The “Chemistry” of Hit Songwriting Partners Dean Dillon and Frank Dycus

Dean Dillon and Frank Dycus’ songwriting partnership was a fruitful one, to say the least. The men are behind some of George Strait’s most well-known hits, “Unwound” and “Marina Del Rey” are among them.

Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Kenny Chesney, Johnny Paycheck and Kenny Rogers are among the many other vast-ranging artists who’ve cut Dycus’ songs. Dillon is perhaps known just as much as the writer of “Tennessee Whiskey” – which he co-wrote with Linda Hargrove and was first recorded by David Allen Coe and George Jones before Chris Stapleton made it his signature hit – as he is the man behind many of Strait’s songs.

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Dillon and Dycus met in 1973 after Dillon moved to Nashville and Dycus was signed to Parton’s publishing company, Owepar Publishing. Dycus served as a mentor to Dillon, but it took a few years to develop a songwriting partnership. Dillon was an artist signed to a record deal at the time he ran into Dycus at a restaurant in Nashville after years of not seeing him.

“I went over and asked him if he still remembered me and he said, ‘Yeah, I still remember you,’” Dillon recalled in a 1989 interview with American Songwriter. “I told him I had a deal with RCA and asked if he’d write a song with me and he said, ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ So we sat down and wrote ‘Unwound.’”

“Dean is a great writer…I was one of his fans when he was a teenager,” Dycus added.

While Dillon presented the initial idea for “Unwound,” it was Dycus who came up with the “hit idea” of a heartsick man being abounded by the woman he loves, the writers getting the point across in the opening lines of the chorus, That woman that I had wrapped around my finger just come unwound. The song was released as Strait’s debut single in 1981 and became his first Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, setting him up for a future streak of a whopping 60 No. 1 hits.

“Chemistry, it takes magic. Frank and I can just sit down in a room and know what each other are thinking. It’s just that type of chemistry is there,” Dillon continued about what made his and Dycus’ partnership so successful. “Not everybody has that. I can’t write with just anybody. After you’ve been together long enough, you develop that. We were fortunate enough that we didn’t have to be together for five minutes to have it. I write by myself once in a blue moon, but co-writing is a lot more fun. The friendship is there and two heads are better than one.”

“Down and Out,” “Honky Tonk Crazy” and “Friday Night Fever” are among the other songs they wrote that Strait cut, along with Dillon’s song “I’ve Learned to Live.” Dean was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2020.

Dycus passed away in 2012 at the age of 72. To honor his memory, Music Health Alliance formed The Frank Dycus Endowment for Mental Health, “To provide outpatient mental health resources to the music community that meant so much to him,” the organization states.

(George Strait with Dean Dillon / Photo Credit: Beth Gwinn/Getty Images)