NAME:
Randy Rogers
ABOUT
Over the last two decades, Randy Rogers Band have emerged as a vital force in the Texas country scene, unfailingly turning out the kind of soul-searching songs that become an indelible part of fans’ everyday lives. For the making of their new album Homecoming, the San Marcos-bred band returned to the same studio and producer as their widely beloved breakthrough effort Rollercoaster—a 2004 release that marked their first collaboration with the legendary Radney Foster, setting them on an auspicious path that’s recently led to such milestones as supporting country icons George Strait and Willie Nelson at the grand-opening celebration of Austin’s Moody Center. In an undeniable triumph for the New Braunfels-based six-piece—vocalist/guitarist Randy Rogers, fiddle/mandolin player Brady Black, guitarist/vocalist Geoff Hill, drummer Les Lawless, bassist Johnny Chops, and keyboardist Todd Stewart—Homecoming ultimately harnesses the freewheeling spirit of their early days while spotlighting some of their most poignant and powerful work to date.
“With this new album we did everything we could to bring it back to the feeling of those 24-year-olds who had no idea what we were doing, but somehow ended up making a record that changed everything for us,” says Rogers. “It isn’t easy to get back to your roots like that, but having those same five guys in the studio made it all feel so natural. The simple fact that we’re all still doing this together really speaks to the longevity of this band—all the ways we’ve grown, and all the hard work we’ve put in to keep this going over the years.”
Produced by Foster and mainly recorded at Austin’s Cedar Creek Recording, Homecoming arrives as Randy Rogers Band’s ninth studio album and the follow-up to 2019’s Hellbent (a critically lauded LP made with multi-Grammy-award winner Dave Cobb). In a testament to the potent camaraderie they’ve honed through playing countless shows across the country since forming in 2000, the album bristles with an unbridled energy even as its songs touch on such complex matters as grief and regret and the everyday struggles of being human. Steeped in the gritty yet gracefully crafted Red Dirt sound the band first carved out on the local honky-tonk circuit, Homecoming both captures the pain of time passing too fast and leaves the listener newly inspired to live more fully in the moment.
A #1 hit at Texas Country radio, Homecoming’s lead single “Picture Frames” makes for a glorious introduction to the album’s mood of bittersweet reminiscence. With its finespun melodies and gently swinging rhythms, the storytelling-fueled track finds Rogers looking back on cherished memories and imbuing every line with equal parts heavy-hearted nostalgia and quietly expressed joy (a dynamic that prompted Billboard to praise “Picture Frames” as a “timeless song of enduring love”). “At the start of the Covid, it was the first time in years that I’d been off the road a while, and I was looking at the pictures on the walls and thinking, ‘Damn, time’s just flying by,’” says Rogers. “It made me realize how fast the kids are growing up, how long I’ve been married—I blinked and my 30s were gone, because that’s what happens when you play 175 shows a year.”
One of several songs co-written with Foster, “I Won’t Give Up” kicks off Homecoming with a lushly textured meditation on long-term love and commitment. “That song came from thinking about how me and my wife Chelsea were coming up on 10 years of being together,” explains Rogers, who also co-wrote “I Won’t Give Up” with Jim Beavers (Tim McGraw, Chris Stapleton). “Marriage isn’t easy, and Covid definitely made things hard for a host of reasons, so I wanted to write a very simple song for Chelsea about how I’ll never give up on us.” Penned by Wendell Mobley and Randy Montana (who contributed Homecoming’s only outside cut), “Fast Car” spins a slow-burning portrait of falling for someone impossibly wild-hearted, with Black’s lilting fiddle melodies and Hill’s soulful guitar tones infinitely intensifying the track’s dreamy romanticism. “One of the best things I’ve learned over the years is how to take an outside cut and make it your own, and in so many ways this song completely personifies my wife,” Rogers points out. And on “Nothing But Love Songs,” Homecoming delivers an uptempo but irresistibly wistful gem that speaks to a highly specific post-breakup phenomenon. “It’s a song about this poor guy who’s just got his heart broken, and he’s driving around and all he hears is love songs on the radio,” says Rogers. “To me it’s classic Randy and Radney, like something we would’ve written in the van back in the day—it’s a sad song but it doesn’t rip your heart out; it’s just truthful and natural and real.”
Elsewhere on Homecoming, Randy Rogers Band turn the lens inward and delve into many of the more puzzling aspects of growing older. On the sweetly aching “Know That by Now,” for instance, Rogers strikes a brilliant balance of self-effacing humor and pensive introspection in shedding light on the unfortunate ease of self-sabotage (from the song’s opening lines: “I can’t have one drink without having four/Bum one cigarette and I’m headed to the store/Better at getting lost than being found/You think I’d know that by now”). “I think we all grow and learn every single day,” he says in discussing the song’s inspiration. “The issue is overcoming the obstacles we constantly and purposely put in our own way to succeed.” Meanwhile, on the piano-driven “Heart for Just One Team,” Rogers ruminates on the recent death of his father and ends up uncovering certain seldom-spoken truths about the complexities of connection. “My dad was a Southern Baptist preacher and we didn’t have a whole lot in common: he was a man of God, I was in a honky-tonk band,” says Rogers. “But one thing we could always talk about was the Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys, and one of my favorite memories is when I was about eight or nine and he surprised me by taking me to a Cowboys game one Sunday instead of going to church. I remember being in complete awe, so this song is my tribute to him and to that special way that sports can bring families together.”
All throughout Homecoming, Randy Rogers Band transform the most unwieldly and overwhelming feelings into slice-of-life poetry you can sing along to, endlessly revealing the unchecked passion that’s defined the band from the very start. “All of us came from nothing,” says Rogers. “We didn’t have anything but talent and the desire to make it happen; we were all just so hungry and excited. I was a booking agent at the time, so once we got the lineup together I started booking Randy Rogers Band under an assumed name, and we hit the road in our ’88 Suburban.” Making their debut with 2002’s Like It Used to Be, the band soon linked up with Foster thanks to some good-natured scheming on Rogers’s part. “I basically stalked Radney,” he recalls. “We’d open shows for him and I’d wait for him to come off stage, and after about the fifth time he asked me for my email and we started writing together.” After joining forces with Foster on Rollercoaster, Randy Rogers Band continued on an upward trajectory that’s now included working with the likes of Alison Krauss and Jerry Jeff Walker, earning acclaim from such leading outlets as the New York Times, and appearing on major TV shows like “The Tonight Show” and “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
But for all the headline-worthy success they’ve achieved through the years, the thrill of putting on an unforgettable live show remains the lifeblood of Randy Rogers Band. “One of the funny things about being around this long is we’ve got nine albums’ worth of songs, and you can only cram so many in a setlist,” says Rogers. “But with this new record, there’s a bunch of new songs that could definitely become staples of the live set. With a song like ‘I Won’t Give Up,’ I can already see people dancing along at shows, I can see people kissing out there in the crowd. It’s the kind of song that could become an anthem for people, whether they’re running a marathon or trying to work out something in their relationship. With all our songs, I always hope people are able to take them and attach them to their lives however they want to or need to.”
Expand“With this new album we did everything we could to bring it back to the feeling of those 24-year-olds who had no idea what we were doing, but somehow ended up making a record that changed everything for us,” says Rogers. “It isn’t easy to get back to your roots like that, but having those same five guys in the studio made it all feel so natural. The simple fact that we’re all still doing this together really speaks to the longevity of this band—all the ways we’ve grown, and all the hard work we’ve put in to keep this going over the years.”
Produced by Foster and mainly recorded at Austin’s Cedar Creek Recording, Homecoming arrives as Randy Rogers Band’s ninth studio album and the follow-up to 2019’s Hellbent (a critically lauded LP made with multi-Grammy-award winner Dave Cobb). In a testament to the potent camaraderie they’ve honed through playing countless shows across the country since forming in 2000, the album bristles with an unbridled energy even as its songs touch on such complex matters as grief and regret and the everyday struggles of being human. Steeped in the gritty yet gracefully crafted Red Dirt sound the band first carved out on the local honky-tonk circuit, Homecoming both captures the pain of time passing too fast and leaves the listener newly inspired to live more fully in the moment.
A #1 hit at Texas Country radio, Homecoming’s lead single “Picture Frames” makes for a glorious introduction to the album’s mood of bittersweet reminiscence. With its finespun melodies and gently swinging rhythms, the storytelling-fueled track finds Rogers looking back on cherished memories and imbuing every line with equal parts heavy-hearted nostalgia and quietly expressed joy (a dynamic that prompted Billboard to praise “Picture Frames” as a “timeless song of enduring love”). “At the start of the Covid, it was the first time in years that I’d been off the road a while, and I was looking at the pictures on the walls and thinking, ‘Damn, time’s just flying by,’” says Rogers. “It made me realize how fast the kids are growing up, how long I’ve been married—I blinked and my 30s were gone, because that’s what happens when you play 175 shows a year.”
One of several songs co-written with Foster, “I Won’t Give Up” kicks off Homecoming with a lushly textured meditation on long-term love and commitment. “That song came from thinking about how me and my wife Chelsea were coming up on 10 years of being together,” explains Rogers, who also co-wrote “I Won’t Give Up” with Jim Beavers (Tim McGraw, Chris Stapleton). “Marriage isn’t easy, and Covid definitely made things hard for a host of reasons, so I wanted to write a very simple song for Chelsea about how I’ll never give up on us.” Penned by Wendell Mobley and Randy Montana (who contributed Homecoming’s only outside cut), “Fast Car” spins a slow-burning portrait of falling for someone impossibly wild-hearted, with Black’s lilting fiddle melodies and Hill’s soulful guitar tones infinitely intensifying the track’s dreamy romanticism. “One of the best things I’ve learned over the years is how to take an outside cut and make it your own, and in so many ways this song completely personifies my wife,” Rogers points out. And on “Nothing But Love Songs,” Homecoming delivers an uptempo but irresistibly wistful gem that speaks to a highly specific post-breakup phenomenon. “It’s a song about this poor guy who’s just got his heart broken, and he’s driving around and all he hears is love songs on the radio,” says Rogers. “To me it’s classic Randy and Radney, like something we would’ve written in the van back in the day—it’s a sad song but it doesn’t rip your heart out; it’s just truthful and natural and real.”
Elsewhere on Homecoming, Randy Rogers Band turn the lens inward and delve into many of the more puzzling aspects of growing older. On the sweetly aching “Know That by Now,” for instance, Rogers strikes a brilliant balance of self-effacing humor and pensive introspection in shedding light on the unfortunate ease of self-sabotage (from the song’s opening lines: “I can’t have one drink without having four/Bum one cigarette and I’m headed to the store/Better at getting lost than being found/You think I’d know that by now”). “I think we all grow and learn every single day,” he says in discussing the song’s inspiration. “The issue is overcoming the obstacles we constantly and purposely put in our own way to succeed.” Meanwhile, on the piano-driven “Heart for Just One Team,” Rogers ruminates on the recent death of his father and ends up uncovering certain seldom-spoken truths about the complexities of connection. “My dad was a Southern Baptist preacher and we didn’t have a whole lot in common: he was a man of God, I was in a honky-tonk band,” says Rogers. “But one thing we could always talk about was the Texas Rangers and Dallas Cowboys, and one of my favorite memories is when I was about eight or nine and he surprised me by taking me to a Cowboys game one Sunday instead of going to church. I remember being in complete awe, so this song is my tribute to him and to that special way that sports can bring families together.”
All throughout Homecoming, Randy Rogers Band transform the most unwieldly and overwhelming feelings into slice-of-life poetry you can sing along to, endlessly revealing the unchecked passion that’s defined the band from the very start. “All of us came from nothing,” says Rogers. “We didn’t have anything but talent and the desire to make it happen; we were all just so hungry and excited. I was a booking agent at the time, so once we got the lineup together I started booking Randy Rogers Band under an assumed name, and we hit the road in our ’88 Suburban.” Making their debut with 2002’s Like It Used to Be, the band soon linked up with Foster thanks to some good-natured scheming on Rogers’s part. “I basically stalked Radney,” he recalls. “We’d open shows for him and I’d wait for him to come off stage, and after about the fifth time he asked me for my email and we started writing together.” After joining forces with Foster on Rollercoaster, Randy Rogers Band continued on an upward trajectory that’s now included working with the likes of Alison Krauss and Jerry Jeff Walker, earning acclaim from such leading outlets as the New York Times, and appearing on major TV shows like “The Tonight Show” and “The Late Show with David Letterman.”
But for all the headline-worthy success they’ve achieved through the years, the thrill of putting on an unforgettable live show remains the lifeblood of Randy Rogers Band. “One of the funny things about being around this long is we’ve got nine albums’ worth of songs, and you can only cram so many in a setlist,” says Rogers. “But with this new record, there’s a bunch of new songs that could definitely become staples of the live set. With a song like ‘I Won’t Give Up,’ I can already see people dancing along at shows, I can see people kissing out there in the crowd. It’s the kind of song that could become an anthem for people, whether they’re running a marathon or trying to work out something in their relationship. With all our songs, I always hope people are able to take them and attach them to their lives however they want to or need to.”