Kix Brooks Grills Up Steakhouse Show for Cooking Channel
It’s been four years since Brooks & Dunn called it quits, putting an end to more than a quarter century of platinum-selling honky-tonk, harmony and high hair. Since then, Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn have both blazed their individual red dirt roads, with each bandmate releasing a pair of solo records. Now, Brooks is gearing up for a new project, one that finds the cowboy-hatted crooner exploring different… er, tastes.
The project is called Steak Out, and it’s a pilot for a potential Cooking Channel series (it was originally reported the series would air on Food Network). Although few details have been released, the show reportedly follows Brooks as he travels across America, one steakhouse at a time. The goal? To suss out the character of small towns and big cities, using the vibe of each steakhouse as a sort of cultural barometer. Eating a whole lot of steak is a bonus, of course.
“Steakhouses in the community sort of speak to the personality,” Brooks recently told The Tennessean in Nashville, his hometown since the early 1980s. “Every small town and big town have their steakhouse and they have their own personalities.”
Meanwhile, Brooks has owned Arrington Vineyards — an award-winning vineyard, located 30 miles south of Nashville — for more than a decade. He’d like to add a steakhouse to the property at some point, and he plans on using Steak Out as “kind of a reconnaissance show… to go find things I really like.”
Ronnie Dunn, who released Peace, Love, and Country Music via his own record label earlier this year, won’t be involved in the show. That’s a shame, because his biggest solo single, 2011’s “Bleed Red,” would make a spot-on theme song.