Brooks & Dunn Let Fans Call the Shots

Brooks & Dunn love the excitement of chasing down fresh inspiration. But after 12 albums, 23 No. 1 hits, and selling some 30 million records over the past couple of decades, they've come to realize it was getting harder and harder to make a record without feeling they were repeating themselves.

"Part of it is working harder, and part of it is the excitement of being creative, and realizing they've already heard [us] do that three or four times," Kix Brooks tells Canada's Edmonton Journal.

And that's why Kix feels the duo's last three CDs -- 'Red Dirt Road,' 'Hillbilly Deluxe' and 'Cowboy Town' -- represent a fresh new direction for Brooks & Dunn.

"I think it was at 'Red Dirt Road' that we both started working on our own in the studio a lot, and not depending so much on a producer to do just a Nashville-formula-type CD," he reveals.

Determined not to repeat themselves on their latest CD, 'Cowboy Town,' Kix and Ronnie worked two years intermittently on it, between touring and other commitments. "It has been a bit of a search for musical honesty for us," Kix notes.

Famous for their explosive, high-energy shows, Kix and Ronnie are also stoked about a fresh new segment they've been injecting into their concerts, which allows them to engage up-close-and-personally with their audience, and give them a taste of a whole other creative side of Brooks & Dunn.

"Let's musically just get off the page here for a minute, and have some fun and just do something reckless and wild," Kix says. "One thing we did [recently] in Australia that was really fun, that I don't think we've ever really done, is we pulled out a couple of stools and we just started doing a verse and a chorus of a bunch of different songs, whatever the crowd wanted to hear. We were literally broken down to one guitar a lot of the times, and just letting the crowd call the shots.

"So we were thinking that might be fun to do this year, just kind of pull it off the cuff, and let the crowd drive the boat for a minute."