Randy Rogers discusses career sustainability, Texas' resurgence in country's mainstream

Randy Rogers stares at the Ryman Auditorium crowd before stepping out to headline the venue.

"I don't dance around. They do," he says, laughing out loud while speaking with The Tennessean on a Friday evening. He then wipes his brow before donning a white cowboy hat. Rogers broadly waves his hand at the two levels at the sold-out venue.

Two smiling couples sip perhaps their second tall boy can of beer while hazily gazing at the stage. Then, after being implored to do so in 20 minutes by Rogers while one of his band members plays a fiddle solo, the taller man (who is also wearing a white hat, his a Resistol) will twirl his shorter female partner — they'll then embrace and start to boogie, as asked.

Fifteen years ago, at a special Opry At The Ryman event, Rogers made his debut there. Playing the Opry — at The Ryman, the program's home from 1943-1974 — is one of the most vaunted Nashville-based accomplishments of any country music career.

But Rogers is a native of San Marcos, Texas. Thus, as country music prepares for arguably its era of broadest and most significant mainstream acclaim in five decades, Rogers, whose brand of two-stepping, honky-tonking good-time party music is in an elite, world-renowned class of that country music subgenre, is worth talking to.

"I've been at it awhile. I used to manage (rising mainstream country star) Parker McCollum, and Cody Johnson was finally, after like 15 years at it, just named the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association's New Artist of the Year, right? I've been waiting to see this moment happen again for Texas since Mark Chestnutt and Clay Walker came out of Beaumont in the 1990s," says Rogers an afternoon before playing The Ryman while seated at downtown Nashville's Soho House.

The start of his mainstream country music career — and much of his touring band as well — hearkens back to the turn of the 21st century.

"Guys like Parker, Charley Crockett and Koe Wetzel getting out there is excellent. But what people don't realize about us, as Texans, is that we're not just Amarillo, Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. Our smaller cities and towns also have a full slate of barbecues, chili cook-offs, dance halls, dive bars, fairs, festivals, honky tonks and rodeos where we learn how to be complete entertainers. Plus, we also all, because they're from where we're from, can aspire to be like [legendary singer-songwriter] Robert Earl Keen, George Strait or Willie Nelson, too."

The divide between Strait's nearly 70 No. 1 hits and Nelson being known as a marijuana-adoring outlaw rancher with a significant outpost on the genre's fringe creates the space between that Rogers and his band have occupied for two decades.

Also, time spent around the likes of Cross Canadian Ragweed, Pat Green, Billy Joe Shaver and Jerry Jeff Walker has imbued the work Rogers does onstage as a lead singer with a level of reserved confidence only earned by feeling assured of a mastery of the craft of conveying the freedom, pride and power that country music uniquely inspires.

Rogers makes a note to discuss why entire crowds of empowered country music fans wanting to dance troubles how many venues outside of the state — The Ryman included — are set up for events. It's a minor point, but perhaps one that notes the peculiar issue that Texas artists have had problems with consistently breaking nationwide, outside of fits and starts every two decades.

Acts like Brooks and Dunn, Strait and Randy Travis were able to emerge during and at the tail end of the "Urban Cowboy" era. As discotheques expanded and imploded as an industry as disco's influence waned, large midwestern, southern and western cities still equipped with dance floors could blend dance-friendly, radio-ready pop-country with a culture of people for whom dancing and staged entertainment were always linked. Unfortunately, in some rural and urban areas, this was not, and still is not, the case.

"We'll get booked to play a show at a casino, where they'll sell a few rows of more expensive up-front seating. Then there's the back half of a 10,000-person capacity space that's more friendly to dancing," says Rogers.

"The back half of the venue? They're partying their a** off. Up front? Those 250 people who paid more money for the 'better' experience? When the spirit moves them to dance, it never fails, they get mad because security guards will shut them down. They're left to leave their seats [en-masse], go right up next to the barricade and start their own dance floor.

"Ideally, my fans come for a show and then go to a dance," Rogers adds.

"What they don't tell you about writing love songs is that you can't do it until you know what love means," says Rogers about his current success with new material.

Rogers has been married for a decade. A decade before marriage, he charted seven songs in seven years about heartbreak. None of those cracked the top ten.

Currently, he's again charted at the top of Texas' competitive regional country radio charts, plus, two decades into the game, he's still roughly at a clip of playing a live show every other day.

On Rogers' October 2022-released album "Homecoming," he returns to the root of his sound and style. Love songs, possibly made better than ever before, are a part of that formula.

One listen to how a song like the album's fiddle and electric-guitar-led "Nothing But Love Songs" highlights being heartbroken and hearing "nothing but love songs" on the radio illustrates that Rogers is finally at a place where he's able to best follow his own advice about how love songs are crafted.

Moreover, he's aided by rejoining critically-acclaimed players and writers like Jim Beavers, Radney Foster and Jon Randall for his work.

He notes that all the creatives named are "complete stars" who "actually, really know me." Their impassioned talents expand well from the studio and stage into their work with him on the record. In addition, working with them inspires Rogers' never-ending desire to improve his art.

When asked to summarize what has allowed the career of both he and his longtime bandmates to sustain the longevity of a storied run, Rogers gets wistful while making the following statement.

"As many people dance to my music and fall in love with it, I have songs that are part of people's love stories, and breakups, too. So when I look out and see a room of people dancing to my music, it's not that they're not paying attention to me; I'm just using lines of rhymes, my talent and the truth to help them have some of the most defining times of their lives."