Interview: Texas country standouts Josh Abbott Band pay tribute to rural folks with “Small Town Family Dream,” plan Norman show
From Wednesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman.
Josh Abbott Band pays tribute to rural folks with new album “Small Town Family Dream”
The fast-rising Texas country band is playing Friday at Riverwind Casino.
With their new album “Small Town Family Dream,” Josh Abbott Band pays tribute to the loves, struggles and misadventures of rural denizens in their native Texas and other middle-America states.
Unlike the fictional folks who inhabit many mainstream country hits, the characters in their songs aren’t the kind to drive sexy tractors, serve cornbread and sweet tea at every meal or pass the days cane-pole fishing.
“When you get off a tractor at the end of a long, hard day, you don’t come home to some supermodel wearing a bikini bathing your tractor and climbing all over it. That just doesn’t happen,” said Josh Abbott, the band’s singer, acoustic guitarist and primary songwriter, with a laugh.
“The bookends of the album and from song 1 to 12 really tell the story of what it’s like to be in a small town, whether that’s in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, South Dakota or Alabama. You know, in the Southern and Midwest states that have small towns, I feel like people really relate to that.”
Maybe those authentic blue-collar songs are why the Texas country sextet has earned such a strong fan base in the Oklahoma City area. Of course, the free T-shirts and CDs Abbott gave away to all 300 fans who turned out a Wormy Dog Saloon show a few years ago could have something to do with it, too.
“Well, that was cool. We were just having a good time and the crowd was really into it, and you know, we were just still trying to get our name out there,” he recalled. “I just thought, ‘Man, you know what, instead of like hoping X amount of people buy a shirt or CD, I’m just gonna give it away.’ So we literally gave away like every shirt and CD that we had. It was awesome.”
Instead of the Wormy Dog, with its 750-fan capacity, Abbott and Co. will play Friday night the 1,500-seat Showplace Theatre at Norman’s Riverwind Casino. But the frontman said fans of the up-and-coming band should expect the same rollicking show.
“We hope that they’ll pick up on our energy and how much we appreciate them being there,” Abbott said. “We try to keep it upbeat: We start with a bang, we end with a bang and somewhere in the middle we try to fit in our love ballads and stuff like that. But mainly we just want to have fun with the audience … “When people come to a live show, they expect to be entertained, they expect a good time, and it’s our job to make sure that that happens.”
In less than half a decade, Abbott and his cohorts — fiddler/electric guitarist Preston Wait, drummer Eddie Villanueva, bassist James Hertless, electric guitarist Caleb Keeter and electric banjo player Austin Davis — have gained an impressive following and firmly taken their place in the burgeoning Texas music scene. Abbott didn’t even write his first song until 2004, when he was still going to graduate school at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. Inspired by Texas country standouts like Randy Rogers, Wade Bowen and Pat Green, Abbott started playing open mikes and soon formed a band. They recorded their first demo in 2007, started booking gigs outside Lubbock in 2008 and released their debut album, “Scapegoat,” in 2009.
The following year, their sophomore album, “She’s Like Texas,” spawned a breakout hit with the down-home ballad “Oh, Tonight” and became a regional smash that climbed to No. 28 on the national country chart. Their third album, “Small Town Family Dream” debuted at No. 1 on the iTunes country chart, No. 2 on the iTunes all-genre list and No. 5 on the Billboard country chart last month.
“I think it’s just a culmination of … really smart marketing and advertising and making good decisions, but also just the music itself being relatable to people,” Abbott said of the band’s fast rise. “I think when you connect with fans and you’re really nice to ‘em and you write songs that they can relate to … then I think that really helps sell the music and make people want to invest in you.”
With their third LP, Abbott, 31, set out to create a concept album that would present small-town life in an genuine way rather than a cartoonish or glamorized fashion. He introduces folks to his hometown with album opener “Idalou,” pays tribute to the firefighters who battled last year’s Texas wildfires with “Hell’s Gates on Fire” and sympathizes with farmers facing the 2011 drought with “Rain Finally Coming Down.” The heartbreaking video to the passionate ballad “Touch” tells the tale of a solider who loses his life and love in the line of duty.
For good measure, the band recorded the pointed Adam Hood/Brian Keane song “I’ll Sing About Mine,” an admonishment for “rich folks singing about places they’ve never seen” to make about their own lives instead of small-town guys.
“The whole point of our album is point out the good and the bad of small towns. But we don’t want to disrespect it by overdoing it and cartooning it up,” he said. “Really, small towns are built on hard-working people who just enjoy the simplicity of living a good life.”
Abbott also pays homage to the Texas country stars who inspired him with “My Texas,” a duet with Green, one of his musical heroes.
“It was a dream come true, really. It really helped legitimize us and our place, I feel like, in the scene. With this new album, we were hoping to go from up-and-coming popular Texas band to being an established band, one of the guys at the top of our game and reaching out nationally. And I thought Pat was the perfect person to help us with that,” he said.
“He’s a great influence.”
IN CONCERT
Josh Abbott Band
When: 8 p.m. Friday.
Where: Riverwind Casino, 1544 W State Highway 9.
Tickets: Sold out.
Information: 322-6464 or www.riverwind.com.
-BAM
CD review: Parker Millsap and Michael Rose “Palisade”
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Folk
Parker Millsap and Michael Rose “Palisade” (Self released)
If you give Parker Millsap and Michael Rose’s debut album a listen — and I highly recommend you give it more than one — you might just get the wrong idea.
After all, they sure don’t sound like a couple of baby-faced recent Purcell High School graduates.
With “Palisade,” the red dirt duo proves the old adage that age is nothing but a number. The Oklahomans do it all on this acoustic album: Millsap wrote the 11 songs, plays guitar and harmonica and sings every track in a deep, gravelly and preternaturally knowing voice that you won’t soon forget. On bass, Rose not only gives each song a sturdy structure, but also demonstrates an uncanny knack for knowing just when to nudge his rhythms toward the forefront. The musical partners have been playing together for about four years — you know, since they were high schoolers — and they’ve developed a solid chemistry.
The album opens with the bluesy title track that emphasizes the duo’s remarkable musical maturity, particularly Millsap’s gritty vocals reminiscent of Tom Waits, then takes a more folksy tone with the pretty ballad “Seed.” The duo shows off their impressive skills with the lively yet old-fashioned instrumental “Tuesday Night Rag,” which has a timeless sound that could fool you into believing it’s been passed down from one picker to another since the early 20th century.
In the grand red dirt tradition, the pair especially excels at vivid story songs like the mournful lover’s plea “Central Pacific,” the matter-of-fact musing on mortality “I Hope I Die” and the sad but cleverly worded tale of a trio of hard-luck cases “Jackson’s in a Hole.”
— BAM
What to do in Oklahoma on May 12, 2012: Hear Jason Boland & The Stragglers at Cain’s Ballroom
Today’s featured event:
TULSA – Hear Harrah native Jason Boland & The Stragglers at 8:30 tonight at historic Cain’s Ballroom, 423 N Main. Doors open at 7 p.m.
For more information, go to www.cainsballroom.com.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
Interview: Pat Green gets back under covers with “Songs We Wish We’d Written II,” plays CD release show tonight at the Wormy Dog
From Wednesday’s Life section of The Oklahoman. To read my early review of “Songs We Wish We’d Written II,” click here.
Pat Green gets back to the covers
The Texas country music star just debuted his new album “Songs We Wish We’d Written II” and will play a CD release show Wednesday (tonight) at the Wormy Dog Saloon.
Pat Green is spending the summer spreading the word about his sequel.
The Texas troubadour hasn’t gone Hollywood, but he does dabble in pop and rock along with country on “Songs We Wish We’d Written II.” The new album is the follow-up to his well-received 2001 covers collection “Songs We Wish We’d Written,” which paid homage to the music of Waylon Jennings, Billy Joe Shaver and Steve Winwood, among others.
“I figure if every 10 years I put out an album of everybody else’s stuff, that can be fun,” Green said in a phone interview last fall. “Man, we got in there with all the usual suspects: Jack Ingram and Cory Morrow and Walt Wilkins and a bunch of my friends and just had a good time.”
Green will play a CD release show at 8 p.m. Wednesday (tonight) at the Wormy Dog Saloon. Admission is $15, which includes a copy of the new album, and the Texas country star will be signing CDs after the show.
Released Tuesday, the album marks the former RCA/BNA recording artist’s first on Sugar Hill Records, a sister label to Vanguard, one of the longest-running indies in America.
“It’s just a more independent record label that kind of lets the artists do what they want to do,” Green said.
“This idea and this particular covers album, it was a just-for-the-hell of it kind of thing and it turned out to be a lot of fun the first go-around. And we had some really good success with it so we’re gonna do it again. If it works the first time, don’t break it.”
While he partnered with Morrow for the first “Songs We Wish We’d Written,” Green took on the sequel as a solo project. But he got several guest stars to perform on the follow-up and reunited with Morrow for one track, a faithful rendition of Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had a Boat.”
Not surprisingly, Green’s new covers collection pays tribute to many of his fellow Lone Star State songsmiths: He opens the album with Joe Ely’s “All Just to Get to You,” gets toes tapping with Jon Randall’s “Austin” and makes earnest romance with Liz Rose’s and Wilkins’ “If It Weren’t for You.”
After all, Green is considered one of the sub-genre’s top artists. The Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter received the Decade Award from the Texas Music Chart as the most played artist on Texas country radio from 2000-2010, and many young stars on the scene cite him as an influence.
“I sometimes worry and think they should set their sights higher than me,” he said wryly. “But I’m sure thankful that I’ve had the opportunity in life to be at least in the front portion of the line as it comes to a brand of music. I think that I happened to be kind of getting onto the scene just about the same time that the scene was really starting to pop.” So that really helped my life out and … if it rubs off on other people or helps other people get here to the same place, I think that’s fantastic.”
“There’s nothing bad about this job except for missing home every now and then,” added the married father of two. “We get to just sit around and make stuff up and sing about it and then get back on the tour bus and do it again tomorrow night. This is a great, great thing to do for a living, and then to inspire other people to do the same thing, wow, what a treat.”
Green’s own musical influences range far outside the borders of Texas and country. The 40-year-old was raised in a blended family of nine children, so he grew up listening to a bit of everything, from ‘80s pop and country to Motown and classical. That eclecticism is reflected on his latest album.
His smooth Texas twang mingles with layers of piano and strings to deliver a countrified version of Tom Petty’s, and Ingram helps him convert Todd Snider’s raucous rocker “I Am Too” into a rowdy boot-stomper. Green and Collective Soul frontman Ed Roland strip down the Georgia band’s 1995 smash “The World I Know” into a soulful duet with just a few subtle country flourishes.
“That song was a big fun song for us in the ‘90s, and I got to know Ed through some charity work that we did. And I was like, ‘I’ll put it on the record if you’ll sing with me,’ and he said yes,” Green said.
Despite his enthusiasm for covering songs he wishes he’d written, Green hopes to get into the studio this year to make an album that focuses on songs he actually wrote.
“The writing process is never-ending,” he said. “There’s probably 20 songs right now that I feel comfortable are good enough to go on any record. You just gotta whittle ‘em down, and … it’s kind of like putting together an outfit to wear. You don’t wanna wear plaid and stripes.”
IN CONCERT
Pat Green album release show
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday (tonight). Doors open at 6 p.m.
Where: Wormy Dog Saloon, 311 E Sheridan.
Admission: $15, which includes a copy of his new album “Songs We Wish We’d Written II.”
Information: www.wormydog.com.
-BAM
New releases for May 8, 2012: Albums from John Fullbright and Turnpike Troubadours
A pair of excellent Oklahoma performers with Okemah ties released new albums today.
Singer-songwriter John Fullbright, an Okemah native, dropped his debut album “From the Ground Up.” To read The Oklahoman Entertainment Editor Gene Triplett’s recent interview with Fullbright, click here.
And Okemah-based red dirt band Turnpike Troubadours, for which Fullbright used to play, released their third album, “Goodbye Normal Street.” To read my interview with frontman Evan Felker, click here.
Also, Texas country star Pat Green dropped today his second covers album “Songs We Wish We’d Written II.” He will play a CD release show Wednesday at the Wormy Dog; look for my interview with Green Wednesday.
Here is a list of the week’s new CDs, DVDs and books, at Amazon.com, VideoETA.com and BarnesandNoble.com:
CDs
John Fullbright, “From the Ground Up.”
Turnpike Troubadours, “Goodbye Normal Street.”
Pat Green, “Songs We Wish We’d Written II.”
Silversun Pickups, “Neck of the Woods.”
Keane, “Strangeland.”
Glenn Frey, “After Hours.”
Barenaked Ladies, “Stop Us If You’ve Heard This One Before!”
Rita Wilson, “AM/FM.”
Mary Mary, “Go Get It.”
Liza Minnelli, “Legends of Broadway: Liza Minnelli Live at Winter Garden.”
Julie Andrews and Carol Burnett, “The CBS Television Specials.”
Dee Snider, “Dee Does Broadway.”
Danny Elfman, “Dark Shadows: Original Score.”
DVDs
The Big C: The Complete Second Season
Chuck: The Complete Fifth and Final Season
Fantasy Island: The Compete Second Season
Mother’s Day
Playback
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie
Underworld: Awakening
The Vow
Books
I Am a Pole (And So Can You!)by Stephen Colbert
11th Hour (Women’s Murder Club Series #11) by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro
Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
The Road to Grace (Walk Series #3)by Richard Paul Evans
Home by Toni Morrison
The Family Corleone by Ed Falco, Mario Puzo
-BAM
Interview: Turnpike Troubadours say ‘Goodbye Normal Street’ with new album, plan Oklahoma City and Tulsa CD release shows
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Turnpike Troubadours say ‘Goodbye Normal Street’
The Oklahoma red dirt band, once based in Tahlequah and now headquartered in Okemah, is hitting the road in support of its third album.
With their third album, the Turnpike Troubadours are bidding “Goodbye Normal Street,” and it’s more than just a catchy title.
It’s the literal and figurative state of the Oklahoma red dirt band, which recently got a new home base in Okemah but has members spread out to the Tahlequah, Oklahoma City and Stillwater areas.
“We lived on Normal Street when a lot of these songs were written in Tahlequah — or I was crashing on RC’s couch there part of the time. Part of the time I paid rent, so I was actually a resident,” said singer/songwriter/guitarist Evan Felker, laughing as he referred to bunking with the band’s other songwriter and bassist RC Edwards.
“But it could be applied to the state of mind that we’re in right now with just how crazy things have gotten,” he added. “It seemed fitting that it was an actual street and now we’re fixing to get on a tour bus and do more gigs than we’ve ever thought about doing and life is pretty much uprooted. … Any normalcy that we had is pretty much over with.”
The band will officially debut its third full-length album Tuesday, but the Troubadours already have a busy slate of CD release shows lined up, including Saturday at the Wormy Dog Saloon in Bricktown and Monday at the Mercury Lounge in Tulsa. The quintet — fiddler Kyle Nix, lead guitarist Ryan Engleman, drummer Gabriel Pearson, Edwards and Felker — expect to easily play 200 or more dates this year.
“It’s what we chose but it’s a pretty wild style of living,” Felker, 28, said. “But we love it. I love playing music. You know, all of us have devoted a great deal of our lives and our time to do it … and being able to enjoy what you do and make a living off it is one of the coolest things anybody can do in the world. I mean, it’s the American dream, right?”
The Troubadours have been living the dream since forming in 2007 in Stillwater, the birthplace of red dirt music. They took their name from the Indian Nation Turnpike, made their debut album, “Bossier City,” on a shoestring and hit the road. They partnered with well-known musician/producer Mike McClure and released their sophomore album “Diamonds and Gasoline” in 2009.
“He’s got a really cool style of production, he does his thing really well, and it works very well. And the last record was really, really great for us … and it was definitely the right move to make at that point of time. I can’t be happier with what that little record did,” said Felker, who gave up his job as an electrician in 2009 to focus on the band.
“We were saving up the money for ‘Diamonds and Gasoline’ doing one or two shows a week and then I’d do acoustic shows, and we were all playing only in Oklahoma then. And after we got that record out, we were playing more like four shows a week and going all over Texas and the Midwest, just significantly more shows and more traveling and more new audiences.”
The Troubadours took a different approach to “Goodbye Normal Street,” which they made with producer/engineer Wes Sharon at 115 Recording in Norman.
“We actually produced the thing ourselves, which is pretty nice when you’ve got an idea of what you want things to sound like already when the song’s written,” Felker said.
Like the album’s title, many of the songs are biographical or autobiographical. Edwards, who quit his day job as a pharmacist last year to concentrate on the band, penned “Morgan Street” about the short-lived Tahlequah bar where the group once played regular gigs. And the bittersweet military anthems “Blue Star” and “Southeastern Son” are less political statements than people stories to Felker.
“I wrote both of those songs about people that I know. They’re just character pieces for me,” he said. “The one (‘Blue Star’) is about my uncle … he was a gunnery sergeant — he just retired — in the Marines, and the other one is about some of my cousins — it’s not completely autobiographical, but it’s based on them — who joined the (National) Guard to make some extra money and wound up getting deployed. It’s not easy living in small-town Oklahoma trying to make a living if you want to stay there. You know, some places there’s not much industry, and you have to do everything you possibly can do to get by. And part of the time that maybe joining the Guard.”
With “Goodbye Norman Street,” he and his cohorts focused on capturing a “real band-playing kind of feel rather than a sort of perfect to-the-metronome kind of record.”
“The things that you hear on the radio, especially country radio, a lot of time are just really Auto-tuned and lined up perfect and it lacks any kind of a soul to it. It doesn’t really sound like real people are playing it to me. And we just wanted to give a really good representation of what we are and what we can do as a band,” he said.
“We wanted to sound like ourselves playing, and sometimes that’s easier said than done … especially in the studio because the studio’s a pretty unnatural place to be trying to get an energetic take or really get into it. You’re just in kind of a sterile room by yourself and it’s quiet … it’s not like playing a live show.”
IN CONCERT
Turnpike Troubadours CD release shows
When: 9:30 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 6 p.m.
Where: Wormy Dog Saloon, 311 E Sheridan.
Information: www.wormydog.com.
When: 7 p.m. Monday.
Where: Mercury Lounge, 1747 South Boston Ave., Tulsa.
Information: http://mercurylounge918.com.
-BAM
What to do in Oklahoma on May 3, 2012: Celebrate the release of John Fullbright’s new album at the Blue Door
Today’s featured event:
Help Oklahoma musician John Fullbright celebrate his new album “From the Ground Up” with back-to-back CD release shows at 8 p.m. today and Friday at the Blue Door, 2805 N McKinley.
Instead of trying to find a record deal for the new CD, even with an indie label, the Okemah native decided to set up his own label, Blue Dirt Records, and release “From the Ground Up” with distributor Thirty Tigers acting as label staff.
He funded the album in part through a Kickstarter.com campaign that raised more than $16,000. He recorded “From the Ground Up” at 115 Recording in Norman.
The album officially will be released on Tuesday. He will embark next week on West and East coast tours in support of the album.
For more information on the Oklahoma City release shows, go to www.bluedoorokc.com.
For more events, go to www.wimgo.com.
-BAM
Norman Music Festival 5 offering free music throughout today
Other Lives
NORMAN — Top local and national indie bands will rock Main Street when the fifth annual Norman Music Festival enters its grand finale today, with free music throughout the day and into the wee hours.
Covering the festival Friday night, The Oklahoman Assistant Entertainment Editor George Lang reports that the event is seeing bigger crowds this year. To read his story, click here.
The event will have music playing on more than a dozen local stages and include headliners Portugal. The Man on the festival’s Main Stage and Hayes Carll on its Jack Daniels stage. The Oklahoman Entertainment Editor Gene Triplett talked to both headliners as well as breakout Oklahoma band Other Lives and Ohio alternative pop-rockers Red Wanting Blue. To read his story, click here.
The festival is in downtown Norman, on Main Street in the Arts District, extending from the 300 block of E Main Street and the 100 block of W Main Street.
Along with Portugal. The Man, Other Lives (fresh off a support tour with Radiohead) and Red Wanting Blue, the Main Stage lineup includes Weekend Hustler, the Tulsa-based Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, Oklahoma City’s Modern Rock Diaries and Norman’s Rainbows Are Free and Crown Imperial.
The Norman Music Festival’s Jack Daniels Stage includes nationally known artists Carll, Alejandro Escovedo, the Giving Tree and the Possum Posse, as well as locally based artists Parker Millsap, The Damn Quails, Krystal Keith (daughter of Toby Keith), Camille Harp and John Calvin.
In addition, NMF5 boasts classical and garage stages, the Wild Prairie Family Park and the Spectacle Stage.
The Dustbowl Arts Market will be an added attraction on Saturday in the 100 block of Main Street, featuring the work of local and regional artists and handmade vendors. Photography, jewelry, prints, screen-printing, clothing, accessories and textiles will be among items for sale.
See the full NMF5 musical lineup for today after the break. For more information, go online to normanmusicfestival.com.
Interview: Randy Rogers Band ready for another helping of Tumbleweed’s Calf Fry, to release new album
Randy Rogers Band
A version of this story appears in Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Randy Rogers Band ready for another helping of Calf Fry
The Texas country-rockers will bring new music from their forthcoming album to Stillwater Friday night.
After spending the past two years “Burning the Day,” the Randy Rogers Band is igniting concert stages with new music.
“We’ve got eight albums worth of material, so there’s no way in a two-hour set we can play everything,” said Rogers, guitarist/lead vocalist for the Texas country-rockers. “We do change our set up quite often so it doesn’t get mundane and the crowds don’t get tired of the same old show … and having new songs in there in the mix, it’s a lot of fun. Not that being onstage is ever boring, but I’m proud of the fact that we change up our set every now and then. It keeps us on our toes. It keeps us better musicians, too.”
For the third straight year, the hard-touring five-piece outfit — fiddler Brady Black, guitarist Geoffrey Hill, drummer Les Lawless, bassist Jon “Chops” Richardson and Rogers — is making an April odyssey to Stillwater, where the band is the Friday night headliner for the 21st Annual Calf Fry at the Tumbleweed Dance Hall.
“It’s always a hell of a time,” Rogers said. “I think it’s probably the biggest party of the year. Seems like everybody is committed to that event, and they save up their partying energy. And it all comes out that weekend it seems. It’s pretty wild.”
“I’ve always felt welcomed by the Oklahoma crowd,” he added. “Back in the day when I was coming up and we were just a baby band, Cody Canada and (Cross Canadian) Ragweed really took me under their wing and brought me to Oklahoma, had me open shows for them, had me onstage with them, and really included me in the whole Oklahoma red dirt scene. And I’m very thankful for that because I think that I got a lot of exposure at that point and time that I wouldn’t have if Cody wouldn’t have been like that for me. So I’m very thankful for that. So I feel at home when I play Stillwater, I do. It’s a nice feeling.”
The San Marcos, Texas-based band also is experiencing nice feelings of excitement and anticipation as it readies to release its fourth major-label album. Rogers and his cohorts just finished writing and recording the as-yet-untitled fourth album, which they hope will be released later this year. For the first time they worked with Jay Joyce, who has produced projects for Eric Church, Jonathan Tyler and Jack Ingram.
“You know, we put more into this record I think than any other record we’ve ever done as far as preproduction. We learned all the songs before we got into the studio so we were prepared. It took only about eight or nine studio days to record this record, which we did that before on an album called ‘Roller Coaster,’ kind of made it all at once,” he said.
“It just kind of all spilled out of us, and not since then has that happened in the studio. So I feel very confident that we got the best snapshot of our band and where we’re at right now. We basically sat up in the studio, the five of us live and played. I mean that’s how we did it, so I’m really excited about it. I think it’s probably the best record we’ve ever done,” Rogers added.
“We had several special guests come and appear on our record, which I can’t tell you who, but it’s really big and really cool and awesome and had a great time doing that. So I’m really excited for everyone to finally hear it.”
The band has achieved some lofty goals since its breakout success with its 2008 self-titled album, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard country album chart and was named Playboy’s best country album of the year. The group made its Grand Ole Opry debut, played “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and earned two Academy of Country Music Award nominations for top vocal group.
Rogers and his bandmates added potent fuel to their hot streak with their 2010 follow-up “Burning the Day,” which bowed at No. 2 on the Billboard country album chart and No. 8 on the all-genre Billboard 200. The frontman said he has another big goal for his band’s fourth effort for Universal Music Nashville.
“Hopefully, they can find a way to get us some more radio play, you know. We’ve never even had a top 40 song. I’ve accomplished so many goals that I set for myself and for our band, and having some radio play is definitely still on that list,” Rogers said. “I know that they’re gonna love it once they hear it, and we’ll just go from there.”
He is encouraged by the radio success of fellow Texas country-rockers and Calf Fry favorites the Eli Young Band, whose ballad “Crazy Girl” was named Billboard and the Academy of Country Music’s top country song of 2011. EYB was the Thursday night Calf Fry headliner.
“I think in general country music has kind of opened its doors, or is starting to a little bit more,” Rogers said. “For years it’s been hard as a band to get on the radio, and I think nowadays because of Eli Young Band and Zac Brown Band, some doors are open. So I’m very excited about that opportunity, for sure.”
He’s also excited about sharing at least one new track with the fans at Calf Fry.
“There’s a song on the record called ‘Goodbye Lonely’ that I’m real proud of, and we’ll probably play it,” he said. “It’s all over YouTube. … I like playing new stuff and live and then seeing them pop up on YouTube. It’s a lot of fun to see how many hits it gets. You can judge like what songs suck and what songs are good kind of by that.”
Even better, reuniting with old pal Canada and his new band The Departed also is on the agenda for Friday night.
“Oh yeah, I’ll be up there. That’s the cool thing about events like this is we actually get to see each other, ‘cause we’re always running in different directions. There’ll be some camaraderie backstage,” he said.
He even plans to put the “testicle festival’s” featured menu item on his plate, though he won’t be noshing on calf fries until after his band finishes their set.
“I try not to eat hardly anything before the show ‘cause I don’t want up to be up there all full. But I’ll enjoy some afterwards, I can promise you that,” he said. “I’m not afraid.”
GOING ON
21st Annual Calf Fry
Featuring: Randy Rogers Band, Gary Allan, Cody Canada & The Departed, Wade Bowen, Corey Smith and more.
When: Friday and Saturday. Show starts at 5:30 p.m.; doors at 4 p.m.
Where: Tumbleweed Dance Hall, Lakeview and Country Club roads, Stillwater.
Information: www.calffry.com.
-BAM
Best Bets for April 27-29, 2012: Festival of the Arts, Joe Bonamassa, Red Dirt Rangers, Greg Jacobs and The Black Keys
The Red Dirt Rangers
Here are my picks for the Best Bets in entertainment happening around Oklahoma this weekend. For more options, go to www.wimgo.com.
1. Celebrate the visual, performing and culinary arts at the annual Festival of the Arts from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday in downtown Oklahoma City. Information: 270-4848 or www.artscouncilokc.com.
2. Listen to blues-rock guitarist/singer/songwriter Joe Bonamassa at 8 p.m. Sunday at Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N Walker. Information: 297-2264 or www.myticketoffice.com.
3. Hear Oklahoma red dirt musicians Greg Jacobs at 8 p.m. Friday and Red Dirt Rangers at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Blue Door, 2805 N McKinley. Information: 524-0738 or www.bluedoorokc.com.
4. TULSA — Catch The Black Keys with special guest Arctic Monkeys in concert at 8 p.m. Saturday at the BOK Center, 200 S Denver. Doors open at 7 p.m. Information: (866) 726-5287 or www.bokcenter.com.
-BAM
