Ronnie Dunn Quotes

I get around OK with a toolbox. As a kid, I picked up skills following my dad through the oil fields of Oklahoma and West Texas. My wife Janine is hard to impress, but she does think it's cool when I fix things around the house.

I was freaking out when Brooks & Dunn were breaking up. I thought 'We play a ton of rodeos, and I thought this was such a cowboy deal, and I don't wear a hat. They might not think I'm a cowboy. That might sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but apparently, it meant something to me. I wound up with a cowboy tattoo from my elbow to my wrist.

My preference is 3,000, maybe 5,000-seat venues.

I'm not a Republican, and I'm not a Democrat.

I grew up in trailer houses in New Mexico, Arkansas, Texas and Oklahoma.

During college I realized I had a music predisposition and really got involved in it. I started playing bass guitar. That was how I began to fit in.

I'm very much involved in art. I started buying art a few years ago and really like the work of T.C. Cannon, who is a native American artist. Then I was introduced to Soviet-era Russian impressionism and started collecting that, especially Gely Korzhev.

Sometimes, I work a little more from emotion than I do from rational thought.

I feel like I am campaigning door to door. You just can't step out of a band like Brooks & Dunn and assume that it is just going to be business as usual. You have to work it. It does feel like a campaign where you would have Obama, Romney, or Newt beating the bushes right now. That's what I'm having to do.

I don't even know how to spell 'legacy!

I carry my own film guys with me now. People think that's a huge expense, but with technology like it is these days, it's not. You can film videos and everything with a Canon Mark II, and shoot a movie. They're doing it for next to nothing, by comparison. I can do ten videos for a project for the price of one mainstream video in the past.

Country fans are the most loyal in the world.

I pay less attention to my hair then probably anybody that I know. I get out of the shower, I towel dry it. I, like, blow it off and then I just run my hands through it and away we go. It's just what it is.

The music has to drive you. That's just it. You follow it. You follow the songs.

My own grandmother went to great lengths to make sure I knew simple things like how and when to open the door for a lady. And the best thing my mama taught me was to pray.

I do have to step out and take time to let people know that I'm Ronnie Dunn and not Brooks and Dunn.

When we look at cities across the country, Cincinnati, for example, where they have come under DOJ guidance with a consent decree, we see that, over time, there has been a transformation in the relationship between the police and the community, where now they have a partnership and true collaborative policing, co-policing, to make the community safer overall.

I went to 13 schools in 12 years. We moved all over the place. Music was the only thing that I could get behind... I wasn't that good at socializing. I'm still not.

I don't have any hobbies. Music is my hobby.

I grew up very modest, and I never forget that.

I'm from Oklahoma. I mean, you can't have good hair in Oklahoma. That's why everyone wears hats. The wind just messes it up.

What a fine line there is between artistry and insanity. There's no formula for it, and I think a lot of people when they're around you - even those closest to you - when you're in that whirl of creativity and you're grabbing those things out of the air, there's no rational process.

In an age of social media and content being key, it's important to change the mold where you have $100,000 to $150,000 for one video. I hired some guys that are young, just out of college, and we used some new, far-less-expensive cameras and technology to make videos.

When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.

I don't walk around with a cowboy hat. I did get a tattoo that says 'cowboy' that's a bit of an over-compensation, probably.