Brooks & Dunn Take the Honky Tonk to the Hills

Hollywood, CA: If you're gonna throw your arms around your influences, then you better do it right. With Red Dirt Road getting serious critical kudos from Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly, Sound & Vision and USA Today, Ronnie Dunn and Kix Brooks' excavation of the music that forged their hard-charging take on the sound of Saturday night is getting a major fuel injection as the freewheeling pair head into the Hollywood Hills for a raucous performance of "You Can Take The Girl Out of the Honky Tonk (But You Can't Take The Honky Tonk Out of the Girl)."

They're building a performance set for us that spells out 'Honky Tonk' in great big letters with lights that looks like the famous 'Hollywood' sign," says vocal tempest Ronnie Dunn with a can-you-believe-this laugh. "They're gonna stagger the letters, scatter us around, let the sun set and have us go for it. It should be a hoot…"

Beyond the larger than life, bigger than neon performance, the Michael Solomon-directed clip will feature a table-turning twist on the story of the wild cousin who comes home for the wedding only to save the day. For when Connie jets in from the coast, she brings her high honky tonk ways with her, recognizes the conflict in the bridal party -- and helps her cousin get the happy ending she really wants.

And with classic Brooks & Dunn subtlety, the fun-loving 4-time Entertainers of the Year have managed to lasso two of America's ultimate heart-stopping pulse-accelerators to play Connie and her cousin: the Coors Twins. That's right, the sweethearts of modern couch potatoes everywhere… "Twins.."

"The folks at Coors have become such a part of our family," says Brooks, in a rare of moment of not flying, bounding, twisting or leaping across a stage. "When we were explaining to them what we wanted to do with our video, they got it completely… and they helped make their franchise fantasy players available to us in the name of good fun and friendship."

Looking at his partner, Dunn just shakes his head, raises his eyebrows and echoes the tag line: "Twins."

Having wrapped their third installment of their version of Honkytonkypalooza, the Neon Circus & Wild West Show, the 25-million-sellers have taken the charts by storm. Red Dirt Road was certified gold in two weeks with the chart-topping title track picking up Country Music Association Awards nominations for Song and Video of the Year to go along with their perennial Entertainer and Duo of the Year nods.

Hailed by the media as "Country's Mick and Keith," the winningest duo out of Nashville wraps their heads around a ferocious "Start Me Up" era guitar riff ("which frankly, we were a bit afraid of, but when we took it off, it just wasn't as much fun," Dunn confesses) in the name of a song that evokes the abandon of Sticky Fingers and the turpentine honk of Exile On Main Street. But mostly, it's a song of reckless endorsement of girls having a good time.

"With two daughters and Janine Dunn in my life," admits Dunn with a broad smile, "I know there's nothing more thrilling than seeing a bunch of girls having a night on the town without men. It makes me jealous kind of… because you just can't be part of it… but then again, you don't wanna cramp their style, either. And you know, that's what this song is all about for us."

"And Michael really seems to get that," continues Brooks. "You know, people having fun on their own terms… Nobody getting hurt, just laughing and scratching… that's a big part of what life, and hopefully this music, is all about. If we can get that in this video, then we've done the hardest thing there is to do: capture that sense of fun beyond bounds."

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