Modern stars help Nashville's Brooks & Dunn revive their country legacy on 'Reboot II'

Country Music Hall of Famers Brooks & Dunn have spent 35 years arriving just a little bit early and yet thoroughly right on time to everything, everywhere.

That's why "Reboot II," their second attempt at a greatest hits cover album in the past five years (out Nov. 15), should spend large parts of the duo's 2025 tour dates being well received nationwide.

It's also an apropos way to describe how Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn enter the Music Row conference room where they're speaking with The Tennessean.

Dunn's the son of a country guitarist who was raised on rockabilly records, while Brooks' tastes leaned more in the direction of country radio hits, countrified West Coast pop and bluesy swamp rock.

Though markedly different in their tastes, their shared love of how all their influences mesh into a "weird" yet inherently palatable blend has enhanced their lifelong friendship and shared musical catalog.

More: Story Behind the Song: Unlikely inspiration behind Brooks & Dunn's 'Rock My World (Little Country Girl)'

Revisiting their legacy's revival

"Well, it's hard for us to not feel like we have a 'been there and done that' relationship to everything," says Dunn when asked about reviving their country covers album concept with 18 acts that are different than the previous album's 12.

The duo laughs when contemplating how the first concept album was set to simply feature artists' tribute reinterpretations as backed by a studio band. It's a concept as old as country music's history. However, a notion emerged similar to the era in which these revived tracks exist.

"Once Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs and Jon Pardi brought in their touring musicians and told us how they would re-record our material, 'Reboot' evolved into breaking all protocols," Brooks says.

For "Reboot II," Dunn jokes that they walked into the studio with 18 vastly different acts. This time, the duo and their collaborators were motivated by the notion that no creative barriers existed.

Did you ever want to hear metal rockers Halestorm's lead vocalist Lzzy Hale wail on "Boot Scootin' Boogie," traditional bluegrassers the Earls of Leicester play the 25-year-old country hit "How Long Gone," or blues favorite Christone "Kingfish" Ingram weave his magic through "Hard Workin' Man?" All those questions are deftly (and impressively, depending on your tastes) answered in Brooks & Dunn's latest work.

Compiling the crew that performed on the new album was the work of the duo's longtime manager, Clarence Spalding. The Kentuckian's perpetually keen eye and ear across genres benefits the album's depth and scope.

Brooks and Dunn, overall, are impressed with how the "Reboot" concept has progressed. Specifically, hearing how acts entrenching themselves in this generation of Nashville's scene have already progressed in their talents as arrangers, singers, songwriters and total performers was heartening to the singer-songwriters

"Good music is good music and hearing how country — especially Brooks & Dunn songs — fit into the DNA of what defines 'good music' for this generation is exciting," Dunn says.

Adds Brooks: "Hearing how our strong run of two decades of steady hits (were revived) creates a tie back to how artists like Dwight Yoakam, Merle Haggard or Emmylou Harris inspired us and how, in general, being total students of and open to the influence of all instruments, genres, whatever, defined our music."

Modern stylists accentuate timeless favorites

Half of the artists on the first edition of "Reboot" still maintained their country chart-topping status five years later. Insofar as how the concept serves as a tent post highlighting the genre's mainstream evolution in the past half-decade, there's a 16-track album existing between "Reboot" I and II that has Kacey Musgraves and Morgan Wallen singing "Neon Moon," plus Luke Combs and Warren Zeiders singing "Brand New Man."

Brooks & Dunn achieved an equal number of No. 1 and Top 10 hits in their career. Thus, 30 artists working with minimal overlapping material still leaves tracks on the table.

The array of stylings available when opening 40 songs to 30 artists is profound. On "Reboot II," the moment Musgraves had with her disco-pop stylized take on "Neon Moon" does not occur. However, country music's reigning Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson continues to kick down doors with yet another swamp funk-empowered smash, this time via Brooks & Dunn's "Play Something Country."

Also, "How Long Gone" was initially co-written by Earls of Leicester member Shawn Camp. Thus, hearing him alongside a crew of peerless bluegrass favorites, including the iconic Jerry Douglas, allows something of the song's original interpretation to broaden its legacy.

And yes, there's Jelly Roll, ubiquitous as ever in country's mainstream moment, lending his bluesy chops to “Believe,” as aided by a 60-piece orchestra.

“We’ve never really had a full pull like that with (orchestral) horns and strings,” Brooks says.

Notable as well, the sheer number of country roots and "red dirt" inspired acts on the album is a tip of the hat to Brooks and Dunn's roots in Tulsa's 1980s-era country scene. Listen to performers like Corey Kent, Hailey Whitters and Jake Worthington performing the duo's songs; it feels like they're new hands playing ball with comfortable gloves.

Worthington's trademark syrupy drawl on "I'll Never Forgive My Heart" adds to his work earlier in 2024 on his Joe Diffie legacy-honoring "Hixtape" collaboration "Is It Cold in Here" with Reba McEntire and performing on Dean Dillon's co-written Miranda Lambert collaboration "Hello S---- Day" to correctly slot him as a modern neotraditionalist somehow cryogenically unfrozen from 1994.

A 'rebellious' perpetual influence on country's evolution

Offer the idea that two decades of country's most grandiose expectations were colored by Brooks & Dunn's ability, as a duo, to work within the genre's fundamental traditions, but also willing to explore and distill its outlaw fringes, and the two both nod their heads in agreement.

"Thirty-five years ago, we rebelliously reacted to being dropped in a box defined by radio," Dunn says.

He walks The Tennessean through a moment in 1992 when Merle Haggard happened upon the tandem recording "Hard Workin' Man" in Buddy Killen's Sound Shop studio on Music Row.

"I was embarrassed because I knew he would feel that the song we were cutting wasn't country enough," Dunn says. "But he was as cool as hell and didn't flinch when he heard it."

That unflinching cool resonated far beyond Music Row.

“Where I’m from, we didn’t even realize it was a genre,” Lainey Wilson said in a press statement. "It was truly just like a way of life, and these guys right here were that way of life. I don’t know anybody in this generation of country music who could say that Brooks & Dunn do not influence what they do.”

'Conversations about what defines country music'

"We can see that everybody on the album is successful and out there on the road banging it out, so we're comfortable with hearing them play our material," says Brooks.

Adds Dunn: "The album perfectly represents how willing we are to embrace how our work as songwriters has influenced so many artists. These songs are hipper than anything we could've imagined initially back then (or currently)."

Brooks summarizes the power, after five decades, of hearing more than two dozen of modern music's most fundamental artists perform note-perfect yet unique renditions of hits with which he initially achieved fame:

"It's humbling to realize that we're in the framework of the conversations about what defines country music and culture."