Ronnie Dunn

Ronnie Dunn INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

All quotes by Ronnie Dunn

I think luck is such a huge factor in our success story or in the success story of any country music act. Really. The element of luck is involved in keeping you going and determines how long you stay. It really is. You know all the stuff the label is saying about us being the most successful country duo, well that’s all fine, but that’s just stuff the label uses to taunt the press and the media.

I used to be the one in the duo who, in the first few years, would be there right at load in at the concert halls, watching the riggings and the lights and the sound system and stuff. Finally it got to me and I felt like from an artists standpoint there’s so many distractions that I could be better spending my time working on my songwriting on the bus or back at the hotel room with Kix or one of the songwriters we bring out on the road from time to time with us. After all, the road crew takes care of all the stuff for the live show and we’ve got the best crew out there on the road right now. So, why should I worry? Plus, you know man, you can die by that in a hurry. If you’re worrying about the stage, sound and lights for every show, then you can die worrying about that in a hurry. You have to keep an eye on overhead, your profit and loss statement, just like any business and that’s not something I need to worry about. We’ve got a good business and financial team so why should I be worrying about that all the time?

A lot of country artists historically haven’t watched the business side of things and in the end they lost track of what they were doing and it cost them dearly. Once you achieve all your goals in life, the goals that you’ve dreamed of all your life, which was kind of the atlas or the manual that you live by, then suddenly, you’ve achieved your goals, well there no longer is a guide to go by. It’s like after Kix and I achieved all we’ve ever wanted for our families and ourselves, we both sat back and said,’Wait a minute, where do I go from here?’ Without getting too philosophical, life is a series of adjustments. You look around and one day go, ‘OK, I’m here.’ Then you either are going to freak out and fold, physically and physiologically, or you suck it up and go,’OK, I’m here, where do I go from here?’ So, as far as our lives and careers and the success we’ve enjoyed along with the hype of us being the “Best selling country duo of all time.’, we just had to stop and look around and ask where do we go from here.

I think it’s more like a series of mountain climbing expeditions more than anything. When we went on the tour with Reba last year. We’ve always been primarily focused on the next record, the next tour for us, so going out on tour with Reba last year, man that was a pretty scary time for us, because we both were wondering,’Will people want to see us after the tour with Reba is over?’ I mean after we do this giant tour with Reba, then what? It was pretty a pretty haunting time for us I’ll tell you man. Well, the tour is kicking off down in Florida and I’m excited about the production, it’s all going to be new. Adding Terri (Clark) and David (Kersh) on there, well it will make for an interesting evening for anyone who comes out to see the show. It’s going to be a fast paced show, there won’t be any breaks in-between the acts. So that should keep it a real high energy show without a dull moment, that’s our plan. We’ve avoided TV forever. We’ve turned down the option of being on TV so many times man, we turned down the networks to let them broadcast our live show for the longest time. Because we were afraid to give the show away.

I think there is a danger in broadcasting your show on network TV. It’s such a huge media event that, if you give even a little bit of your show away, then any little piece of mystique that you might have built up through your years of touring, well that could quite possibly all end right there and then. Plus the sound isn’t always good on TV. You’re letting go a lot of things when you have your live show broadcast to network TV into the hands of a television producer. We’re real happy though with the way the stock car show coming up on CBS turned out.

Will you be taking dome time off from your work?

Ronnie Dunn- We’re taking time off from the road and really long touring schedules is something that everybody in Nashville is shooting for these days. Especially for Kix and I as songwriters we need to have that time off from the road so we can work on our songwriting. But if you’ve got that big financial monkey on your back where you’ve got to keep those tractor trailers and tour buses running for two or three hundred dates a year, then that’s a pretty stressful situation. We want to find a middle ground between the two. On one hand we don’t want to play three hundred dates a years, while on the other hand we don’t want to play to few dates a year. So everybody is shooting for that, but only a very few acts in country music can get to that point.

I don’t know if country has proven that the acts can do what rock has done in that in rock you’ll have a band like the Rolling Stones who can takes off three years between albums and tour and come back really strong and tour to sold out arenas and stadiums every time they come back out on the road. Acts like the Stones or pink Floyd, they can take two or three years off, and then come back and still have a career. As far as all the newcomers getting into country music over the past two years, they’re always there waiting for us to fall and they’re in line all the time. I mean that’s a long line to it goes from here ( Nashville) all the way to West Texas. And all these newcomers are waiting in line to get to the microphone and get their music recorded and onto the radio. I say good luck to them. I know what it’s like to be down there at the end of that line.

I think there’s room for everybody and those who get here, they deserve to be here.

You do not just fall out of the sky into this position here in country music these days and then suddenly have a place and a career and then stay there.

I’m so focused on what we’re doing that I don’t turn around and worry about the other guy. Because the day I do, then I’ll feel them creeping up on me and I don’t want that man. Man all these artists who are in country music today and they don’t write songs and they’re not songwriters, I can imagine when the time comes to decide what songs they want to record and to have to solicit songs from the songwriters down here in Nashville, I can imagine that could turn into a nightmare. I mean there’s so many good songwriters down here and there’s so many artists cutting tracks, that it does make for difficult times for anyone who is looking for find good material that they like and feel comfortable with enough to record and then will sing it night after night throughout their career. You know when people asked me how long Kix and I are going to keep this going, I tell then, the public is going to have to dictate that. Someone else is going to have to tell me there is no water in the well because I’m probably going to have to go down writing songs. As far as taking out a huge stage show, well we got the idea from that from watching rock groups like The Stones and Pink Floyd. Those bands shows are major events and the visual aspect of their shows is as big as the music sometimes. It’s cool. That’s what makes me want to see the Stones.

We developed our stage show and the way we constantly are upgrading our show and plowing more money into it to make it different and bigger and better each time out, well we learned that from studying the Stones. We looked around and said,’Who has been out there for a really long time and still are drawing really large crowds?’ It’s those acts who take a bigger show to the people like the Stones. We’ve invested our money back into our shows and as long as people keep going back then we are able to continue to do that. Meeting with the fans is something that’s really important to me. I really value the feedback the fans provide. You know, from time to time, there are doubts in my life, I do feel isolated at time and I don’t get that much feedback all the time. So when I meet a fan and they tell me they love what we’re doing and they’ve seen a bunch of our shows and they had a good time, that’s really good for me. That’s what keeps me going, that’s good to hear.