Brooks & Dunn are set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Sunday night, the 19th of October. They are going to be inducted alongside comedian Ray Stevens and executive producer Jerry Bradley. And with their long tenure in music, their career is not only legendary but also multi-faceted.
Brooks & Dunn Says Their Songs Will Be Alive When They Won’t Be
The legendary country duo has definitely made a huge comeback this year, with their critically acclaimed Reboot album, and a Country Music Hall of Fame exhibit that will run until July. And thanks to the recent resurgence of ’90s music among younger fans, they have cultivated a new listener base.
In an interview, they have noted that it was a “head trip” for the duo, going through all of that. According to Kix Brooks, it’s the younger audience who don’t see them as being traditionalists.
“I would argue that [our younger fans] don’t see us as much as traditionalists as, maybe, at the risk of sounding arrogant, this music has just stood the test of time, and it’s songs that they liked. I don’t think they necessarily consider us traditional country music. They know the history of country music enough to know that we’re not Merle Haggard.”
Their career is one of the more colorful ones out there and despite having to sometimes take a little bit of a tangent in their performances, people still consider them as traditionalists because of the nature of their songs. Brooks fondly shares about how their shows were sometimes out of the box, the people come back because of the music.
“There were times throughout our career when we were blowing up inflatables bigger than our stage, blowing confetti out every night, having huge balloon drops night after night on tours, swinging from the ceiling.”
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“Even during that time, we would catch ourselves and talk about it a lot, going, ‘Is the smoke, the lights, the nonsense, is that getting in the way of our music?'”
“Hardly anybody’s talking about those inflatables [today] — all those hundreds of thousands of dollars we spent shooting ourselves out of cannons. Nobody’s talking about that. They’re all talking about the music, here, that many years later, which is pretty freakin’ cool for us.”
Brooks & Dunn’s legacy is multi-faceted: Twenty No. 1 hits, including “Neon Moon” and “My Maria,” two Grammy Awards, 17 CMA Awards, and 29 ACM Awards dot their resume. However, the songs are what has put them in the ranks with classic artists and the other Hall of Famers.
Dunn adds that though they’re going to be gone from this world, their music stays as their legacy.
“All that [extra] stuff that we did [as] Brooks & Dunn will be forgotten in time but the songs, that’s what’ll move it forward. They’ll be alive; we won’t.”
