Brooks & Dunn keep ’90s country music alive at Dickies Arena in Fort Worth

‘90s country music is experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Mainstays of that decade like Garth Brooks, Shania Twain and George Strait continue to tour and release new albums, while younger artists like Cole Swindell are now old enough to remember that decade fondly and write music like “She Had Me At Heads Carolina,” a song that pays homage to Jo Dee Messina’s original while adding a new spin.

I couldn’t help but think of that generational torch-passing while watching Brooks & Dunn play to a packed Dickies Arena Saturday night on the third stop of their Reboot 2023 tour. At the height of their popularity in the 1990s, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn were inescapable. They played a style of honky-tonk country rock that had one foot planted in traditional country and one foot kicking toward more popular country ballads. They were rollicking, but safe.

Since the beginning of that decade, they have racked up 20 No. 1 singles. They won the Country Music Association Vocal Duo of the Year award 14 times, and it would have been 15 in a row if not for Montgomery Gentry in 2000. They were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2019. Thirty-three years after they started performing together, they’re nominated for Duo of the Year at this year’s Academy of County Music (ACM) awards in Frisco.

Now, their brand of country music is viewed as more traditional as the genre boot scoots onward.

Megan Moroney and Scotty McCreery, the duo’s two opening acts, are, like me, young enough to have been raised on Brooks & Dunn and their contemporaries. (Fun fact: Until I was 6 years old, I refused to go to sleep until I heard “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” in its entirety from their first “Greatest Hits” album before bed. No skips, either.)

Moroney and McCreery both made mention of their affinity for the country music of the ‘90s, and also got the crowd ready with songs that hinted at the playful wordplay of much of the country music of that decade (Moroney’s hit “Tennessee Orange”; McCreery’s “Damn Strait”) and the steel guitar that’s often missing from today’s country music (most of McCreery’s set).

So I assumed the crowd Saturday night would be firmly my age (elder millennial) and above, but you know what they say about assumptions. To my surprise, the crowd skewed younger than I thought. I saw grandparents with grandchildren, 30-somethings, teenagers, and everybody in between. At least half the crowd cheered when Brooks asked if there was anybody there who had never been to a Brooks & Dunn show before.

Much like the America Brooks & Dunn sing about, when they put on a show, everybody gets to dance — and a love of “Neon Moon” is universal.

A ‘REBOOT’-ED APPROACH

The last album Brooks & Dunn released was 2019’s “Reboot,” a set of duets of their greatest hits with some of today’s top country stars, like Kacey Musgraves, Luke Combs, Midland and Cody Johnson. Saturday’s show didn’t feature any assistance from those duet partners, but the duo definitely put a live spin on some of their most well-known songs.

Backed by a 7-piece band that included guitars, bass, piano, steel guitar, fiddle, drums and even a gong at one point, Brooks and Dunn played an hour-and-a-half of subtle twists on 20 of the hits that have made them synonymous with honky tonks for the last 30 years.

There’s a little more twang to Dunn’s soulful voice live, and Brooks even busted out a harmonica and what appeared to be a bedazzled mandolin at one point for some showmanship. Each song got its own, new musical introduction. On “Hard Workin’ Man,” Dunn made sure to highlight the hard workin’ women in the crowd, too. And of course Brooks lived up to his moniker as he kicked, strutted and danced his way across the stage.

The pair took the stage at 9:01 p.m. after a video intro of a muscle car speeding down a country road (sadly, asphalt, not red dirt). Brooks was in his traditional Western wear and cowboy hat, while Dunn was sporting a T-shirt, jeans and a backwards ballcap. They bathed the audience in spotlights as they sang the first lines of their first No. 1 hit, “Brand New Man”: “I saw the light, I’ve been baptized by the fire in your touch and the flame in your eyes...”

Naturally, the biggest songs to get crowd reactions were some of their biggest hits: “Red Dirt Road,” “Neon Moon,” “Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You” and “Only In America,” which continued the pair’s tradition of bringing out armed forces service members for the final chorus.

Their setlist spanned their whole career, but with more of a focus on the ‘90s. No covers, just the hits. Clearly, that was what the crowd wanted to see, as a mass exodus started heading to the bathroom or the bar during a new song about Texas women. But when they returned, there was plenty of dancing and two-stepping in the aisles.

Speaking of Texas, there wasn’t a lot of stage banter from either member in between songs, but when there was, the talk was about Texas: how Brooks & Dunn have been wanting to play at Dickies since it was built, how Texas bars were one of the first spots they felt like their music was truly appreciated, and how buying horses in Fort Worth is different than it is in Nashville.

Mostly, though, the duo were content to play through their hits with glee, and the crowd was more than willing to oblige. The dream of ‘90s country was alive and well, successfully passed down to a new generation of singers and fans alike.

BROOKS & DUNN SETLIST, DICKIES ARENA, FORT WORTH, MAY 6, 2023

1. Brand New Man

2. Put A Girl In It

3. My Next Broken Heart

4. Mama Don’t Get Dressed Up For Nothing

5. We’ll Burn That Bridge

6. Honky Tonk Truth

7. You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone

8. Ain’t Nothing ‘Bout You

9. Red Dirt Road

10. Lost and Found

11. Hard Workin’ Man

12. Till Texas Takes Her

13. Play Something Country

14. Cowgirls Don’t Cry

15. Neon Moon

16. Rock My World (Little Country Girl)

17. Believe

18. My Maria (B.W. Stevenson cover)

Encore

1. Boot Scootin’ Boogie

2. Only In America