NASHVILLE, TN. (Top40 Charts/
Rodney Atkins Official Website) - There's a message buried within the lyrics on Rodney Atkins' If You're Going Through Hell album.
Actually, there are two. The more obvious one is suggested by the visual references that bring its stories to life. Thompson's Barn, Martin's Creek, that old gray fence: All of these places in his songs are real. There's a deeper meaning, though, which reveals a lot more than this artist's home ground: Atkins simply will not record, or even sing, a song that doesn't tell some truth about his life.
"That's all I can sing about," he affirmed, speaking shortly after completing a promotional video for Target near his home. "Greg Hill, from my management company [Red Light Management], has this picture of me from a photo shoot, wearing the clothes I wear every day - the ball cap, the T-shirt. And whenever we listen for new songs, he says to me, 'Okay, this guy in the picture - would he sing this song? Will folks feel comfortable with him doing it?' That's how I choose what I sing; it comes from how I live."
This was true when Atkins, an East Tennessee native, released his Curb Records debut, Honesty, back in 2003. Someone who followed the rules of radio-friendliness might not have picked the title cut for a single. Atkins himself was dubious. Luckily, for 13 years now, he has worked closely with producer/songwriter/musician Ted Hewitt, who knew that keeping it real counted more than keeping it commercial. And so, sensing that title song "Honesty" would connect, he challenged his friend to give it another shot.
"It was a four-minute ballad and another song was already slated as the first single," Hewitt recalled. "But I believed that Rodney would come around. He's a strong person. He can be set in his ways. But I respect that. And we respect each other to the point that if one of us is passionate about a song the other isn't sure about, we try to find what it is that he feels."
"The guy that drives a truck views things differently from the guy who puts on a suit every day and runs a company," Atkins said. "So when I heard 'Honesty' I thought, 'Well, that's kind of . nice. It's so nice that it's gooey.' But Ted made me understand that it's about what people face every day. And I still get e-mails from folks in major corporations as well as truck drivers about how this song affects them."
"Honesty" made it into the Top 5, but the title cut from If You're Going Through Hell and the second single, "Watching You," both climbed to the top of the charts while the album went Gold within the first four months of its July 2006 release date. And it's no coincidence that both songs reveal even more of who Atkins is.
"It's funny," said Dave Berg, who co-wrote three of the tracks on this album. "Sometimes when we're writing, Rodney will play me a song that he's heard, something that blows him away, but he'll say that he's not interested in recording it because it's not really him. So when we started writing 'In the Middle,' I could see how it does reflect where he's at in his life right now. He is that everyday, blue-collar guy, living the songs he sings."
"I want to let people know through my music about my life, the decisions I make and the things I hold dear, like family and growing up in the South," Atkins explained. "People talk about getting around the kitchen table to eat supper. We don't do that: We eat on the front porch, which looks out onto the old tar-and-chip road that leads to our house. That's where the good road ends - the blacktop - and the gate used to be, when they had cattle on our property. We can see that road from the porch, and then across from that is another field and then the woods. At night you can look up and see all the stars."
The people with whom he shares this Eden are as important as the land itself. "When the alternator goes down, you call your neighbor," he said. "You ask if they can come over and help you work on this, and they do it. Or if they see you doing fencing, they'll pull their truck over and help you out. To me, that's the American way of life. When I listen to Alan Jackson, that's how he feels to me - like my neighbor. I want my songs to hone in on that too."
The songs on If You're Going Through Hell are snapshots taken from this world, especially the ones with his name among the writer credits: "About the South," a litany of lifestyle icons ("We believe the Book of John and we drive John Deere."); "Wasted Whiskey," an old-school jukebox lament that doesn't forget to recommend having a designated driver; and "In the Middle," which is actually about as close as a song can get to taking a picture of one man's life and homestead - it's so close to the bone that Atkins jokingly described it to co-writer Berg as "directions to our house."
"When I signed my record deal and went through the different producer situations while making my first album, I kind of forgot what brought me here and the kinds of songs that changed my life," Atkins said. "After I finished that album and went on the road, it came back to me: 'Oh, yeah, I'm singing to people, not to a bunch of record executives. This is what I love.' The music business is in Nashville, but out here it's just music."
All of that is true, but it's true as well that success will change even some of those things that a Country Music star-on-the-rise holds dear. With his schedule growing more demanding while he gears up to go on tour in April with Martina McBride and Little Big Town and 90-minute drives into Nashville for meetings or flights out of town, Atkins and his wife Tammy Jo are thinking about the unthinkable: leaving their home up on the ridge and moving closer to the city.
"Yeah, we're talking about that," he admitted. "But we're not talking about moving into town. Wherever we wind up, I've got to have some land around me, somewhere to ride four-wheelers and get out into the woods, because we're still the same folks we always were. I'm that guy who doesn't put the toilet paper on right or leaves something spilled on the counter or makes too much noise in the morning when he goes out fishing. Luckily, Tammy Jo loves me for who I am - not who I was or who I'm going to be, but in that moment, right then. So no matter where we go from here, these are the best years of my life."
