Kix Brooks has something to say.

That’s not surprising, given that Brooks — a singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer and radio host — has been in the music business for about 40 years. For most of his professional career, Brooks, 68, has been half of the acclaimed country duo Brooks & Dunn, operating as a crowd-pleasing lightning rod alongside the more reserved Ronnie Dunn.

Today, Brooks is an elder statesman in country music, with a dozen albums under his belt as part of Brooks & Dunn and a hefty catalog of hits that includes 20 No. 1 singles. Awards? Brooks & Dunn have roped in plenty of those, from the Academy of Country Music, Country Music Association, American Music Awards, Grammy, Billboard and more.

The acclaimed duo has a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They’ve performed a residency in Las Vegas with Reba McEntire, recently headlined at the Stagecoach Festival and are now on a “Reboot 2023” tour linked to their latest album.

Brooks & Dunn will perform on Thursday in Birmingham at the Legacy Arena at the BJCC, with opening act Scotty McCreery. The duo is a longtime favorite in Alabama, playing for cheering, foot-stomping crowds throughout the state.

AL.com caught up with Brooks by phone before the show here, asking the star to share his thoughts on country music old and new. Throughout the conversation, Brooks was engaged, opinionated and refreshingly straightforward, answering every question in detail. Here are some excerpts from that interview, lightly edited for length and clarity.

It’s safe to say that Brooks & Dunn are heroes to many artists in the country world. Can we talk about your music heroes? Which artists have influenced and inspired you?

Kix Brooks: It definitely started with Hank Williams at my house. His widow, Billie Jean, was married to Johnny Horton, who’s another hero of mine. They lived about two blocks from us in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hank, after he left Nashville, got married to her and made a home in Shreveport, and they lived in a very humble little white house, just like ours. And after Hank died, she married Johnny Horton, who I think should be in the Hall of Fame.

And Johnny Cash (was an influence), at the same time. One of my first songbooks was “100 songs by Johnny Cash,” and I learned every dang one of them. He was a huge influence on me. And as I started having bands in college and that kind of stuff, I really got turned onto a lot of the Austin crowd. Kris Kristofferson, a great influence on me as far as songwriting went. I can’t even begin to say his name along with mine, in terms of songwriting. You know, a huge fan.

Willie and Waylon, both of those guys. I started going to Willie (Nelson Fourth of July) Picnics and just love that whole outlaw movement thing.

When I got to Nashville, I was influenced by a lot of people. Roger Miller, another influence.I know those are all kind of older names. And George Jones, you’d expect me to say that. What a great stylist he was as a singer. Mostly singer-songwriters were the guys that really influenced me along the way.

Is it the storytelling aspect that draws you in? The emotion expressed by a singer or a dynamic presence on stage?

All of those things. You know, being from Louisiana, that was one of the first conversations that Ronnie and I had. We met on a Tuesday and wrote our first two No. 1s on Thursday and Friday. We didn’t know each other from Adam, and the next thing we know, we’re on stage on tour. And I’m all over the stage, but that’s Louisiana. We raise hell when we do shows. And Ronnie came from that real upright kind of George Strait mentality where you stand there at the microphone and you deliver your song. And he’s damn good at doing it.

But he told me, “You might want to settle down on stage a little bit,” and I told him, “That microphone’s not an anchor. There’s people over there; there’s people over there, too.” We shared out thoughts and I think we both found some middle ground as a duo, because we’re both on stage together, and how do we make this work?

We never have, unlike Reba, our big sister who we love, she knows everywhere on the stage, all night long, that’s she’s going to be. And all those (stage) lights know where she’s going to be, and everything else. And Ronnie and I, we’ve never done that. You know, we’ve never gotten organized. We just sorta found a way to survive up there. We’ve been together for 30 years, and I don’t know why, but it’s kind of worked out for us.

Are there any artists from Louisiana, maybe Cajun artists or blues artists, who’ve influenced you, as well?

Absolutely. I mean, Doug Kershaw, I toured with him back in the ‘70s. He’d jump right off the stage onto a table, if there was one close enough, and just kick your beer all over you. He had a cord on his fiddle that was 100 feet long, and he’d used every foot of it.

I had a cord back then that long, too, because I wanted to be like them: (Clarence) “Gatemouth” Brown and the Neville Brothers. Before I went to Nashville, I did 72 nights in a row in New Orleans, and every configuration of the Nevilles, from Aaron to the Meters, his brothers and cousins and whatever. Man, those guys, it was just … You don’t think of that as country music, but it’s soul music. And I was really inspired from Louisiana by Otis Redding and people like that. They just brought all their energy and everything they could to the stage. That’s what excited me, and that’s what I always wanted to do.

You mentioned Billie Jean Horton, who was married to Hank Sr. You gave your very first performance with her daughter, correct?

I did, Nina, and I still see her when I go to Shreveport. Yeah, we went to grade school together and in the fifth grade — actually sixth grade — I had my first band. And they hired us for her birthday party. We got five bucks; I’ll never forget it. We got a dollar apiece, or five dollars for the band. On the playground, we always said five bucks. It sounded bigger.

But it was so cool. I went inside her house, and there’s Hank Williams’ guitars and gold records, and Johnny Horton’s too, you know, pictures of them that people had painted. It made me feel, like, “Wow, this is in my neighborhood. This isn’t some mansion on the hill. This is something that people actually do. You can do this as a real job.” It sort of brought a reality to me that never left.

Country music keeps changing. Some folks think every new trend spells the demise of country music. What do you think about the state of country music today?

I’ve never been a stone thrower. Me and Vince (Gill) talk about this all the time, too, because Vince is as traditional as anybody I know. But the truth is, people think of Ronnie and I as pretty traditional now, which is really funny to me, because we were seriously influenced by the Rolling Stones, and by the Allman Brothers, even Charlie Daniels, who was not mainstream country when he was hot. You know, “Devil Went Down to Georgia” went both ways, but Charlie’s music was considered real progressive.

The bottom line of what you’re saying is influences, and the point I’m trying to make. Because kids in fraternity houses now, they’re listening to all kinds of hip-hop and stuff like that. We were listening to Waylon and Willie and all that stuff, you know, when I was in college. And the Stones, and rock ‘n’ roll music, blues and R&B, all those things. Music that you like, if it’s good, when you start writing songs, that stuff just comes out of you. It’s all gumbo in your head, and it just comes out in rhymes on a piece of paper, if you’re any good at putting them together.

Buck Owens jumped on the bus with me, not to be a name dropper, in Bakersfield, and we got to be friends — me, Ronnie and him — and he was laughing, because we were talking at the time, I think Strait had just had that “Murder on Music Row” song, you know, about country music’s dead … And he started laughing, he goes, “I’ll tell you boys, they’d boot me right off the stage at the Grand Ole Opry for playing a Telecaster.” And (Brad) Paisley just said, “We need to hear more Telecaster in country music.”

It’s just, nobody is playing a dulcimer anymore on a record in country music, nor have they for a long, long time. And that music that came out of the hills of West Virginia and Kentucky, you know, Hank Williams brought the blues into it, into country music, in a big mainstream way. His three chords and the truth, and every frickin’ blues song is three chords and the truth.

Our influences and what makes country music can be argued until the sun goes down, over and over again. But the truth is, it’s young people making the next generation of country music, and their influences are gonna change. And they’re gonna be influenced by the new version of R&B and rock ‘n’ roll and whatever else is coming down the pike.

Because that’s what kids do. You look for something new. I don’t hold that against them, and I’ll tell you something else: There are some serious songsmiths in Nashville, Tennessee, right now. I listen to some of the songs in Top 30 country music, and you can say what you want, but man, the way they are putting words, phrases and stories together, they’re really frickin’ good at it.

You’re the host of American Country Countdown, keeping up with the Top 30 every week. If you had to pick one young artist who makes you sit up and take notice — “Hey, look at what that person is doing!” — who would it be?

Well, Morgan Wallen is probably the biggest gorilla in the jungle right now, him and Luke (Combs). A couple of (Wallen’s) songs — “Sand in My Boots” is one of them, and the song he wrote for his mom (“Thought You Should Know”), that’s as good at writing and melody as I’ve heard in a long time. Like everybody else, you go through an album and you pick your favorites. Those of his songs are really my two favorites. I listen to those two, and I go, “That’s really good work, man.”

And Hardy, he’s a brilliant frickin’ writer. He just is. Craig Wiseman, I wrote quite a few songs with him, back in the day. … Writing with Craig, we’d get into something and I’d throw out an idea, and we’d get to moving along. He’d go stand over in the corner for a minute and he’d grumble a little bit, and then he’d sit back down and he’d spit out two or three lines that are just … And I’m, “Did you just think of that”? The guys that are good at this, they are really good at this.

When you see some of these guys that are fast, and really that good, it’s just … The greatest composers in the world are in Nashville, Tennessee. New York and LA, too, but the level of talent and competitiveness in the songwriting world here is really hard to explain unless you’re doing it.

One young artist, Lainey Wilson, created lots of buzz when she came out and sang with you guys at the Stagecoach Festival this year. How did that happen?

She sang with us on “Cowgirls Don’t Cry.” We did 104 shows with Reba in Las Vegas, and she came out every night on that song and did that. Anyway, Lainey I’ve known for a long time. She’s probably 15 miles up the road in the most rural part of Louisiana. My farm is about 60 miles due west of Natchez, Mississippi. We’ve been farming since 1807 there. That’s where Lainey’s from, too, in the middle of nowhere.

Of course, for a while now, it’s been “Lainey this” and “Lainey that” (in Nashville). It’s not like she just started here, either. She’s been here 10 years or so now. She is definitely catching a wave, and I could not be more excited. We asked her if she wanted to come out and sing with us, and she did. That was fun. And she killed it, by the way, at Stagecoach. Her set was rockin.’ She totally won that crowd.

You worked with artists like Luke Combs and Kasey Musgraves on the “Reboot” album, revisiting a dozen of your signature songs with them. How did you choose the lineup for that project?

I’ll start with Luke Combs. Luke is probably as responsible as anybody for us doing the “Reboot” album, because he sent us an acoustic version of “Brand New Man” and was doing that in his show every night. And Kacey Musgraves was doing her version of “Neon Moon.” Our manager came to us, and he said, “These young people are really into you guys, these new acts, and it could be fun, if you guys wanted to, to hook up.”

I said, “If enough of ‘em care, and want to (record) our music, that’d be cool to do. I’d enjoy that.” He came back to us with this whole list of acts that wanted to do all these different songs that Ronnie and I had written, and we got excited. It’s one of the most fun things we’ve ever done in our whole career.

So that part of it is neat, you know. It makes you feel good that after all the nonsense and fun and games we’ve done on stage, the music is the thing that survives.

If you go: Brooks & Dunn are set to perform on Thursday, May 18, at the Legacy Arena at the BJCC, 1898 Ninth Ave. North in Birmingham. Scotty McCreery will open the 7 p.m. show. Tickets are $23.75-$135.75, plus service charges, via Ticketmaster.