Randy Rogers looks back 20 years after his band's breakout country album 'Rollercoaster'

Twenty years ago, Texas-based country favorite Randy Rogers and his eponymously named band released their album "Rollercoaster." Since then, everything and nothing has changed for the act.

Aug. 23 marked the re-release of their Radney Foster-produced, star-making moment.

Maintaining their core while redoubling their efforts to maintain relevancy in the Lone Star State and elsewhere — as well as the growth of potential mainstream country stars from the state — are the roots of what's allowed for their success.

Impressively, Rogers, Brady Black, Geoffrey Hill, Les Lawless, Jon Richardson and Todd Stewart are still together as an act.

"Keeping it on the rails and staying together hasn't happened without embracing the excitement and overcoming the fear, mistakes and uncertainty (apparent in that moment)," Rogers told The Tennessean two weeks before the album's re-release.

Iconic roots spawn success

In 2004, Rogers was only five years removed from following the massive footsteps associated with the performance and songwriting communities birthed via the then-Kent Finlay co-owned Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos, Texas.

In 1975, Finlay and his business partner, San Marcos Daily Record writer Jim Cunningham, leased the building and redeveloped it as a honky-tonk meant to mimic the early '70s blues, folk and outlaw country scene that acts like Guy Clark and Townes Van Zandt were frequenting between Austin, Dripping Springs and Luckenbach, Texas.

Within a decade, George Strait and Stevie Ray Vaughan were drawn to the venue. And in the decade that followed that, creatives like songwriter Bruce Robison ("Angry All the Time" for Tim McGraw and "Traveling Soldier" for the Chicks in 2002) and singer-songwriter Todd Snider (2007 Americana Honors and Awards Artist of the Year nominee) had cut their teeth at the venue.

Rogers followed in that lineage. In 2017, he purchased the venue from Kent's children, Jenni, Sterling and HalleyAnna Finlay.

A half-decade of playing in venues sized somewhere between Cheatham's 500-person capacity and iconic, 6,000-person rooms like Fort Worth's Billy Bob's Texas, 250 miles away from San Marcos, left the Randy Rogers Band, more often than not, driving home in a 1988 Chevrolet Suburban after barely breaking even on most nights.

Still, their live touring and two independent albums had piqued the interest of Foster, a Texas-born and Nashville-based artist and producer.

Foster a critically acclaimed creator, was five albums into a two-decade-long mainstream country career at the time that had yielded "Nobody Wins" as a Top 10 single in 1993. By 2002, "A Real Fine Place to Start" (which later became a No. 1 single for Sara Evans) had appeared on his album "Are You Ready for the Big Show?"

The band was afforded four days with Foster to complete their recording of a set of songs they'd been playing at a series of live shows growing in renown.

"Songs nobody had heard before were becoming regionally popular," Rogers recalls.

"Our fans were anticipating ('Rollercoaster') — 20 years later, songs that became loved all over the world when people were burning and stealing CDs are finally available on vinyl." says Rogers, laughing.

Magical pandemonium

In 2004, the act was part of a community groups like Oklahoma-based Cross Canadian Ragweed and San Antonio's Pat Green — Midwestern-to-Western stars appearing to be on the verge of making waves in country's mainstream.

Of note, "This Time Around" from "Rollercoaster" was written by Cross Canadian Ragweed's lead singer, Cody Canada.

"For a generation, acts from Oklahoma and Texas have maintained a camaraderie-driven community of acts large and small, all attempting to survive and grow daily," Rogers says. "We treat each other like a family, trying to create a lifelong legacy instead of peers in competition with each other."

Live shows three months after the release of "Rollercoaster" were described by onlookers like this:

"Brady Black's blistering and frenetic fiddle playing stole the spotlight, but the engine of Johnny Richardson and Les Lawless kept the train on tracks while Geoffrey Hill riffed and grinned his heart out. At the forefront was Rogers singing the songs he wrote with his now standard gravel-soaked gravitas. It was a true moment in time. By the time they launched into 'Down and Out,' pandemonium was in the crowd. Jostling, shouting, visible steam. Power stick guy, the rodeo clown guys, shrieking college girls. Trucker caps and cowboy hats bobbing in rhythm together."

Alongside the bubbling under-the-radar radio success of "Tonight's Not the Night (for Goodbye)" and "Down and Out," reports of responses like what's described above piqued the interest of Kenny Chesney, who cut the album's track "Somebody Take Me Home" on his 2005 album "The Road and the Radio."

"Dierks Bentley, Kenny (Chesney), all of the breakthrough stars of that era were fans of acts like (fellow Texan) Miranda Lambert and I," Rogers recalls. "Dierks and I must've played 100 shows together back then. Dierks loved (the 'Rollercoaster' track) 'This Time Around,' Kenny loved and then recorded 'Somebody Take Me Home,' which is not only my favorite song on the album, but the first song Radney and I wrote together.

"It was a magical time. Taking this album from dancehalls to arenas showcased how we developed our good songs and tight band work into a uniquely fun experience where personal and sincere songs (inspire crazy parties)."

The decades that followed

Following the success of "Rollercoaster," Foster became a mentor to Rogers and the band, producing their albums through 2008.

The artist served as an essential teacher about the rigors of the music industry, developing their craft as songwriters and musicians, and how to earn trust via being an earnest and honest creative ally and champion.

Spurred on by the album's success, the Randy Rogers Band achieved six Top 10 Billboard country albums in a decade.

"When radio's playing your hits and live crowds of 20,000 people is singing the choruses, you feel affirmed," Rogers says.

The spirit that had broken through into country's mainstream via songs best enjoyed during late nights in Days Inn parking lots, at dimly-lit Tex-Mex restaurants, or on two-stepping dance floors revealed itself not so much as a continuing series of barnstorming gigs, but rather as what Rogersr, who graduated from Texas State University as a mass communications major, had successfully avoided in his first four years post-college:

"It became a job," jokes Rogers.

However, it's one that he's had the luxury of holding with the same five people for over two decades and 15 live and studio albums.

Thus, Rogers' comments in a Lone Star Music Magazine interview in 2005 hold up 20 years later.

"I found these guys who are all so much more talented than I am at what I do, and things just took off for all of us at the same time with no real leader. It was sort of a democracy that just pushed forward. From the first few rehearsals, it was like we all had that everything's-going-to-be-OK feeling, almost like when you find the person you know you're going to marry. We just all feel like we're going to make good records together, and we're going to take this as far as we can. It's not by choice — it just happened."

In 2024, Rogers offers a reflection highlighting how his work-to-date will inspire what he creates in the future.

"'Rollercoaster' remains viable at a time when country music is as popular as it has ever been. It's filled with essential, influential songs that will now stand the test of time."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Randy Rogers Band re-releases breakout album 'Rollercoaster'