They became the best selling duo in country music history with forty one Top 10 country hits including twenty No. 1s, yet Ronnie Dunnβs path there began when a dean told him to stop playing honky tonks or leave school and Dunn left.
He chose the bars.
Long before Brooks & Dunn, Ronnie Dunn was being pulled between two worlds. He later described his father as a hard living honky tonker and his mother as a Bible carrying Baptist.
As a young man the church side appeared to be winning. Dunn went to Abilene Christian College in Texas, studied toward ministry and considered becoming a preacher.
Another Life Taking Shape At Night
But at night another life was taking shape. Dunn had begun singing with bands in bars around Abilene. The clubs gave him something school could not with a room full of strangers who immediately let him know whether a song worked.
Eventually the college found out. Dunn later recalled being summoned by the dean. School policy prohibited students from frequenting bars and clubs and Dunn was doing considerably more than frequenting them.
The dean gave him the choice plainly to stay in school and stop playing bars or leave. Dunn chose the bars.
Years On The Nightclub Circuit Before Nashville Called
There was no Brooks & Dunn waiting outside the deanβs office. He moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma and spent years working the nightclub circuit.
He fronted the house band at Dukeβs Country during the Urban Cowboy era and recorded several traditional country singles for the independent Churchill label in the early 1980s. None made him a national star.
For a while Dunn wondered whether he had made a terrible decision. He later remembered asking himself whether abandoning school might leave him pumping gas instead of making music.
Then in 1988 he won the Marlboro Talent Search. That victory helped move Dunn and his wife to Nashville.
An Unplanned Duo That Made History
Producer Scott Hendricks became involved with his demos and Arista Nashville chief Tim DuBois eventually saw another possibility instead of launching Dunn alone by pairing him with Louisiana songwriter and struggling solo artist Kix Brooks.
Neither man had spent years dreaming of becoming half of a duo. But when they began writing together the songs arrived quickly.
Their 1991 debut Brand New Man produced four consecutive No. 1 singles and Brooks & Dunn went on to that historic run of forty one Top 10 hits and twenty No. 1s.
Returning To Abilene With Both Worlds In His Voice
Decades later Dunn returned to the place where the two paths had separated. On his 2022 solo album 100 Proof Neon he wrote βThe Road to Abileneβ looking back at the religious college, the West Texas music scene and the young man leaving town to chase what Dunn called his βsix string dream.β
Six string dream.
By then he no longer had to choose between the two sounds that had divided his youth. The gospel influence stayed in his voice and the honky tonks taught him what to do with it.