With Brooks & Dunn’s brand new album, Reboot II, coming out in just over two weeks, the anticipation is seemingly growing by the day. Like the first reboot, which came out in 2019 and featured a laundry list of stars such as Cody Johnson, Kacey Musgraves, Jon Pardi and more, Reboot II looks to up the ante with even more artists and their reimaginings of the legendary duo’s hits.
With 18 artists appearing on the new album, it was only natural to wonder how the pair selected the star-studded lineup that consists of everyone from Morgan Wallen to Riley Green to Jelly Roll.
In an exclusive press conference with Brooks & Dunn, we learned that the artist selection process was done by their manager with Ronnie Dunn citing that he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Our manager picked and made the calls to the artists,” Dunn said.“We didn’t want to get in trouble. You know, we’re gonna walk down the sidewalk every now and then in Nashville and run into somebody who says, ‘Why wasn’t I on that record?’ or ‘You didn’t call me.'”
Kix Brooks echoed the same sentiment with a hilarious one-liner in response to Dunn’s answer, “We’re gonna hear it anyway, so it’s nice that you have someone to blame it on because it is the truth.”
Dunn then went on to explain how he and Brooks, along with their manager didn’t want to inconvenience the artists while selecting them, “He really did pick them. He said, ‘I’m not gonna bug people in a situation like this or inconvenience people. I’ll make one call.’ Sure enough, he did, and everyone called back in a timely fashion. And we went at it.”
Brooks later dove into how they didn’t know who exactly was going to be on Reboot II in the early stages of the project, citing the logistical nightmare it can be to get so many artists and bands into the studio, “We didn’t know all at once what we were gonna do or who was on it over the course of a year. It’s just different people. You know, for managers and people’s schedules and all that kind of stuff, the logistics are just a nightmare.”
As advertised during the album’s announcement, the artists had complete creative freedom on the songs that they chose to record with Brooks & Dunn. Ronnie, in particular, championed that sentiment, “They had complete creative freedom to do whatever they wanted to do… They all took a new, fresh slant that felt good and really maintained their personality. The creative style of that was the biggest thing.”
Brooks echoed this by saying, “That was really the joy of making this record because we did challenge all these artists, saying, ‘Let’s do this however you want, whatever you can dream up.'”
Later on, the duo also revealed that they are working on their first original album in nearly two decades with Dunn saying, “We’re working on that stuff right now. We’ve had 10 years to write a lot of stuff. I think we’re pretty close.
Reboot II releases on November 15th and features 18 tracks reimagining the duo’s biggest hits over the decades.
- “Play Something Country” with Lainey Wilson
- “Neon Moon” with Morgan Wallen
- “Rock My World (Little Country Girl)” with Marcus King Band
- “Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You” with Megan Moroney
- “Brand New Man” with Warren Zeiders
- “Believe” with Jelly Roll
- “She Used to Be Mine” with Riley Green
- “She Likes to Get Out of Town” with The Cadillac Three
- “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” with Halestorm
- “Ain’t No Way To Go” with Mitchell Tenpenny
- “How Long Gone” with The Earls of Leicester
- “I’ll Never Forgive My Heart” with Jake Worthington
- “She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind” with Hailey Whitters
- “Hard Workin’ Man” with Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
- “Hillbilly Deluxe” with HARDY
- “Indian Summer” with ERNEST
- “Drop in the Bucket” with Thousand Horses
- “Only In America” with Corey Kent