Randy Rogers Band - Just a Matter of Time
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CD Details
Artist: Randy Rogers BandEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-09-12
Music Label: Mercury Nashville
Soundtracks:
- Better Off Wrong
- Kiss Me In The Dark
- One More Goodbye
- Just A Matter Of Time
- You Could've Left Me
- You Could Change My Mind
- Before I Believe It's True
- You Start Over Your Way
- If Anyone Asks
- You Don't Know Me
- If I Told You The Truth
- Whiskey's Got A Hold On Me
Music reviews of Just a Matter of Time
Music Review: Randy Rogers is dead, long live Radney Foster Junior
Rating: 1 Stars
Let's get a few things straight. I am a Randy Rogers fan. In fact, a BIG Randy Rogers fan. I was also, at one time, a huge Radney Foster fan, even going so far as to proclaim his albums "See What You Want To See" and "Another Way To Go" (as well as "Texas in 1880" with Pat Green) as some of the best country music ever made. That's a statement I don't make lightly, and I stand by it. I would also include Randy Rogers' albums in that same company. Now before you go all half-cocked telling me that I shouldn't compare an artist's previous work to their new stuff, and that I need to get with the program, let me say that I normally would agree with you. I made every effort to get into "Just A Matter of Time" on its own terms. But the problem here is that "Just A Matter of Time" isn't a Randy Rogers album at all. It isn't even a Randy Rogers BAND album. It is, in fact, a cruel and embarrassing force-feed of everything that Radney Foster wants Randy Rogers to be, right down to vocal inflections, cheesy choruses, and some of the worst and most cliched lyrics imaginable. It is an outright shame that this album should have ever seen the light of day, and I have an awful feeling that we may never see the potential Randy Rogers once had as one of the brightest stars in Texas country.
This isn't the first time a producer has wreaked havoc on an artist's sound, drowning it in their own vision so much that the artist himself becomes a parrot of the producer's ideas and sound. Listening to some of Nickel Creek's albums, for example, you hear so much of Alison Krauss' style and influence that Nickel Creek themselves almost disappear. This is the case with "Just A Matter of Time" in a major, major way. There is so much evidence of Radney Foster's recent love-affair with bland, schmaltzy contemporary adult-pop cheese that there isn't really anything specifically Randy Rogers about the album at all.
The song that will no doubt be singled out as evidence of this trend is "Kiss Me In The Dark", which is the absolute worst song in Randy Rogers' entire career, and for reasons that may have very little to do with him. I defy anyone to listen to the vocal parts and the bridge and tell me that you're not listening to something from a Radney Foster album. It almost sounds like Rogers is consciously trying to IMITATE Radney Foster's style. In fact, when Rogers isn't singing, I can almost see Foster sitting there salivating in the control booth to get on the mike. And how about the discouraging similarity between "You Could've Left Me" and Foster's "Tired Of Pretending"? Then there's the title track, a song that sounds peeled from Foster's catalog of oversentimentalized acoustic balladeering. By the time we get to "You Don't Know Me", the closest approximation of anything Randy Rogers-like on the album, you can almost sense that Foster would've vetoed the placement of this song on the album at all, instead opting for a (possibly his own) sapply love ballad in its place. Even when these guys act like they're kicking out the jams, such as with "You Could Change My Mind", they sound uninspired and bland, like a third-rate battle-of-the-bands contestant at the Potter County Fair. Such a shame.
And to read these lyrics is to turn red with embarrassment. Let's just say that the greater problem with Foster's influence on Rogers when it comes to lyrics lies in an album called "This World We Live In" which came out last year, and demonstrated a massive and sad step backward for Radney Foster's songwriting. Every single lyric on that album is sickly sweet and cliched, like an explosion in a Hallmark Card factory, right down to the meaningless album title. Well, the same is true for Roger's latest, and it's obvious who's to blame. The titles of the songs, the album title, the trite choruses, everything is almost interchangeably bland and silly. It doesn't even matter what song these cliches come from, because they could be from any one of them: "girl, we don't even have to pretend"; "why can't I make up my mind"; "would you steal my heart again and set me free"; "hit me with your heart"; "you're gonna see it your way, I'm gonna see it mine"; and my absolute favorite, "till the morning light". Folks, to hear a guy who once brought me to TEARS with his songs "Can't Slow Down" and "They Call It The Hill Country" reduced to singing stuff like this makes me so disappointed that it's a wonder I can even restrain myself from sending the damn thing back.
What a sad, disappointing tragedy this album is. Some folks are gonna call it a sellout, that's fine. Some people are gonna LOVE it, and that's okay too, since he deserves success, and I'm happy for him. But as for me, you can count me out. It was bad enough seeing Radney Foster disintegrate into the Barry Manilow of Texas country last year, but now he has to take Randy Rogers with him, and I ain't liking it. Not one bit.
Description of Just a Matter of Time
"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.?"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."
"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."
On this Texas group's first major-label release, which debuted in the Top Ten of the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, frontman Rogers and Americana star Randy Foster reprise the songwriting strength that marked the band's last album, Rollercoaster. But here, Foster--who again handles producer's duties--takes the quartet in a different direction, particularly on "Kiss Me in the Dark," a tune he cowrote with former hitmaker George Ducas. It's a sexy, radio-friendly song of skin-and-sheets surrender, and like several other efforts on Just a Matter of Time, delivers a libidinous afterglow. What it doesn't do is keep enough of the band's essential renegade character at its core, despite a smattering of Southern rock underpinnings. While Rogers is an affecting lead singer, and his wounded baritone excels at conveying the heat of obsession and fevered longing, in the end this all comes off reminiscent of a Firefall album from the late '70s--a bit too mellow, too AC pop, and too unsure of what it really wants to be, except successful. --Alanna Nash
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