Duo Delivers Hillbilly Deluxe
One might think that being country music's most successful duo—with 28 million albums sold worldwide—would be enough. Not so for duo Brooks & Dunn, who released their ninth studio album, Hillbilly Deluxe, on Aug. 30. "You never want to rest on what you've done," says Coleman, Texas (pop. 5,127), native Ronnie Dunn, 52. "If you're going to play country, you want to strip away a lot of the stuff, get down to the heart of the matter, and find songs that dig a little deeper into the way folks live their lives." Both Dunn and his partner, Shreveport, La., native Kix Brooks, 50, contributed heavily to the songwriting on the new release—co-writing six and three tracks, respectively. They've got 22 No. 1 hits to their credit, and their current single, Play Something Country, may soon be their 23rd. The Nashville, Tenn.-based artists currently are enjoying their Deuces Wild tour, a high-energy line-up that includes pals Big & Rich and the Warren Brothers. "I'm thinking between the pranks and the performances, this could be a whole new kind of country getting cooked up out there," Dunn says.
