Brooks & Dunn up the ante with 'Wild West' tour

MARK HUMPHREY/The Associated Press

Kix Brooks, right, and Ronnie Dunn of the country music duo Brooks & Dunn will bring their Neon Circus and Wild West Show tour to Kansas for a July 15 show at Sandstone Amphitheatre in Bonner Springs.

Tickets

Tickets go on sale at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 19, at all Ticketmaster locations for the Brooks & Dunn Neon Circus and Wild West Show, which features along with the headlining duo, Brooks & Dunn, these acts: Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry, keith urban and country music parodist Cledus T. Judd. The concert will begin at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, July 15, in Sandstone Amphitheatre, 633 N. 130th, Bonner Springs. Tickets are $35 for reserved seats and $25 for lawn seats.

Country: Tickets go on sale Saturday for the Brooks & Dunn Neon Circus and Wild West Show's Sandstone stop in July

By Jim Patterson

The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. --- Ronnie Dunn barely moves on his stool while singing the new song "Only in America," while the tapping foot of partner Kix Brooks makes him appear only slightly more interested.

This isn't a portrait of superstar country music act Brooks & Dunn grown bored. It's two hardworking men doing the repetitive grunt work of rehearsing with their band.

Showmanship comes later.

Brooks & Dunn, famous for such hits as "Boot Scootin' Boogie" and "My Maria," have sold more than 22 million albums. But each of their five studio albums since the five million-selling debut, "Brand New Man," in 1991 has sold less than its predecessor. "Tightrope" from 1999 and "If You See Her" from 1998 haven't sold 500,000, the mark needed for a gold record.

With their new album, "Steers & Stripes," and a tour dubbed the Neon Circus and Wild West Show, Brooks & Dunn are trying to prove that there's still lots of fire left.

"People start to look for that when you've been around awhile --- complacency," said Dunn, 47, after the rehearsal at a Nashville amphitheater.

"That's not what we want. We want them to see that we're really hungry and we love what we do. As often as we fail to achieve it, we're really perfectionists. We're shooting as high as we can go."

To that end, their tour, which stops July 15 at Sandstone Amphitheatre in Bonner Springs, is a festival featuring a comedian, circus acts and opening acts Toby Keith, Montgomery Gentry and keith urban.

"I think our audience has come to expect a lot of bells and whistles and fun and gags and all that," Brooks said. "So we've beefed it up and thrown some money back into what we're doing."

The first single from "Steers & Stripes," the rocking "Ain't Nothing 'Bout You," went straight to No. 1. It's the first sign that taking seven months to record the album, instead of doing it in a couple of months between tour dates, is paying off.

"At this point, 20 million people already have Brooks & Dunn records," said Brooks, 45. "So when a new Brooks & Dunn record comes out, if you haven't made some music that's really melting their butter, they're going to pick up something else just because they might have three Brooks & Dunn records, or they've got the greatest hits.

"We want it to be like (Eric) Clapton did with (the 1989 album) 'Journeyman,'" Dunn said. "You've seen it over the years, artists that are real long in the tooth come up with something that you just go, 'That doesn't sound like him, that's fresh and that's new. I want to buy that!'"

Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn were struggling solo artists until record executive Tim DuBois urged them to join forces in 1990. They reached a milestone of sorts last year when their "Tightrope" tour did great business despite the album selling poorly. Radio stations were unenthusiastic about the singles off the album.

As a live act, they had always wanted to get to the "Jimmy Buffett level," with a reputation so good they could always draw fans.

But the slip in sales and radio play hurt their pride.

"Tightrope" got lost in the shuffle as their longtime record label Arista was being consolidated into RCA. And some of the material, such as the single "Beer Thirty," seemed like retreads of past hits.

"Every now and then you go back to the same watering hole," said a slightly abashed Dunn, who wrote the song. "I knew I was sinning when I did it."

His partner defended him: "Ronnie writes that style of song real good, and he's going to write one of those now and then. It's a good Ronnie Dunn song."

Then in October at the Country Music Association Awards, their competitive juices really got flowing. For the first time in nine years, they didn't win the best vocal duo award, which went to Montgomery Gentry.

"I think it's kind of lit a fire under us," Brooks said. "It's like, 'OK, can we win those awards again? Let's go see.'"

Brooks & Dunn redeemed themselves earlier this month by winning the Academy of Country Music's award for best duo of the year.

They invited Montgomery Gentry to go on the road, along with Keith and urban, two high-energy acts that are a challenge to follow.

"This is 'the boys are back' thing, after the Lilith Fair stuff," Dunn said. "It's, 'Let's get some hardheaded rednecks together and run at it.'

"For two goof-offs, we're trying pretty hard."

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