Brooks & Dunn BioPage 2
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but not wanting to relinquish what was, while "When Shee's Gone, She's Gone" squares the realization with the ever-flowing tide of the Mississipi against the fading of New Orleans' famed revelry against the chill of the dawn.
For Brooks, who was raised outside Baton Rouge, country music was around the house and it was what he learned to play, plinking out the songs of Hank Williams and Johnny Horton on his first guitar. And it was on his grandfather's dairy farm, he made an important discovery about music's roots. "The guys who worked there -- for them, the music was all spirituals, Leadbelly and Robert Johnson. From my few chords that I'd learned, I realized country and the blues were from the same roots. "The same three chords that moved me moved these other people who liked a whole other kind of music in the same way. Rock and roll may've turned the guitars up more, but it's from the same place too." Both men were secure in their understanding of the overlap. It fired up their will to push country's edges, maybe make it a little dangerous again. Not in the sense of killing, per se, but in the way they bring an intensity to their attack. For Steers & Stripes, Brooks, Dunn and Wright enlisted engineer Gregg Drummond, known for his work with Fleetwood Mac -- and they decided to plumb some territory that was a bit forbidden in today's Nashville. Grazing the gritty rural overlap that is ZZ Top's adjacency to country, Brooks & Dunn took their always bird-dog sensibility a bit further out. Against a crunching backdrop, the pair found a frontier that most in today's politically correct Nashville are quick to sidestep: lust, sex and abandon. It's not cheating. It's not breaking any laws. But it is about the sweep of hormones and the quickening of the pulse. "The emotional current was a drug to me," Dunn slyly acknowledges. "The undertow of sex in songs was just electric. Even when I was young and I didn't know what sex was, I knew something was up! Before I ever had a shot of tequila or a beer, I was listening to music and trying to make out, to connect those dots I couldn't even explain! "Heck, even Willie Nelson admitted he picked up a guitar to get girls! Music always has that dangerous element of seduction to it, which keeps you on edge all the time. It's just frought with that and it makes music very, very powerful." "Hey, look, let's be honest," Brooks adds with a shrug," people are pretty much geared that way, so why ignore the obvious? We're not about misuse of it, but sex and love should be fun. Spring Break fever never hurt anyone! It shouldn't always get bogged down in some emotionally ladden thing, either, because while sex doesn't necessarily make the world go round, it's definitely the fuel that keeps things running. "And it's not about a double standard. Women should be just as free, have just as much fun. Because when you're honest and let it be fun, you take the shame away and can have a really healthy perspective!" So, listeners can bet "The Last Thing I Do," with Yearwood going lick for lick with Dunn on the heightened choruses, is a promise to be delivered, while "Good Girls Go To Heaven" celebrates free spirits who are ready to kick out the jams -- and "See Jane Dance" knocks back the ZZ Top heroine owning her sexuality with brazen abandon. And the men who embrace their roots both musically in a classic Buck Owens romp on the shuffling "Lucky Me, Lonely You" and the comedic twist of vintage Roger MIller in the tale of the morning after a night ill-spent "Deny Deny Deny" -- and thematically with the driving down one's destiny in the innocent yearning "Go West" and the endless possibilities celebrated in the pumping "Only In America." Interestingly, the latter not only paints the obvious American Dream, it also embraces the notion of the stakes as it confesses "one may be going to prison/one may grow up to be President." It's a great country and we should love it," Brooks says. "But to love it, you have to see it for what it is. I think that can make you love something more..." Indeed, for Brooks & Dunn, whom no less than The Dallas Morning News proclaims are "filled with thoughts on yearning and lonliness... Brooks & Dunn are really just good storytellers at heart," Steers and Stripes is a record to re-pay their fans in full and push the possibilities in ways they haven't since forging a new kind of revved up country almost a decade ago. "There's a lot more undercurrent on here, and a lot more danger to these songs than meets the eye," the Arkansas/Texas/Oklahoman Dunn admits. "These songs are turning points in people's lives, moments that are decisive, things will change. And the best part to me is that some of these songs -- like the songs that really captured me as a kid -- are about what they don't say -- or know. You're not told and may never know, but those moments are there. "I think there's an element of danger of things changing involved somewhere. For some, it can be through the music or the lifestyle -- that dysfunction is part of the appeal. I mean, Kurt Cobain is just another Johnny Cash, except he didn't make it. But look what they meant to so many people! People who thought they spoke for them... "At the end of the day, everybody has demons -- and everybody wrestles them." "For us, our competitiveness fires both Ronnie and I to push harder as artists, as musicians," Brooks picks up. "Sometimes that gets in the way of our creativity because letting that tension drive the music misses the point. But we let it make us better. When we do that, like we did here, our drive unifies us..." "It's true," Dunn adds. "When you nail a song, it's like racing a car... you get this pure adrenaline rush, especially when you hear that roar from the crowd. That's what we're pushing for! We want to do to the crowd what we want to do to ourselves: have as much fun as we can, give everyone a release, let 'em feel a bunch of emotions and send 'em home exhausted." "Yeah," Brooks agrees, "hopefully we're a party band with some substance to us. Our main objective is to show people a good time -- and they come to be lifted up. But then you'll be playing 'Neon Moon' or 'Husbands and Wives' -- and you realize they're really listening, maybe even thinking about it. That's cool -- it shows they're looking for something deeper, too. "To me, there's a really cool thing about entertaining everyday people because they want to have fun, get lost in the music and the moment. I come from a pretty average background -- and I'd say our fans are a pretty average cross-section. They speak in plain terms, live in regular houses, wait for the weekend, don't love their job, but do love their family... "It's not very glamorous, but it's the truth. And the last time I checked, it's the truth that drives country music."
[ Brooks & Dunn Bio (Page 1) ]
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