CD Review – ‘Burning the Day’ – Randy Rogers Band
14 years ago Liv Carter 3
‘Burning the Day’ – Randy Rogers Band (MCA Nashville, 2010)
After a long collaboration with Radney Foster, the Randy Rogers Band returns with a fifth studio album for which they worked with another top producer, Paul Worley. Mainstays of the Texas country scene for the better part of a decade, the five-piece band broke through nationally in 2006 with the release of the ‘Just a Matter of Time’ album.
The fiddle-heavy first single, ‘Too Late for Goodbye’, has just made its way into the Mediabase Country Singles Top 50 and tells the tale of a bitter break-up. With it’s catchy melody, it certainly has the potential to become the band’s highest charting single. More lost love is mourned on the strong ‘Damn the Rain’.
With one exception, relationships are the theme on the record, but the subject is approached from enough sides to keep it interesting – from the domestic life of a traveling musician with only brief spells at home on ‘Interstate’, letting go of a lover who left to pursue a dream on ‘Missing You Is More Than I Can Do’, to a dose of co-dependency on ‘Just Don’t Tell Me the Truth’, and even the taboo subject of going after another man’s woman ‘Steal You Away’.
The album closes with one of the standouts, the bluesy ‘Last Last Chance’, the only track staying away from love, instead focusing on a ne’er-do-well trying to straighten his life out.
Though the vocals and harmonies sounds better than on any of the band’s previous albums, the production does seem to be lacking something. On a few songs the fiddle arrangements, welcome though they are, sounds fairly similar. Maybe it’s just my preference for Radney Foster’s work but some songs here lack a bit of bite. It downgrades a potential lament like ‘Holding On to Letting Go’ to simply another song about not moving on. Maybe as the working relationship with Paul Worley develops, he will start to take a few more risks with the production.
Nevertheless, Randy’s unique voice and the band’s musicianship easily lifts up any song they touch. ‘Burning the Day’ is a solid continuation of the body of work of the Randy Rogers Band.
‘Burning the Day’ will be in stores on August 24, 2010.
Disclosure of material connection for this review.
Liv Carter
She holds several certificates from Berklee College of Music, and a certificate in Positive Psychology from UC Berkeley.
Her main influences are coffee, cats, and Alexander Hamilton.
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