“It feels like the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders,” he said of the upcoming release. “From being on the production end to all of the mechanical aspects, the songs, the recording, and the packaging, down to going back and forth with the label for three months as to which picture to use as the cover. But now, we’re promoting the single. It never stops. It’s just a constant world of chaos that I think I’m about to come to terms with.” That being said, you wonder if the Oklahoma native would have it any other way. “But, I have to admit that I think I’m addicted to it,” he says with a smile.
Is there stress related to stepping out on his own? Sure, but the singer is philosophical about the new phase of his career. “You know, I’ve got two things that I can do,” he tells Roughstock. “I’ve got a bunch of ‘For Sale’ signs that I can put around the house and my cars----I’m hangin’ on to the pickup, and move to Mexico….or I can have a successful record and continue to go on and do what I love to do.”
What he loves to do is make music that matters---to him, as well as the millions of fans he entertained on the road as a member of Brooks & Dunn. The debut single, “Bleed Red” debuted in the top-30, and is quickly approaching the top ten on the singles chart. The album features many songs that seemed poised to follow “Bleed Red” onto radio playlists nationwide. From the swagger of “Singer In A Cowboy Band” and “How Far To Waco” to the heartfelt honesty of “Last Love I’m Tryin” and “I Just Get Lonely,” fans will be glad to know that Dunn’s trademark vocal approach is as strong as it ever has been.
One song that fans will feel an immediate attraction to is the power ballad “Love Owes Me One.” Dunn said the track is immensely personal to him.
“You know, back in October, I quit a really good paying job,” he jokes, before turning serious. “I was sitting out on the back porch with my wife, Janine. She was kind of quiet, but not quiet by nature. It was a rare moment. She looks up at me, and says ‘What are you thinking about doing? I don’t remember us having a conversation about you quitting the band. You’re manically all over town, and writing all the time, and cutting songs everywhere. I hardly see you. I look over at you, Ronnie, and you’ve got “Cowboy” tattooed all over from your elbow to your wrist, so what’s going on? You’re taking off on your own in more ways than one. “
He realized that he was in a unique place in his life, and told Janine as such. “I said that I felt I was at a stage in my life that I was trying to come to terms with who I am. I want to make some things mean something, and maybe revamp myself. She said ‘Why don’t you just go to Mexico, stare off into the desert, and try to figure it out? Quit all this frantic stuff, and calm down just a little. See what your voice tells you. She told me to stop writing, and I’ve never heard her say that. I started to think ‘You know, I must be out of control.”
Did he book the flight across the border?
“So, she leaves, and as soon as I see her going around the corner, I grab a pencil and paper, and I’m doing exactly what she tells me not to do. I write ‘Love Owes Me One.’ I think her speech sobered me up in terms of just thinking about what it would be like to be in the process of quitting this or changing that. I thought that in the back of my mind that I was going to blow the marriage apart or something. So I wrote that song to her, as my way of saying I’m not going to do that. I love you too much. That’s the last thing I would do.”
While Ronnie Dunn is a different musical entity than Brooks & Dunn, the legendary singer admitted that he was still trying to figure out what made the solo work different.
I don’t know the answer to that. That’s been a question that has been asked. We’ve analyzed that, as you can imagine. On a personal basis, I’ve asked myself how do I make this different, and I don’t know,” he says, before pausing a second. “Actually, I do. The songs dictate what the album sounds like. This is a unique grouping of songs. For me, I feel like it’s the best twelve songs I have ever put on a record.”
For Dunn, one of the most meaningful of those dozen tracks might be the sobering “Cost Of Livin.” He thinks that many will identify with the lyrics. It’s a song that Dunn----a million selling singer and writer many times over had to fight his label on. “That song came to me in 2008 when we had the first gas crisis of the past few years. One of the guys who wrote it, Phillip Coleman, mows grass in the summer of a living, as he’s a struggling songwriter. I played it for the guys at the record label, and one of the guys there said ‘The economy will be turned around by the time we could record this song and get it out, even if we did record it.’ So, it come time to do this record, and I pull this song back out because I’m crazy about it, and obviously the economy hasn’t turned back around. We’re looking at gas going to four or quite possibly, five dollars a gallon. One of the executives again tells me that ‘You’re too wealthy to sing this song.”
He decided to enlist some help on his behalf. “So, I immediately call my mother, and ask her for a favor. I asked her to send a picture of at nine years old in front of our trailer house in New Mexico on the construction of the Navajo Dam where my dad was driving a bulldozer. I told them ‘I don’t see some wealthy boy there’ some kid that has come from privilege. It’s a hard time for me to come to terms with that. I cut the song, and we play the entire album for our friends at radio. They flip over it. When we started with the song, the lyric was ‘Two dollars and change at the pump,’ so I just went in there this week and asked me if I would mind cutting a version that said ‘Four dollars and change at the pump?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’d do that, because it was going to be there by the time the record is out. It’s not written as something to exploit the economy, it’s written from the point of view of a guy who is out there trying to support his family. It’s real,” he says frankly.
For more on Ronnie Dunn, log on to www.RonnieDunn.com!
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