BROOKS & DUNN RELEASE THEIR NEW ALBUM “REBOOT II”

Track List
1. Play Something Country (with Lainey Wilson)
2. Neon Moon (with Morgan Wallen)
3. Rock My World (Little Country Girl) (with Marcus King Band)​
4. Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You (with Megan Moroney)​
5. Brand New Man (with Warren Zeiders)​
6. Believe (with Jelly Roll)​
7. She Used to Be Mine (with Riley Green)​
8. She Likes to Get Out of Town (with The Cadillac Three)​
9. Boot Scootin’ Boogie (with Halestorm)​
10. That Ain’t No Way to Go (with Mitchell Tenpenny)​
11. How Long Gone (with The Earls of Leicester)​
12. I’ll Never Forgive My Heart (with Jake Worthington)​
13. She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind (with Hailey Whitters)​
14. Hard Workin’ Man (with Christone ”Kingfish” Ingram)​
15. Hillbilly Deluxe (with Hardy)​
16. Indian Summer (with Ernest)​
17. Drop in the Bucket (with A Thousand Horses)​
18. Only in America (with Corey Kent)

Liner Work Parts

Hey there were Brooks and Dunn…
Hey, we’re Brooks and Dunn…
Brooks and Dunn here…
Hey I am Kicks Brooks and I’m Ronnie Dunn, and we’re Brooks and Dunn…
And this is our new song…
And you just heard our new song…
and this is a new version of one of our hits…
From REBOOT II…
Play Something Country (with Lainey Wilson)
That Ain’t No Way to Go (with Mitchell Tenpenny)
Rocked My World (with Marcus King)
Ain’t Nothing About You (with Megan Moroney)
Brand New Man (with Warren Zeiders)
She Likes to Get Out of Town (with The Cadillac Three)
She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind (with Hailey Whitters)
Neon Moon (with Morgan Wallen)
Hard Working Man (with Kingfish)
Boot Scootin’ Boogie (with Halestorm)
Never Forget My Heart (with Jake Worthington)
How Long Gone (with The Earls)
Hillbilly Deluxe (with Hardy)
Indian Summer (with Ernest)
She Used to Be Mine (with Riley Green)
Drop in the Bucket (with A Thousand Horses)
Believe (with Jelly Roll)
Only in America (with Corey Kent)

Story Behind the Project

How did the idea of Reboot II come to mind?
Well, one faithful day our manager showed up and he said, “Guys, I think we could do this reboot thing again”, and I’m not sure how Ronnie felt about it, but I’m like, “we already did that, right?” I think we both come from the school of, we don’t want this thing to be tired. We’re not just trying to do the same thing over again and honestly, that was real different for us doing the “REBOOT I” album. There were some neat takes on it, Kacey Musgraves certainly did a very different version of “Neon Moon”, but for the most part, you know, we just kind of strayed, blurred the edges a little bit, I guess, for lack of a better way of saying it. I got a feeling Ronnie feels the same way I do, when we went into this. It’s like, man, let’s turn this thing loose. Really. Let’s let these guys really do what they do. If they want to do their own producers or whatever, because Dan Huff did a good job of kind of helping keep the first one very organized. We needed that help. And sure enough, everybody liked it. No one showed up on it. But different, you know, a group this time for the most part, Jelly Roll, Lainey, Marcus King, and some real, kind of out of bounds, cool Kingfish come over from Memphis. Brought his soul and just and you know Jerry Douglas bluegrass. There’s everything, some really hardcore rock stuff on here. You know Hardy’s not going to settle down at this point. Yeah. He came screaming in to and it’s really it’s all over the place, but really fun just unleashed frickin creativity. You know you’re not you’re just going to go, oh well that’s that’s the “Hard Working Man” okay. That’s “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” wait until you hear this. I mean for me, and I think you feel the same way, this is the most fun project and everybody says it, but I mean it. This is the most fun project we ever we’ve ever done for sure. Dan Huff smoked it from everything. The way the record sounds to the artist, just on and on. It’s cool. We’re excited to turn this one loose. Yeah.

CUT x CUT (Audio)

Brooks & Dunn – “Play Something Country” with Lainey Wilson – Story Behind the Song
Lainey Wilson comes rolling in the room fired up, by fired up she had a flame shirt on, she had flame bellbottoms on, she jumped in the vocal booth and she just ripped and torched. Sounds like a ZZ Top Version with Lainey singing, it’s really cool. 

Brooks & Dunn – “Neon Moon” with Morgan Wallen – Story Behind the Song
“Neon Moon”. Yeah. Shoot. Clare, our manager, called over Big Loud and asked for Morgan if he would do “Neon Moon“ and, darned if he didn’t do it. Bingo. They put a kind of a Mexicali slant to it, which is always kind of what we wanted to do anyway and, I think you’d be surprised by it. Really good performance by Morgan, but what would you expect from Morgan Wallen right now? Right. It’s not, not, un-similar, but it has added a little added cha cha to it I would say, a cowboy cha cha.

Brooks & Dunn – Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” with Marcus King Band – Story Behind the Song
“Rock My World“, man. We had fun doing this back in the day. It was kind of different for us for sure, but I’ll tell you what’s really different. Marcus King, if you don’t know this guy is a guitarist, slingers, soul singing cat monkey and he came in and with his band from South Carolina and they were not playing. I mean, they hit this thing hard. It is rockin and you find out just how good a guitar player he is on this thing, too. He ate it up, man. Tore the room to pieces singin’ and playin’ at the same time. Yeah, how many people do that.

Brooks & Dunn – “Ain’t Nothin ‘Bout You” with Megan Moroney – Story Behind the Song
This is a whole different side of Megan Moroney, and you’re not going to believe and I mean that. Seriously. We walked into the studio and she, she was cutting the first few lines on that, had that grit like she’d been up all night or for three or two or three nights. Like that gravelly, sexy voice and wow tore off into it and we just jumped on the wave and served it, served it home. This is Megan Moroney “Ain’t Nothin ‘Bout You”. Terrific.

Brooks & Dunn – “Brand New Man” with Warren Zeiders – Story Behind the Song
“Brand New Man” is like the first song Ronnie and I ever wrote. Still like to open our shows with it a lot. And, Warren Zeiders came in. He, he’s just catching his own wave out there, but he was a little unsure of what he wanted to do with it. This was a fun collaboration, and I think, I don’t know, I think Ronnie might have thrown out there. How about putting a little Nirvana vibe on this thing? You coulda heard a pin and drop? Let’s do it. Let’s do it kind of with the Nirvana slant and sure enough, the band tore off into it and bang! There you have it. He dug it. We dig it. Yes. Cool.

Brooks & Dunn – “Believe” with Jelly Roll – Story Behind the Song
Dan Huff, the producer, herded most of the cats on on the project. His father, come to find out, was an a prominent, LA, orchestral arranger. Is that the right word? That’s the right word. And Dan arranged the strings. It was a 60 piece, symphony. They came in with a 30, I think group, choir, behind us, and we cut it as a place called it used to be, it’s Ocean Way, it used to be an old church, but it’s it’s amazing. It’s amazing. So we sang that together. Really, really pretty. Really cool.

Brooks & Dunn – “She Used to Be Mine” with Riley Green – Story Behind the Song
I don’t know what to say. I was on Instagram the other night and it’s like these big burly dudes with, you know, the big, you know beard, were doing a podcast. They were talking about Riley Green, about, “oh, man, he’s a man’s man.” That dude is a man’s man. You know, he’ll walk out on stage with his shirt off and he carries his dog in a thing? That’s it’s like it’s like a harness, a vest that goes around or something. Yeah, something I haven’t seen this.. And he carries ’em one stage and does that deal. And they were they were showing the clip on. There’s the dog’s feet aren’t touching the ground. No man. You know he’s just walking up there strutting like a man. What they’re going to do, man he’s beautiful man. He is flying his dog around. Oh he’s pretty man. All those guys, there’s funny stuff anyway. Riley Green, “She Used to Be Mine“.

Brooks & Dunn – “She Likes to Get Out of Town” with The Cadillac Three – Story Behind the Song
Cadillac Three. They do their own thing and they are swampy and they are down in it. And Jaren, who’s the singer and leads that band, I think he just came in with a take that we’d never would have dreamed up. This is a song I wrote a long time ago with the with Bob DiPiero, and we just we rock it pretty hard on stage, but it’s rocking now, but it is rocking way down in a swamp. It’s got black water all over it. Check this thing out.

Brooks & Dunn – “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” with Halestorm – Story Behind the Song
Okay. Look out! Look out! This is not the “Boot Scootin’ Boogie“ that you’re accustomed to. These guys came in. They just, headlined, Wembley in Europe. Lzzy Hale. Yeah. And they were on fire. Man. The drummer had green hair. We don’t care. Her brother? Yeah. Her brother. Yeah. He almost broke his arm, hitting the snare drum so hard. You’ll enjoy this one.

Brooks & Dunn – “That Ain’t No Way to Go” with Mitchell Tenpenny – Story Behind the Song
“Ain’t No Way to Go“. It’s an early song. Once of the first albums that was out. Ironically, it’s one of our top songs, you think well, “Neon Moon”, “Boot Scoot”, “My Maria” are up there, but it’s right up there with them. We don’t do it that often, a lot, but, we’ve started doing it now. I think you’re going to enjoy this. Mitchell did a great job.

Brooks & Dunn – “How Long Gone” with The Earls of Leicester – Story Behind the Song
So Jerry Douglas, the undisputed, I think, undisputed best dobro player in the world, came in with with Shawn Camp, who actually co-wrote this song for us originally, and the hottest bluegrass players in this town. They landed in their chairs playing, and I mean, they went top to bottom. I think they might have run it twice. Yeah, and it was totally together. Bluegrass guys are like that. I mean, they do their thing and they don’t screw up. It’s not cool for them to screw up. It’s not like sessions, are we? “You know, I don’t know, what do you think about this or that and whatever.” It’s like, bang, hit it. Burning a little man in a line and it was on it is I really stinging and good bluegrass cut it short and Shawn Camp who wrote it, got in the middle of it and wind it up. It’s great. Yeah. Awesome. Really fun.

Brooks & Dunn – “I’ll Never Forgive My Heart” with Jake Worthington – Story Behind the Song
Jake Worthington is a he’s a delight to be around. He is is hard country down in the dirt as you can get. He’s a Texas boy, but he he’s the real deal. He almost sounds like a new version of Lefty Frizzell when he talks. The way he carries on his lingo I love him. He’s fixing the fence right now. Our building. The wrecking ball. Yeah, yeah, with a six pack, a six pack of something, somewhere close by.

Brooks & Dunn – “She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind” with Hailey Whitters – Story Behind the Song
Oh, Hailey Whitters walked in, she’s so cute. She’s like a mini Miranda writer, young Miranda. She’s country. Smart. Yeah. And put the coolest, like, groove vibe. It kind of reminds me of the way that, we ended up with “Neon Moon” on the REBOOT I record. Really cool. You’ll enjoy this.

Brooks & Dunn – “Hard Workin’ Man” with Christone “Kingfish” Ingram – Story Behind the Song
Man. Kingfish is cool. If y’all don’t know who Chris is. Check this out. It is not the “Hard Working Man”. Oh, that’s one that we did before I had mentioned because, Brothers Osborne. That’s right. Did “Hard Working Man” and we do that version, which is kind of like us on steroids. The version we did on the first one, this is nothing like that. “Kingfish” is Memphis blues, and it is super cool. He’s such a he such a groove and you just get all. You just surf the wave. Came in with his band and his B.B. King guitar and let it go.

Brooks & Dunn – “Hillbilly Deluxe” with Hardy – Story Behind the Song
Okay. This is another one of those. It’s a little unorthodox. I’m not really going to try to give it away. You know, Hardy’s album “The Mockingbird and the Crow”, if you’re familiar with him, this is the Crow. Yeah.

Brooks & Dunn – “Indian Summer” with Earnest – Story Behind the Song
God. Ernest has been out with us. He’s an established writer here in town, young writer and I think he’s had, like, 7 or 8 number one, Morgan Wallen hits. A lot, he’s been out on tour with us. Last year, it was really fun. He surprised us and picked, Indian Summer. I have to sing, Kix has to sing with, with all these we had to like, if it’s in the wrong key for us, we just got to kind of man up and do it. But, this was this is really fun to do and I love singing that song. It’s fun. Not our biggest, but certainly, one of Ronnie and I’s favorites that we’ve written for sure. He was so excited ran up on the bus, and goes “man we just cut Indian Summer” he says “We put some George Strait on it.” He sang it good. He did great.

Brooks & Dunn – “Drop in the Bucket” with A Thousand Horses – Story Behind the Song
This is a song that was a funky little groove, on our record. And it’s it’s a lyric that I always just have fun listening to. I don’t even know where. So one of those songs, you’re right, where stuff’s just coming off the top of your head doesn’t really make sense, but it just kind of makes sense. I don’t know, those guys picked it up one way or the other and, same thing. They put it on a real fast moving train and, let it eat. Thousand Horses cut, that’s their whole band playing musically, they kind of went through the whole thing and then they took it to another place and then they take it to another place and I think it’s still fading somewhere.

Check out Play Something Country with Lainey Wilson out now!