? I'll go a lot of times if I'm just going to find music, it'll be John Mayer. 00:46:04 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:04 Speaker 1: It'll be... Counting Crows. I mean, heck, it'll be you guys some, depending on what kind of mood I'm in. But that's comfortable to me because I can passively enjoy it. 00:46:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:16 Speaker 1: What artist is that for you? 00:46:17 Speaker 2: Sheryl Crow and Mayer. Paul Carrick, who was in the band Mike and the Mechanics, but wrote a bunch of stuff. Real, real soulful cat. It's really, really cool stuff. How long? He was a singer in that band. How long has this been going on? The classic song. 00:46:42 Speaker 1: I don't know that song. 00:46:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll know it if you hear it. I promise you. 00:46:45 Speaker 1: If I heard a singer, like a real singer sing it? 00:46:47 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:46:47 Speaker 1: I know what you're saying. Yeah. 00:46:49 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:46:50 Speaker 1: In the KV. How long? Why, after a certain amount of years, did you guys decide to go and do new music? I mean, you could have done it any time over the past 15. 00:47:01 Speaker 4: 20 years. 00:47:01 Speaker 1: Why now? 00:47:02 Speaker 4: Oh. 00:47:04 Speaker 2: The energy is there. It's popping as hot as it ever has been. I just felt like, you'll love this. I go to chat GPT. This is months ago. I hadn't really played with it. I said, okay, what do you think the next career move for Brooks and Dunn should be? 00:47:31 Speaker 1: You didn't tell them you were Done. No, no, no, no, no. 00:47:35 Speaker 2: And away it went. I mean, it came out with just pages and pages of stuff that was pretty brilliant. I mean, it'll take you back, you know. I mean, what? He says, hey, you don't need anything different. He says, you know, what you're doing works and has continued to work. And it hasn't. Don't worry about that. Just come with what you do, you know. And I just wanted a new, fresh song. For whatever reason, just to kick the can down the road. That's it. It's not something... You're doing a whole album or a song? No, we're doing a full record. Right. Yeah. So that's just for fun. 00:48:16 Speaker 1: Is it done? 00:48:17 Speaker 2: That's for creative fun, almost. 00:48:19 Speaker 1: You say creative fun. The whole record is just creative fun? 00:48:22 Speaker 2: They all are. 00:48:25 Speaker 1: Ah, some of them had to be some pressure. 00:48:26 Speaker 2: This whole business is. 00:48:27 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's easy to say they now want you rich. 00:48:28 Speaker 3: Huh? Huh? 00:48:29 Speaker 2: Not once you're rich. 00:48:30 Speaker 1: No, it's easy once you're rich to say that. I think we both know when you ain't, it's hard. 00:48:36 Speaker 3: No. 00:48:36 Speaker 1: Wondering how you're going to get a paycheck out of doing this crazy thing. 00:48:40 Speaker 2: No, man. It's like, God, I used to try to control everything in the room or on stage, you know, because everything was critical. You know, every show. If your voice goes out, dude, you're done, you know, in a show. You're done. You're over, you know. And over the years, of course, you learn that that's not the case. 00:48:58 Speaker 3: But. 00:48:59 Speaker 2: Everything was just.... 00:49:01 Speaker 1: When's the new record, or when does the first new song on the new record come out? 00:49:05 Speaker 2: First year. Dan Huff is producing it. That's his heart. We've got parts all over the place. In today's world, we're going to cut all the stuff in the tracks and stuff, and

then we just like send if we need a keyboard player we got a friend or something like that go to the guys in the band play steel Gary Morris terrific musician that kind of stuff just organizing it all putting it back in one one little tight tidy group of stuff that we can work with but no really good I think it's some really good songs so say I Are. 00:49:40 Speaker 1: You excited about putting it out? 00:49:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:49:42 Speaker 1: Are you guys going to play a lot of it at shows? 00:49:45 Speaker 2: I think. 00:49:47 Speaker 1: Good question. 00:49:48 Speaker 2: I don't think I'd make a big deal about it. We used to have a theory or a policy that if the song wasn't number one on radio, we wouldn't play it. And then once it became number one in radio, we'd start trying it out. But you know, I think you probably know, there's a gap, a time frame. It used to be, and it's according to what cycle you guys are on in radio, but whether they're going to, what, 12-week or 16-week number ones or something's changed in advertising or in the back office or whatever. I can remember, it might have been my Maria. It went to really fast. to number one. But there were a lot of songs doing that in that little window of time. And, I mean, they'd be on the radio. My mother would call and she goes, what's your next song? And I'd go, well, it's out. It was just the number one. Mother Gladys, she's just funny, funny. She'd talk like this. I haven't heard your new song, Ronnie. I'd say, Mama, it's number one. Oh, is it country? No. Your dad wants to know when you're going to do a country song. 00:51:16 Speaker 4: I don't know. 00:51:16 Speaker 1: We'll try. Did you guys ever get hit with the, hey, you guys aren't country? Oh, hear that? 00:51:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. Maybe in the... Early stages, but no, I don't remember anybody saying that. 00:51:29 Speaker 1: People were like, you guys are too big, too bold. This is not my traditional country. 00:51:34 Speaker 2: Too loud. I can remember Donna Hilley over at Sony was the head of it over there bringing Merle Haggard in the studio when we were cutting Hard Working Man. It embarrassed me. I'm like, man, this is too much of a rock song. This is not country. And Haggard was great. I mean, we just sat there and chatted. Of all songs to be doing. But maybe it's best I wasn't trying to do a country song. That's kind of his turf, you know. 00:52:01 Speaker 4: Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor. And we're back on the Bobbycast. 00:52:15 Speaker 1: When Morgan Wallen asked you guys to go out, was that an easy yes? 00:52:20 Speaker 2: No, I had to think about it. I had to think about what just all the, All the implications and the perceptions, you know, stuff of what happened. And at first it was uncomfortable because you walk up there and go, man, I'm the opening act, you know, in a scenario that we're used to headlining. But what it proved was he brings such a younger, it doesn't look younger to

me. It looks like all the people we've always played for. But we'll stop in our shows right now. And don't let me ramble too much. But we're stopping our shows right now, and cooks will go, how many of you, this is the first time you've seen a Brooks and Dunn show? Eighty percent of that audience goes off. 00:53:01 Speaker 1: Like, what? 00:53:03 Speaker 2: And that's what doing the Morgan shows is all about. And he tells me, he goes, the reason we'll have you guys up there is because of the people who say that I'm not country enough. So it works. It really works. It has worked well for both of us. 00:53:18 Speaker 1: So you were happy you guys did it once you started doing it? 00:53:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you get used to the stadiums now. You're coming out of arenas and going into the stadiums. That's a whole different world, how you relate, how you move, whatever. 00:53:35 Speaker 1: Do you watch Westerns? 00:53:36 Speaker 2: I used to when I was a kid. I used to come out of there. We grew up on cowboy stuff. 00:53:42 Speaker 1: Do you ever read Western books? 00:53:46 Speaker 2: Who's the famous author of cowboy stuff? 00:53:51 Speaker 1: E.B. 00:53:52 Speaker 2: White. 00:53:52 Speaker 1: No. Charlotte's Web? 00:53:53 Speaker 2: Nope. 00:53:54 Speaker 1: No. Keep going. It's famous. 00:53:58 Speaker 2: He's famous, and I can't remember his name. I read one, yeah. It's called Ghost Mesa. That was it. But no. But most of the stuff, I always watched TV. The Rifleman and all that. 00:54:14 Speaker 1: Bonanza. 00:54:14 Speaker 2: Wagon Train. 00:54:16 Speaker 1: Oh, Louis L'Amour. 00:54:17 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:54:18 Speaker 1: That's the author, Louis L'Amour. 00:54:19 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's it. 00:54:20 Speaker 1: Yeah. My father-in-law reads Louis L'Amour. 00:54:23 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:54:23 Speaker 1: You Google him right there. 00:54:24 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:54:25 Speaker 1: I got a computer right here. Wait a minute. 00:54:26 Speaker 2: Let me Google this. That wouldn't make much sense. 00:54:28 Speaker 1: But if I didn't know better, I would say his name is Louis L'Amour, but I know who Louis L'Amour is. Louis L'Amour. 00:54:32 Speaker 3: Yeah. 00:54:32 Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah. What do you watch now that's any good? Besides you? 00:54:37 Speaker 2: Yeah. 00:54:37 Speaker 1: Besides me. 00:54:39 Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm getting pictures of my sniper wife with her camera and me watching you. 00:54:44 Speaker 4: Ha! 00:54:47 Speaker 2: You know, I get off into the news a lot, but it just disperse. I'll go to YouTube because it's short clips, and I just kind of hit stuff and go, you know, that's AI or that's not. And every now and then just pick up something. 00:55:01 Speaker 1: So no shows? You have no shows to recommend? 00:55:04 Speaker 2: Oh, God, yeah, Landman. I'm all about Landman. That's right out in Midland and Odessa. I was in second grade there. But I had aunts and uncles that lived in Midland. That's right up my alley. Ever met Taylor Sheridan? I met his wife the other night. We played two shows in Fort Worth, and she was there in back. But Billy Bob Thornton and I hooked up through Mark Colley. Mark Colley was calling us, and they were putting the soundtrack together. And we ended up writing one called Blood for Black Gold. 00:55:43 Speaker 1: You and Billy Bob did? 00:55:44 Speaker 2: Uh-huh. 00:55:45 Speaker 1: Malvern, Arkansas, Billy Bob Thornton. 00:55:46 Speaker 3: Yep. 00:55:47 Speaker 2: My dad was a coach. Yeah. 00:55:49 Speaker 1: What's he like? 00:55:49 Speaker 2: I think he's cool as all get-out. He's just a regular guy, you know, when no one's around. You would like him. And he's not that weird dude that everybody says. 00:56:00 Speaker 1: He would replace you as my most famous friend, though. 00:56:03 Speaker 2: Really? 00:56:03 Speaker 1: If I got to be friends with Billy Bob Thornton. You wouldn't want that because he would be my most famous friend. 00:56:07 Speaker 2: You know what? As your friend, it would be great for you to have another friend like that. 00:56:12 Speaker 1: I won't allow it. 00:56:13 Speaker 2: No. 00:56:14 Speaker 1: I won't allow it. 00:56:14 Speaker 2: It's you. 00:56:15 Speaker 1: I'm going to set this up then. It's you and it's only you. Well, is there anything that you wish... And this is because people watch this, people in the industry. Yeah. Is there anything you wish people would ask you about more in interviews that you don't get asked about? Like you would enjoy talking about? This could be like a little... Lobber out there. 00:56:35 Speaker 2: On the way over here, Brandon and I were talking, and I thought Kix was going to be here the whole time. I mean, he was coming. It was a Brooks and Dunn thing. 00:56:45 Speaker 1: Oh, you thought that. 00:56:46 Speaker 2: I didn't know it was just me. Yeah. And it's way easier, even though it's hard for me, easier for you because you do it all the time. And you're just good at it. But, you know, taking a mic and just talking to people. What was the question? 00:57:05 Speaker 1: The question was, what's your favorite thing about me? 00:57:06 Speaker 2: That wasn't it. 00:57:10 Speaker 1: That wasn't. 00:57:13 Speaker 3: It. 00:57:13 Speaker 1: What do you wish people would talk about more when they interview you or you guys? And maybe it's nothing. I don't know. 00:57:21 Speaker 2: I can't come up with anything off the top of my head. 00:57:25 Speaker 1: What do you wish people would talk about less with you? use this as your billboard because you're not going to get I'm. 00:57:34 Speaker 2: Alone yeah this is it no those those are good questions what let's talk less about no I don't. 00:57:40 Speaker 1: Know I can tell we want my Maria you hate talking about. 00:57:43 Speaker 2: That I don't I hate talking about that I love that song yeah but that song had been good to me I know but you were like ah no no what were less than I don't. 00:57:54 Speaker 1: What about

when people go do you guys like each other Oh, yeah. Because I think I would get annoyed by that. I didn't ask that. 00:58:01 Speaker 2: Yeah. No, everybody thinks that we don't. I don't know all the rumors. I don't pay attention to it unless someone rolls one across the floor in front of me. But I don't think of those kind of questions. Used to, bad interviews are tough. And you, as you well know, I'm sure you get from your end, you get, you know, but it's, it used to be with questions where people go, well, what's, what's first, the lyrics or the words, you know? Right. And then, then remember when going through the stages, it was, what is it? Tidy waddies or boxers or whatever. That was a, that was a thing that ran through the industry for a long time. But, Then, every now and then, you'd hit somebody that wants to go deep and really talk about stuff. So, you know, enter Bobby Bones. 00:58:59 Speaker 1: Thank you. Final question. Do you remember the first time we ever met? 00:59:02 Speaker 3: Ooh. 00:59:07 Speaker 2: Well, no. What? it in your office? No. No? 00:59:12 Speaker 1: The show? No. 00:59:14 Speaker 2: Oh, come on. 00:59:15 Speaker 1: I don't expect you to remember because you're way more famous. So to me, it's a bigger deal. 00:59:20 Speaker 2: That's funny. 00:59:23 Speaker 1: I'm serious. I'm going with it. 00:59:24 Speaker 2: Just go ahead. 00:59:25 Speaker 1: We did. 00:59:26 Speaker 2: Get it over with. 00:59:28 Speaker 1: The first time that we met, we actually performed together. 00:59:35 Speaker 2: Whoa, Bobby. 00:59:39 Speaker 1: Where? 00:59:39 Speaker 3: What? 00:59:40 Speaker 1: It was not in Nashville. Now, we performed on the same stage for the same person, but not exactly at the same time. 00:59:49 Speaker 2: Okay. So we were on a show. And Kix was obviously there, right? I wish he was here. He would answer that question. 00:59:58 Speaker 1: Or not. Still nothing. We were dressed up, both of us. Really nice. 01:00:02 Speaker 2: Really nice. 01:00:03 Speaker 1: It was on television. It was on television. 01:00:08 Speaker 2: So really nice. 01:00:11 Speaker 1: More than normal. 01:00:12 Speaker 2: Past shoot, because stage closed. Mm-hmm. Oh, man. Oh, no. It's not the Kennedy Awards. 01:00:20 Speaker 1: Yep, it was. 01:00:20 Speaker 2: Was it? 01:00:21 Speaker 1: We were both a part of Reba's Kennedy induction. Wow. That's right. 01:00:26 Speaker 2: But you emceed it, didn't you? 01:00:27 Speaker 1: Well, I started her segment. I told some jokes and did a whole. 01:00:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, and Kelly Clarkson. Yep. Holy cow. 01:00:32 Speaker 1: That's the first time we'd ever met. 01:00:34 Speaker 3: Wow. 01:00:35 Speaker 1: I came up to you. You were sitting in the audience. 01:00:36 Speaker 2: Yes. Not like we were sitting in some place that you would easily forget, right? 01:00:40 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just that the Kennedy Center honors, no big deal. 01:00:43 Speaker 2: Whatever. Who was the president back then? I don't know. 01:00:46 Speaker 1: That's the first time we ever met. Wow. And you were really nice. And people didn't warn me about you. 01:00:51 Speaker 2: Really? 01:00:52 Speaker 1: And I was like, he's awesome. What did they say? Well, no, just that what I can appreciate about you now as a person. It's what people had oddly warned me about, but I'm the same way. It's like, man, if he likes you, he likes you. But if he doesn't, he's not going to act like it. And I was like, oh, cool. I'm not trying to be anybody's friend. 01:01:08 Speaker 2: I don't know what not acting like he likes him, don't like somebody, unless it's really something bad. 01:01:12 Speaker 1: I just think you're just an honest person. You're pretty transparent. 01:01:18 Speaker 2: My wife wouldn't tell you that. 01:01:20 Speaker 1: She wouldn't tell us that? 01:01:21 Speaker 3: No. 01:01:22 Speaker 1: And I met you, and I thought we hit it off pretty quick. 01:01:25 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:01:25 Speaker 1: Yeah. 01:01:26 Speaker 2: Well, you know, when— yeah, we did. But when you rolled in, like, into this position— Oh, yeah. 01:01:34 Speaker 1: It was bad. 01:01:35 Speaker 2: It was— man. Brutal. 01:01:36 Speaker 1: It was like— It was a brutal two years for you. 01:01:38 Speaker 2: It was incoming from everywhere. Yeah. 01:01:40 Speaker 3: Right? 01:01:40 Speaker 1: It was really hard. 01:01:42 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:01:43 Speaker 1: Looking back, it's really one of the harder— couple of years of my life because I was getting attacked from– I was just so different. 01:01:49 Speaker 2: Well, it was a complete disruption of the business, you know, a period. You know, just like the changing of the guard, the ultimate. 01:01:58 Speaker 1: It was hard. It was hard. Yeah, it was tough. I can't even really joke. I mean, it was really hard. 01:02:05 Speaker 2: Right. 01:02:05 Speaker 1: But I'm glad I did it because, like, I own that now. Like, I own that I did it. I came in and– What do they say? 01:02:12 Speaker 2: What is it? Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. How was that? 01:02:17 Speaker 1: It is tough. You guys are really nice to me. And then Kix was really nice to me. I met him for the first time at the Opry. Or no, I actually peed beside him in Texas once. 01:02:27 Speaker 2: I'm sorry. At a urinal. 01:02:30 Speaker 1: I knew he looked familiar. The other guy I peed next to was Jerry Van Dyke once. 01:02:37 Speaker 2: Really? 01:02:37 Speaker 1: Yeah. At Oak Lawn Racetrack. You know Jerry Van Dyke? Well, yeah. Funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How funny. Yeah, I didn't want to say anything to him while we were peeing. But after we washed our hands, I said, Mr. Van Dyke, I'm a big fan. And he was going to shake my hand. And I was like, we're good. Wash your hands. Because I did. 01:02:56 Speaker 2: Johnny Cash said the strangest place that ever happened to him was in the bathroom where somebody slipped a note under the door or something and asked him to sign it. 01:03:06 Speaker

1: While he was on the toilet. 01:03:07 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. 01:03:09 Speaker 1: Final, final question. What was Johnny like as a person? 01:03:13 Speaker 2: Everybody that knew him super, super well. And Janine was one of those people. I mean, she was literally part of the family. But so that he was a 17-year-old guy. So he's never outgrew being a 17-year-old kid. Just balls to the walls all the time. 01:03:30 Speaker 4: Great. 01:03:30 Speaker 1: I remember he told me once you guys would just watch the news. 01:03:32 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:03:33 Speaker 1: You just have the news. 01:03:34 Speaker 2: Oh, that's when I first met him. 01:03:35 Speaker 3: Yeah. 01:03:36 Speaker 2: She and June left me after just introducing me and saying, hey, here's my new boyfriend or whatever. He wants to be in the music business. Don't take me there. 01:03:45 Speaker 1: Oh, no. Oh, it's horrible. It couldn't have been worse. 01:03:49 Speaker 2: No. Oh. Oh. You know, no. 01:03:54 Speaker 3: No. 01:03:55 Speaker 2: You know, but John was as nice as he could be. And June– Took Janine out shopping and got rid of the Rydak, you know, like all this stuff. She called her boys, words like Christofferson and Waylon. Oh, God. Anyway, Larry Gatlin, who was a wild man at the time. But these guys and Willie, they were crazy. David Allen Cole, you know, was part of the posse. Can you imagine that bunch? 01:04:33 Speaker 1: And you would just sit and watch the news. 01:04:35 Speaker 2: And Janine goes, look, they're crazy. She said, if they get up there, it's going to be nuts, and you're going to be challenged by all kinds of stuff. 01:04:43 Speaker 1: Oh, talking to Janine. 01:04:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, telling Janine that. And anyway, Janine came back. She was kind of pale, which is not like Janine. And I said, well, what happened? She goes, I'll tell you later. So she told me all the way home. 01:04:59 Speaker 1: I was like, oh, God. It was awful. Well, I appreciate you giving me an hour. 01:05:05 Speaker 2: Well, thanks. Thanks for having me on here. 01:05:09 Speaker 1: Oh, little old you? 01:05:10 Speaker 2: Well. 01:05:10 Speaker 1: You're doing the whole. I'm surprised you didn't have a little old me on. 01:05:13 Speaker 2: I'm just. I'm going to go home, take the trash out, and do the dishes. 01:05:15 Speaker 1: Come on. Come on. 01:05:17 Speaker 2: Another day. 01:05:18 Speaker 1: You don't take the trash out. 01:05:19 Speaker 4: Yeah, I do. 01:05:19 Speaker 2: Yeah. It's not far. 01:05:22 Speaker 1: Do you do the dishes? 01:05:23 Speaker 2: If Janine tells me to. 01:05:27 Speaker 1: You don't need the dishes. 01:05:29 Speaker 2: I'm going to load the dishwasher every now and then if I'm at the farm or something. 01:05:33 Speaker 1: My wife told me yesterday that I probably did not know how to work the dishwasher. 01:05:37 Speaker 2: Oh, that's not bad. You're busy all the time, though. You go all the time. 01:05:42 Speaker 1: But she did say, I bet you don't know how to work the dishwasher. 01:05:45 Speaker 2: Oh, that's a challenge. That's cold. How long have you been married now? 01:05:49 Speaker 1: Almost six years. 01:05:50 Speaker 2: Six years? 01:05:51 Speaker 1: That long? Yeah, almost six years. 01:05:52 Speaker 2: She's shorter than that. 01:05:53 Speaker 4: Yeah. 01:05:53 Speaker 2: So six years. Now she's stepping up. Here she comes. She's turning into another wife now. Those are the ones that make you sweep the floor, take out the trash. 01:06:03 Speaker 1: She's the boss. 01:06:04 Speaker 2: Janine is too? 01:06:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. And seeing her as a mom has been really great, though. It's like a different, you get to see it from a different angle. 01:06:12 Speaker 2: Yeah. 01:06:13 Speaker 1: That's been really great. 01:06:14 Speaker 2: I bet it has changed. I see it on socials on Instagram and stuff. Janine's always looking there. 01:06:19 Speaker 1: Do you do your own socials? 01:06:21 Speaker 2: No, Brayden does 99% of that. All that stuff. 01:06:26 Speaker 1: So when you messaged me needing some Apple gift cards. 01:06:28 Speaker 2: No, if I say it's me, it's me. 01:06:30 Speaker 1: But you asked me for a bunch of Apple gift cards, and so I gave them. I'll send them over to you. That was you, right? 01:06:34 Speaker 2: All right, I'm going to ask you now. Remind me to ask him. 01:06:38 Speaker 3: All right? 01:06:39 Speaker 1: All right, there he is. Next year, obviously, the new Brooks and Dunn music, the great Ronnie Dunn. Thanks for listening to a BobbyCast production.