Kimberly Dunn said Forever on the Run fuses her musical past with the present.
That means the debut album is a little bit country and a little bit rock ’n’ roll. Or, as Dunn puts it, “Allison Krause meets Alice in Chains.”
The Texas native dropped her album on Tuesday. The project is a hefty one, with 16 tracks that trace her journey from winning a battle of the bands at Texas A&M University roughly six years ago to the present.
Her thoughts about the opening track, “So Good,” open a window to her musings about being on the cusp of a career.
“So Good” doesn’t try to hide its source, the anchor of the Southern gospel cannon “I’ll Fly Away” — that soulful hymn written by shape note music composer and Oklahoma native Albert Brumley.
“I wrote that song on a Sunday morning in 15 minutes,” Dunn said of “So Good.” “We had played in the Stockyards. We’d played a gig at Filthy McNasty’s [Saloon]. I was having such a rough time coming to terms with some things. I knew my career was gong to be rough to build. I wrote it to make myself happy. I had ‘I’ll Fly Away’ in the back of my mind, and we watch O Brother, Where Art Thou? on the bus.”
“So Good” is a touchstone for Dunn. It reminds her that her job isn’t to dominate Texas radio or to put sex appeal ahead of songwriting. Her job is to write from the heart, and sing like her life depends on it.
Dunn took some flak along with praise for her early material, like the song “Randy Rogers,” which earned suspicion that she hoped to chart by dropping names. But Dunn doesn’t apologize for being a student of Nickel Creek’s bluegrass or an avid fan of classic rock. Dunn found that it was best to let both kinds feed her muse.
“We played for those honky-tonk crowds,” Dunn said. “We write and play to have them up on that dance floor dancing. And then once in a while, they want to hold each other close for a few minutes. I was raised on bluegrass and classic rock, and I was oh so yearning for that classic rock. ‘Trashy Side’ and ‘Bones’ are the new directions, and that’s the direction I’m heading.”
Forever on the Run includes two songs Dunn said were written in her dorm room — “Dream Girl” and “Common as the Rain” — and Dunn said she didn’t think she should clean them up even though the record was in the making for three and a half years.
“I was thinking about my relationships back then,” she said. “I always wanted to be a singer-songwriter, and in releasing those songs, the biggest thing is that I didn’t want to re-record the vocals. I want to show that, one, I am getting better as the year progress, and two, I have a very hard work ethic. I want to be strong female voice in this industry, and I think to do that, you have to be honest about where you are when you write.”
Dunn has matured along with her team. Her manager, guitar player and boyfriend Scot Willson started a company with Will Harrison and made Dunn its first project. The two men migrated from rock to country, and Dunn said she’s ducking advice to present herself as “a single white female” and keep Willson in the background. She also credits artist Lang Freeman for writing with her and testing her.
“Lang is a singer himself. He pointed out one day that he writes a lot of sad songs — but when we started writing together, we write all these upbeat songs,” Dunn said. “I’ve told everyone I write with that I want to do whatever is right for the song. If I’m not supposed to sing this song, then I’m not supposed to sing that song.”
Dunn said she’s also pleased with her radio team.
“My last single that we put out, ‘Sealed With a Kiss,’ was sort of a song for the military. My dad was in the Air Force and there were a lot of letters between him and Mom,” she said. “For my next single, I wanted to put out ‘Bones.’ I want to be known as the Girl in Black. My radio team was like, ‘Well, I think that’s great,’ but they didn’t know if radio was ready for it.”
The team shopped for a song that would ease onto the airwaves. Enter “Trashy Side.”
Dunn said she had to admit it was the right song, even if it didn’t further her Johnny Cash-style ambitions of being a folk-poet.
“We cut it in 11 hours,” she said. “The vocals at the very end of the night, I can hear it in my voice that I was a little tired, but the song is ‘Trashy Side,’ so why not sound a little dirty around the edges? I’m always curious about the charts, but at the end of the day I can’t pay attention to it.”
LUCINDA BREEDING can be reached at 940-566-6877.
