Ray Wylie Hubbard Writing & Recording w/ Ronnie Dunn
It may seem like an oddball pairing on the outside. Ray Wylie Hubbard, the wily, enigmatic and cryptic Texas songwriting god that goes by handles as far ranging as “The Forgotten Outlaw” and “Wylie Lama”–and Ronnie Dunn, one half of the Brooks & Dunn super pairing that sold over 30 million records and won more music awards than any other act in country music history before disbanding in 2010.
Then again, Ronnie and Ray have the same Texas/Oklahoma upbringing and lineage. Ronnie spent years running around the Texoma region, from getting kicked out of Abeline Christian University for playing in bands, to playing the honky tonk circuit in Tulsa, OK before Brooks & Dunn. It’s not hard to imagine Ronnie rubbing elbows with Ray at some point, and finding it hard to forget his prowess with the pen even after all these years.
On September 9th, Ronnie Dunn posted on his Facebook wall, “Ray Wylie Hubbard (Redneck Mother) is flying in tomorrow to write…. (love his new cd Grifter’s Hymnal”)…his song SNAKE FARM is a favorite here at CAMP WACO ! RD.” Two days later, Ronnie wrote, “Sittin’ at the dinner table with with Ray Wylie Hubbard. Good day of writin’ dang fun country songs. May have to go to Austin and make him feed me for a few days and record some of ’em soon. Cool day. RD.”
Lo and behold Ronnie Dunn did end up in Austin where he’s been for the last few days, recording with Ray, and an all-star band of George Reiff, Rick Richards, Ian McLagan from Faces, Brad Rice formerly of Son Volt, and others. “Started recording in Austin yesterday,” Ronnie Dunn posted on Facebook. “TEXAS boys ripped it up !! Brad Rice, George Reiff, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Ian McLagan (Faces)….this is where the Rolling Stones ride with the Cowboys !!!! If you like your country raw and with a razor edged jangle….I found the ‘honey hole’ RD.”
Meanwhile Ray Wylie Hubbard took to his Twitter account to voice his excitement and post a wavy picture of the troop at a restaurant. “Ronnie Dunn recorded 4 songs we wrote…yep. believe it.”
Ronnie Dunn released his first post Brooks & Dunn album in June of 2011, and announced exactly a year later that he’d exited his contract with his label Arista Nashville. We very well may be seeing Ronnie Dunn unfolding his creative wings after a long career, and I can’t wait to hear the result.
November 29, 2012 @ 8:39 am
I like Ronnie’s voice and love Ray’s music.I will wait and see the finished product before I pass judgement.
November 29, 2012 @ 10:30 am
This is pretty cool. Whether or not it’s any good, it’s good to see Ronnie basically saying “Fuck it” and trying something new and creative. He knows he could write another standard Nashville album and make millions off of it because he’s Ronnie Dunn, but he’s choosing to go with a guy who’s a leading outlaw figure and little known in Nashville anymore. It will be interesting to see how his voice meshes with the gritty dirty Country blues rock that Hubbard makes. Best of luck to both of them!
November 29, 2012 @ 12:58 pm
This is very exciting! I love both of their works and this should turn out great. Ray Wylie is one of the best songwriters out there and Ronnie has one of the best voices in country music.
November 29, 2012 @ 2:00 pm
I never could stand Brooks and Done, but now that you mention it, Ronnie Dunn does actually have a good voice. The problem is the bad southern rock music behind it and the cheesy lyrics. I’m a huge Son Volt and RWH so I will give this a try when it comes out. Hopefully, I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
November 29, 2012 @ 1:59 pm
Seems to me that this partnership is reminiscent of Waylon Jennings’s partnership with Billy Joe Shaver on “Honky Tonk Heroes”.
Perhaps Ronnie Dunn’s work here can fuel a modern-day Outlaw movement too.
November 29, 2012 @ 2:00 pm
Damn the potential for greatness here is high cannot wait to check it out.
November 29, 2012 @ 11:56 pm
I like when Jay Leno made fun of Ronnie Dunn on national TV for wearing eye liner and asked him if that was supposed to be “country”, Dunn may be from Oklahoma but he is nothing like most of the folks I grew up around. He’s part of the problem, not the solution and it really bothers me to know that Hubbard would collaborate with him willingly.
November 30, 2012 @ 12:16 am
And yet another commenter proves my point on why the underground country movement is fading.
November 30, 2012 @ 1:23 am
Situations like this and Hellbound Glory touring with Kid Rock proves whatever point your trying to make about a fading country underground. Sorry, I choose not to suck Ronnies balls just cause he’s recording with Hubbard.
November 30, 2012 @ 12:48 am
Maybe Ronnie agrees with you. Maybe that’s why he dropped his major label and is flying out to Austin to record music with Hubbard. We could be seeing yet another Music Row defector here. We could also not be. We won’t know until his next album is out, but all signs point to Ronnie Dunn flipping the industry the bird and after 30-something years, getting back to doing things his way. And if that’s the case, we should be applauding him, even if we don’t like the music.
That’s my opinion.
November 30, 2012 @ 1:36 am
I hope your right but I would bet your not. Seems to me he is more likely reaching for some street cred after years of gold number one garbage he had to spew to make a killer living. I dont have a problem with them making money just dont bullshit the public while or after you do it. Stand up and say “I am Ronnie Dunn and I am a huge douchebag who wrote music for like minded douchebags and made a shit ton of money off of it and I will apologize for nothing because I have a hot wife ten sports cars and a winter home in Brazil.” I would still not appreciate his music but I would respect him and applaud him for something like this.
November 30, 2012 @ 3:40 am
A singer’s taste in music can be very diverse. It is entirely possible that Ronnie Dunn is proud of both his past music and the music that he is making with Ray Wylie Hubbard right now. The problem is that his label, while he was signed to it, may have been limiting his musical output to only the narrow sliver of his taste that appeals commercially. Now that he is free from label control, he can explore the full range of his musical interests, without regard to commercial viability.
November 30, 2012 @ 9:29 am
I think Ronnie has always been a roots or traditional orientated artist. I think it was his label and Kix who steered them towards the southern rock/pop arena. I may be wrong. It could be that he’s had his fame and fortune and realizes that he is not gonna be the next big thing and is just looking for legendary status like his traditional country idols and can make music he actually enjoys. who knows?
November 30, 2012 @ 9:31 am
Go back and listen to Brooks and Dunn…well….Ronnie…sing “I’ll Never Forgive My Heart” and tell me that’s not country.
November 30, 2012 @ 10:06 am
That is the whole problem with why “underground” country is dying. Is this crazy idea that because somebody has had mainstream success the are forever labeled as “the enemy”. If what RWH and Ronnie do together is good, wonderful. If it is not it’s not. Good music is good music bad music is bad music, period. Let art stand on it’s on meritt not based on who the artist happens to be.
September 3, 2013 @ 6:38 pm
That is true. That’s a big if though. Also if he’s doing it at the expense of my ears maybe its time to just let it be. I heard his new I wanna kiss song the other day. Lyrics were good. Don’t have a problem with those could be made into a very good country song. The beat. Please for the love of god I was begging for ice picks to pop my ear drums.
I never had a problem with brooks and dunn when they were together. They wrote some good songs that I still listen to and always will. But I lost a lot of respect for Ronnie when I heard that song. Never though I’d hear him singing pop country. Shouldn’t have been surprised but I was. I miss the old days of listening to jerry, merle , Dave duddly, George strait, etc. Back when country was country.
Used to be I could drive down the road turn the CB off at night if there was bullshit on it and flip through the different country stations and be happy for another 200 or 300 miles. Now I’d rather listen to the shit on the CB than listen to what country stations call music. Just my humble opinion on the matter.
November 30, 2012 @ 9:00 am
Given the right material Dunn sounds excellent. There’s a ‘live in the studio’ session recording of him doing “You Don’t Know Me” that’s fantastic (can’t find that but here’s a live version of the the song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i9gyiyZUno ).
I think this could be a very interesting project!
November 30, 2012 @ 9:35 am
Thanks for sharing. Brooks and Dunn’s song “Believe” has to be one of the best modern day country ballad. I swear every time I hear that song I get goosebumps. That feeling always tells me this is a great song I’m listening to. That song has so much emotion and Ronnie knows how to show that emotion to believe what he is singing is from the heart.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5z-jjWyAJQ
November 30, 2012 @ 1:45 pm
Can’t say enough good about RWH. Found it odd that these 2 were working
together but nothing surprises me now a days.
Even the Greatness of working with Ray still won’t be enough to make me like
hearing whatever Dunn comes out with. Never found B&D’s tunes to be any dif from
the typical pop/radio friendly country tunes that have been thrust upon us over the last 20 plus years. But, his days in popular main stream radio country days are over so it’s no surprise that he is ” branching” out… I’m sure he won’t be the last.
November 30, 2012 @ 5:10 pm
Well lets just make a bunch of excuses for the traitor. This forum is SAVING COUNTRY MUSIC and Ronnie is precisely the type of person I believe it needs saving from.
December 2, 2012 @ 10:13 pm
The founding principle of Saving Country Music is to fight for the creative freedom of artists, regardless of whatever tastes you or I might have. I am not supporting Ronnie Dunn, I am simply reporting a story about how he is working with Ray Wylie Hubbard. How credible of a critic would I be if I opposed music that hasn’t even been mixed, mastered, and released, let along that I haven’t heard? You think I should be attacking Ronnie Dunn, but trust me, there’s may people out there attacking me for not supporting him because they believe him to be one of the most traditional artists in Nashville right now. And there’s even more out there attacking me even when I do support him, for not supporting him enough. If you don’t believe me, just go look at the comments of this article:
https://savingcountrymusic.com/ronnie-dunn-reminds-us-that-we-all-bleed-red
Here’s a good one:
“If anyone writes off Ronnie Dunn as a pop country singer, they are fucking dumb. Oh your dick got hard cause he was hanging with Hubbard? He has been pals with him for years…Happy election day douche bag.”
I make mistakes every single day running this website, but I do the best I can. Excuse me for keeping an open mind and deducing that an artist that just dropped his label may be finally doing what he wants to do, and being curious about the situation. Except for one song, I hated Ronnie Dunn’s solo album that many are ballyhooing as a great traditional country record. If I were to venture to guess, I probably won’t like the Ronnie Dunn/Ray Wylie Hubbard tracks. But screw me for keeping a positive, open mind.
If we’re going to criticize pop country artists from defecting for the Music Row formula, what motivations would they have to do so? Isn’t this what we want, for pop country artists to renounce their ways and get real? Oh, but I guess that’s all for marketing, like trying to garner fand and money from the underground isn’t like squeezing a turnip.
Or like I said in this article:
https://savingcountrymusic.com/support-for-music-rows-true-country-albums
“In the war to restore balance back to the mainstream country format, where both pop and traditional country music and demographics are represented, there is nothing more important than creating support around these few traditional or progressive country albums that Music Row does let slip through. A lack of support for these albums only validates the major label”™s prejudices about them, making future albums like these even less likely, and making it less likely labels will be searching for more traditional or progressive up-and-coming talent.”
December 2, 2012 @ 12:56 pm
So I guess Ray is taking part in the “Adopt a Douchebag” program. Kinda like Hellbound Glory hanging out with Kid Rock. Next thing ya know I’ll be inviting Toby Keith up to the house for a round of beers….
December 2, 2012 @ 10:56 pm
if someone is gonna say ronnie can’t sing then your a moron.