“Red Dirt Road”
Brooks & Dunn
Written by Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn
Radio & Records
#1 (1 week)
July 25, 2003
Billboard
#1 (1 week)
August 2, 2003
If all this record did was rhyme “Jesus” with “pieces,” it would still be a winner.
But we get so much more with “Red Dirt Road,” a rich autobiographical hit from Brooks & Dunn. They channel labelmate Alan Jackson on this one, drawing on memories that indulge in nostalgia without overly romanticizing the past.
Dunn’s lead vocal heightens the sense of gratitude for the life experiences in his rear view mirror. The bright and joyful instrumentation keeps things light, with the production flirting with being too busy but stopping right before getting there.
Easily one of their best records from this era.
“Red Dirt Road” gets an A.
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There are just too many country songs that look back at youth. That being said, this is a good one. “B+”
Brooks and Dunn’s winning streak continued beyond “Steers and Stripes” with another solid and memorable entry. The specificity of the lyrics coupled with the instrumental hook have kept me from changing the radio dial when this comes on for more than 20 years now. My strongest memories of this song are filtered through others in my orbit who enjoyed it even more than I did.
The editor at the newspaper where I worked at the time would hum this song numerous times a day in the office. And my best buddy from school was primarily an 80s country guy, his favorite memories connected to the country radio his mom had playing in his elementary years. He was more hit or miss about the country that came afterward but I’ve heard him single out “Red Dirt Road” on more than one occasion as a tune that he thought was biographical about the culture of the area we grew up in.
Anyway, I’d argue that this song marked the end of Brooks and Dunn’s early-2000s quality surge as they’d soon return to a heavier rotation of the novelty songs that didn’t work so well for me.
Grade: B+
This one was always very high on my list. It’s so amazingly well-written and vivid on all accounts. They really hit a high point in the Mark Wright era, and I love the meta narrative of how the early noughties were such a comeback, better and stronger than ever, after the Tight Rope disaster.
My only complaint is the same as I have on most B&D songs, and a complaint I’m surprised more people haven’t made: where the hell is Kix on this? 75% of their songs, he only sings a barely-noticeable backup for like four bars, and even then it’s hard to tell because one of the other backing vocalists is nearly drowning him out. Some songs, I’m certain Kix didn’t sing a single note.
But that’s a complaint about B&D as a whole, not about any of the songs of theirs I like.
Not just the incredible rhyme that shouldn’t work but does, but the emotion Ronnie Dunn squeezes out of “I tore it all to pieces” is fantastic. I sing along to that line every time like it’s the most profound lyric ever.
One of the duo’s best numbers with Ronnie Dunn shining on the lead vocals. I always preferred the more serious B&D songs to the novelties. By the way, I do not regard the TIGHT ROPE album as a disaster
It would be interesting ( and likely has been) to explore all the songs celebrating the importance of roads to coming of age narratives in country music. A nice coffee table book with photos and essays. We have this excellent song, Sawyer Brown’s “The Dirt Road,” John Denver’s “Take Me Home (Country Roads)” and Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again” with many others, no doubt, to come to mind as soon as I hit send on this comment.
I think retrospectives will elevate Brooks & Dunn’s legacy beyond its already lofty mark.
It felt so good to have them still making great music a decade after “Brand New Man.”
Put me in the camp that was not as horrified by “Tight Rope” as I expected to be from all the negative buzz and chatter at the time. Then again, I also think Sugarland’s “The Incredible Machine” was great album.
I think the problem with Tight Rope was that it was just mid. I have zero memory of the “Missing You” cover, so it clearly didn’t stick. And Montgomery Gentry somehow got the Duo award that year despite having only two singles out at the time. So it really felt like B&D had fallen from grace.
I would like to add Lee Roy Parnell’s “On the Road” to the list of “road” songs.
It’s funny to think that songs with road in the title seem to be far more substantial than the numerous number of modern country songs that mention roads. I’ll add the slightly more metaphorical Long Hard Road (The Sharecropper’s Dream) to the collection of “road songs”.
This is nostalgia done right, because it provides a much more complex and comprehensive look back on what the Red Dirt Road meant. Probably my second favorite Brooks & Dunn song from the aughts.