Red Dirt Road

Album

Red Dirt Road

Label

Arista Nashville

Genre

Contemporary Country

Media Type

45s

Composer(s)

Kix Brooks;Ronnie Dunn

Entered Chart

May 31, 2003

Peak Date

Aug 9, 2003

Released

April 21, 2003

Recorded

Unknown

Catalog #

Arista Nashville Album Cut

This was a rare co-writing collaboration between the Brooks & Dunn duo. Most of their songs were either penned by just one of the pair or by outside writers. Ronnie Dunn told American Songwriter magazine how the duo wrote this song that recounts some of his adolescent memories. "I remember it was after a show, and Kix stepped up on the bus," he recalled. "The bus was running and getting ready to leave. He stepped up in the door well of the bus, and was sitting at the table. I had wanted to take… this happens a lot, we'd get a record finished, and I wanted to reel everything into a concept or kind of hang a stamp on it. I thought we needed something like 'Red Dirt Road.' Use that as the title." The concept Dunn had in mind was the red dirt road, in Arkansas that he, his cousins and the rest of his family used to live on. It was a four-mile dirt track that led from the East Main highway out of El Dorado down to his cousin's farm. Dunn then told Brooks about different experiences he had growing up there such as receiving Jesus Christ in his life when an evangelist came to their local church and getting drunk whilst camping out. "I said, 'that's where I first met Jesus," he recalled. "That's where I wrecked my first car," which I did. We had the chorus written before we left. 'Somebody goes hey we're rolling,' because we had a long, long drive. I don't remember where it was to." By the time they'd reached their destination Brooks had completed the song. Dunn recalled: "I remember Kix walking off of his bus as we were walking across the parking lot. He just looked like he'd been through the wringer. He wrote the verses to it. He played it, took us up on the bus. He was just beat man, like he'd been up for two days. He really plowed into it. He played it and I went, 'Shoot! You want to arm wrestle over who sings this?' He goes, 'No man.' I thought, ''My God!'"

I was raised off of rural route three
Out past where the blacktop ends
We'd walk to church on Sunday morning
And race barefoot back to Johnson's fence
That's where I first saw Mary
On that roadside pickin' blackberries
That summer I turned the corner in my soul
Down that red dirt road

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
Where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to Heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
Learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers (I heard)
I've come to know there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road

Her daddy didn't like me much
In my shackled up GTO
I'd sneak out in the middle of the night
Throw rocks at her bedroom window
We'd turn out the headlights
And drive by the moonlight
Talk about what the future might hold
Down that red dirt road

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
Where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to Heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
Learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers (I heard)
I've come to know there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road

I went out into the world
And I came back in
I lost Mary
Oh, I got her back again
And driving home tonight
Feels like I found a long lost friend

It's where I drank my first beer
It's where I found Jesus
Where I wrecked my first car
I tore it all to pieces
I learned the path to Heaven
Is full of sinners and believers
Learned that happiness on Earth
Ain't just for high achievers (I heard)
I've come to know there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road
I've come to know there's life at both ends
Of that red dirt road