Randy Rogers Band 'Just a Matter of Time' album

“He has the swagger of Steve Earle and the grit of John Fogerty.” - Radney Foster; The son of a preacher who can rock with the best of them, Randy Rogers was raised by his parents Danny and Donna in Cleburne, Texas. It was a pretty typical upbringing, Mom was a teacher’s aid in special education and Dad was a Baptist Preacher. From an early age, music was an everyday part of his life. His Dad and best friend regularly played guitar and sang in the house and Randy’s Great Grandmother Ruth taught him how to play the piano when he was six years old. By age eleven, he was writing songs and teaching himself to play chords on guitar. Randy’s love for music grew over the years as he began to listen to artists like Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Don Williams, The Beatles and even Pearl Jam. He began experimenting with his live show when his high school garage band performed a Stone Temple Pilots cover in a talent show.

Rogers went on to play as a sideman for several years...playing guitar and singing harmony vocals. His first two years as a sideman made him realize that he wanted to form a band and treat each member as an equal. “I was in a band before as a sideman and was treated as a side guy…I hated it,” said Rogers. “These guys are up there with me night after night, they deserve to be factored into the big decisions.” This notion was catalyst for the beginning of the Randy Rogers Band. After years of playing the songwriter circuit in San Marcos, Texas and playing with friends and fellow musicians…the Randy Rogers Band began to take shape.

Down in Texas, folks have known Rogers had the goods that would take him the distance long before he even cracked the regional radio charts. Folks like Kent Finlay, songwriter and owner of Cheatham Street Warehouse in the small college town of San Marcos (halfway between Austin and San Antonio), who pulled a young Rogers out of the club’s weekly songwriter’s circle and told him he could have his own night if he could put a band together. Less than two months after the Randy Rogers Band’s first rehearsal, they cut their debut record — Live at Cheatham St. Warehouse.

That was six years ago and well over 1,000 shows ago. Even on that first record, the songs were all original tunes, and Rogers has always been adamant about sticking with that “Band” part of the moniker. The current lineup — Rogers on vocals and rhythm guitar, guitarist Geoffrey Hill, fiddle player Brady Black, drummer Les Lawless and bassist Jon Richardson — has been together for more than three years now, going back to Rollercoaster (the band’s second studio effort). By then they were already well on their way to being the biggest homegrown force on the Texas scene since Pat Green, who had already crossed over to the national arena. Rollercoaster - produced by fellow Texas maverick Radney Foster - would prove to be the Randy Rogers Band’s own E-ticket ride to the big leagues.

Foster, who has since become a close friend and mentor to Rogers, was as impressed with the young artist as Finlay had been years before. “The first thing that struck me was Randy’s songwriting,” says Foster. “Lots of guys can get a crowd going, but they can’t deliver a real song. Randy’s got a keen wit and a massive amount of heart, and all of that comes through in his songwriting. And his voice is so compelling, too — he has all the swagger of Steve Earle and the grit of John Fogerty, but with vulnerability as well. And the energy that he and the band have in the studio reminds me of when Foster and Lloyd were making our first records.”

Between the rave album review for Rollercoaster in USA Today, the national chart success of Rogers/Foster-penned single, “Tonight’s Not the Night” (stopping just shy of the Top 40) and no small amount of Music Row buzz on the band, it was truly “just a matter of time” before the major labels came calling.

After months of meetings with every label in Nashville, Rogers and Co. signed with Mercury Nashville, sealing the deal at the joint where it all started: Cheatham Street Warehouse. And then they teamed up with Foster again at Austin’s Cedar Creek Studio and got to work making the biggest record of their career to date — with full understanding from the label that they would not compromise their sound or style.

“We were really conscious about not letting the fact that this was going to be our major-label debut mess with our heads” says Rogers, “Because to us, this record is really just the next step. For many folks who don’t know about the movement that’s going on down here, it’ll be their first look at us. But we approached this like we were making our fifth record, not our first. And there was a lot of trust from the label in terms of, ‘You guys go out there and make a record and turn it in, and we’ll leave you alone and let you do your thing.’”

“Randy and the band have a strong sense of what they want to do,” observes Foster. “They didn’t have any of the nervousness that goes along with making a first major label record, and I think Mercury recognized that the band knew what they were doing.”

In exchange for that creative freedom (and the luxury of a considerably bigger budget than they’d ever had before), the band and Foster delivered on their end of the bargain. Like Rollercoaster before it, Just a Matter of Time plays like a rock ’n’ roll album with a country heart as big as Texas, or a straight-up country record played by a killer rock ’n’ roll band. But in fine country tradition, it’s the uniform quality of the songs that really steals the show. All but two were co-written by Rogers (four with Foster himself, a potent combo that yielded many of Rollercoaster’s brightest moments, including the single and “Somebody Take Me Home,” later covered by Kenny Chesney for his The Road and the Radio album); the other two were contributed by bassist Richardson (a former front man in his own right) and Foster and George Ducas, who first struck gold co-writing Foster’s first big solo hit, “Just Call Me Lonesome.” Here, they contribute the irresistible “Kiss Me in the Dark,” which was pretty much destined to be the lead single from the very first time the band heard it. “If we were going to cut an outside song, it had to be such a great song that you couldn’t pass on it,” says Rogers, smiling. “It would have to be a single.”

Rest assured, though, it won’t be the album’s only single, just as Just a Matter of Time most certainly won’t be the last time people will be hearing from the Randy Rogers Band. It’s almost irrelevant, really, whether people recognize this as the band’s fifth album or mistake it for their first, because either way, this particular rollercoaster is only just now starting to really pick up speed.

“We just wanted this record to be an honest representation of where we were at when we signed our first major-label deal,” says Rogers. “I think it’s the best thing we’ve ever done, but … we’re going to make another record pretty soon, and hopefully we’ll feel like that’s the best record we’ve ever done, too. The idea is to just continue to raise the bar.

Song by Song

“Better Off Wrong” (Randy Rogers, Gary Nicholson, Radney Foster)
I really wanted to write kind of a real driving, old-school ’70s country kind of tune, with a Waylon Jennings kind of backbeat. I knew that Gary Nicholson had played with Billy Joe Shaver and been around forever, so I just told him, “I want to write a Waylon-esque tune.” He said, “Oh really? Here’s Waylon’s 57 Tele,” and hands me Waylon’s guitar. Talk about a panic attack! But it was really cool.

“Kiss Me in the Dark” (Radney Foster, George Ducas)
Radney and George pitched this one to us along with like four or five other songs they had written together. I loved it, played it for the guys, and they loved it. It was very obvious that it was single material. When you get that good of a song, you can kind of feel the magic of the song. And you gotta go with it.

“One More Goodbye”
(Randy Rogers, Clint Ingersol)
Clint is another writer at Big Tractor Publishing, where I’m also signed. He’s a good ol’ country boy from Oklahoma. We wrote “One More Goodbye” on a dreary, rainy afternoon in Austin at my road manager’s house. It’s just about that universal thing that I think everybody has gone through, which is like, “I don’t ever want to see you again,” and then the next day, “Uhh …. Can I come over?”

“Just a Matter of Time” (Randy Rogers, Stephony Smith)
Stephony is a songwriter who I met through Alisha Jordan who signed me to my publishing deal. We really hit it off and wrote three songs for this record, starting with this one. It ended up being the title of the record, because I felt that as a title it kind of sums up the subject material of the other songs.

“You Could’ve Left Me” (Randy Rogers, Kent Finlay)
Kent Finlay from Cheatham Street Warehouse (in San Marcos, Texas) is definitely one of my mentors. This is like the most pissed-off, driving, kind of screw-you song on the record, which is funny if you know Kent, because he’s a little bit older and doesn’t get too fired up! We wrote it, and I played it for him, and he went, “Well, it’s not what I expected!” Because it came out so rock ‘n’ roll, just gunning it. But he loves it.

“You Could Change My Mind” (Randy Rogers, Stephony Smith)
This is one we wrote from scratch. Neither of us had a melody. I think the hook came about just through us talking it through. It’s always fun when that happens; when you start a three or four hour session of song writing, and you start with nothing and you’re able to walk out with something. It’s a beautiful thing when songs happen that way. Sometimes it takes months to complete a thought, but this one was like, boom.

“Before I Believe It’s True” (Randy Rogers, Radney Foster)
That was one that Radney brought to the table and he and I completely revamped it. It was the truest form of collaboration between two songwriters that I think I’ve ever had. It was the real deal — that’s how co-writing 101 should be.

“You Start Over Your Way” (Randy Rogers, Radney Foster)
That’s the first song that Radney and I wrote for this project. We wanted to write just an up-tempo, let’s go out and have a good time thing. I usually have a hard time writing that kind of stuff — feel good songs aren’t really my specialty! But we managed to write that one.

“If Anyone Asks” (Randy Rogers, Drew Womack)
Drew and I became buddies when he moved to Austin a few years ago. This song is about a guy locking himself up in a room because he’s so upset about a breakup, he doesn’t want to face any of his friends, because he’s embarrassed. It’s a pretty tough subject matter.

“You Don’t Know Me” (Jon Richardson)
Written by Mr. Johnny Chops, our bass player - we call him that because of his big sideburns. We used to do it bluegrass-style, just sit around and play it on mandolins in the van and in the hotel room after the show. We wanted to put a country-ass song on the record, to show off how, you know, “Yeah, we may come off as these real country rock enthusiasts, but if you want to listen to some Jerry Reed, we’ll play you some country music.” And the whole premise of the song is, “I don’t care what you think about me; you judging me isn’t going to ruin my day.”

“If I Told You the Truth” (Randy Rogers, Radney Foster)
I think that was the second song that we wrote for the record. I’d been playing with the melody for a while, and Radney and I finished it together. It’s not as bad as it sounds … it’s not like, “I did something wrong, and if I told you, you’d leave me.” It’s more like, “If I told you that I loved you, would you stay with me or would you run away?” So it’s not bad. Unless, of course, she runs away!

“Whiskey’s Got a Hold on Me” (Randy Rogers, Stephony Smith)
I quit drinking whiskey about a year and two months ago after finding the bottom of the bottle, which I don’t recommend. I was staying in Radney’s basement, and I was so ashamed of myself because, here I was trying to become a better songwriter, and I wasn’t taking care of myself, doing the things I needed to do to get myself mentally prepared to write. So Radney’s wife said, “Write about that!” Ding ding ding! It’s probably the most honest song I’ve written in a long time.

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Randy Rogers Band - Just a Matter of Time