Country Music Herald

If you’re following along with Country Music Herald’s salute to Brooks & Dunn, we are now on Part 3 of the special series celebrating Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn’s latest album, “Cowboy Town” which was released this past Tuesday and will surely be ranking on the Billboard Charts next week. In Part 1, we followed the guys on a photo shoot, and Part 2 saw the behind the scenes hijinks in the recording studio. We’ve now reached Part 3 and get to look in on their video shoot for the title single off the new CD. All of this great new Brooks & Dunn content is leading to a great contest that will be run right here on this blog. Stay tuned here to find out what great Brooks & Dunn gear you could win (and let me tell you, it’s an awesome prize package). Until then, enjoy the mini-video of the single’s video shoot, and also read some more about what Kix and Ronnie think of their new album, after the jump.

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If that sounds like the very definition of what a title track should be, that’s because “Cowboy Town” was among the last of more than thirty songs that Brooks & Dunn recorded and considered for the album. They wanted a statement that pulled the album together, and they got it. The song, which opens the disc, finds a thematic soul mate toward the end in “American Dreamer,” a song that bestows its title on achievers as diverse as Merle Haggard, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and astronaut Neil Armstrong. It’s an American Dream that’s that big. Big enough for everyone.”Johnny Cash Junkie (Buck Owens Freak)” and “The Ballad of Jerry Jeff Walker,” meanwhile, pay tribute to the musical masters who inspired - and continue to inspire - Brooks & Dunn. That Walker put in a guest appearance on the song that bears his name gave Brooks a thrill that will last a lifetime. “He showed up with a Martin guitar and a six pack,” Brooks says of the session in Austin at which his idol contributed his characteristically spirited vocal. “He walked in and said, ‘I’m ready!’ He gave it his all, and was totally in the spirit of the song.”

As far as paying tribute goes, “Put a Girl in It” and “Tequila” acknowledge two other inspirations that have motivated musicians - and pretty much everybody else - since time immemorial. “I’m sitting on my back porch looking at my barn, which is a quarter mile from here, and I cannot tell you how many times I have crawled from my barn to this house,” Dunn says as he describes “Tequila,” which he co-wrote with his longtime collaborator, Terry McBride. “We were laughing on the bus trying to write this thing - believe me, it was written from experience. Then in the studio, I thought it might work as one of those Stevie Ray Vaughan kind of shuffles, and the back just locked in.”