Album Review: Randy Rogers Band – Burning the Day

On Burning the Day, their third major-label release, Randy Rogers Band continues to show confidence in their musicianship with this nice slice of Texas country. The five-piece band regularly performs more than 200 shows a year, and that serves them well on an album that usually centers on the open road and the often painful reasons why people explore it.

With Paul Worley as producer, Burning the Day has the sonic edge of the Lone Star State while offering enough mainstream sheen to agree with a larger audience. That style suits Randy Rogers’ weathered vocals just fine. He wrote or co-wrote eight of the eleven tracks, including the Dean Dillon co-write “Just Don’t Tell Me the Truth,” a despondent ballad of a man who’s desperate for one last stand with a fickle lover. “We both know that I’m your fool,” he growls, “Give me somethin’ I can buy into.” When he sings the punchy “I Met Lonely Tonight,” it’s clear that he’s reeling from the after effects of that affair. Its chorus is bright and shiny; the conflict involved is anything but.

To rid himself of those demons, he takes to the highway on slow-boiling songs like “Interstate” and “Damn the Rain.” And on the most traditional cut, “Missing You Is More Than I Can Do,” the urgent sound of Brady Black’s fiddle highlights the tension in Rogers’ delivery. While much of the album explores the interior life of a vagabond soul who’s rarely satisfied, current radio single “Too Late for Goodbye” turns the tables. In his gruff, near-unforgiving voice, Rogers drives the final nail into a love that’s died: “Must be strange to hear my voice saying don’t come back this time.” It sounds like he’s just as surprised.