Randy Rogers Band’s ‘Homemade Tamales Live at Floore’s’ Brings Show to Stereo
Can’t make it out to see the Randy Rogers Band this week? No problem. The band is bringing their amped up, live show to a stereo near you. Homemade Tamales Live at Floore’s encompasses the experience of seeing the Texans up close and personal and comes nearly a decade after their last live album.
“I figured we needed one.; it had been 10 years,” Randy Rogers tells CMIL. “We put out a bunch of material between the last one and this one. We can’t even play all the material we have because we have six studio records or whatever. It was something that we wanted to do as we were leaving Universal Music Group – and making records for MCA and Mercury – we wanted to put our stamp on that time period we had with the label. We got to produce this one on our own, which we hadn’t gotten to do in a long time. There are some factors that lent itself to making a live record.”
And Helotes, Texas – just outside of San Antonio – was the perfect place to record it. “Floore’s is just a gorgeous venue and a great sounding audience,” Randy explains. “The audience is just singing so loudly, you can’t even hardly hear us sometimes in this recording. Instead of going back and making changes to this album, we wanted the crowd to be a part of it too, so they’re loud as anywhere in the state of Texas. We wanted to capture that.”
However, doing a live record does have its challenges. “You can’t go back and fix anything,” Randy admits. “I could go back and tune my vocals up but you’ll miss out on the 25 other microphones that are picking up everything else that’s going on live. That’s the recording. That’s what the engineer in me says. Having the crowd being that much a part of the show, makes all the difference in the world for us. It sounds cheesy, but emotionally, the way we play, the energy levels, the confidence. There’s no replacing that feeling of a live audience screaming your songs back at you. When I listen to this, I think, ‘Shit, there’s some stuff wrong with it.’ But that doesn’t bother me. I think makes it more real than anything. Being able to pull it off live, I think there’s something to be said for that.”
“This is like a greatest hits album, almost,” bandmate Geoffrey Hill adds. “It’s the songs we play every night, as well as we can play them, not a collection of brand new songs that you’ve never heard before. There are two new songs on the record, but for the most part all the live tracks are stuff you’ve heard.”
Yep, there are two new songs — the band’s current single, “Satellite” and “She’s Gonna Run” – both written by Randy and Sean McConnell (Randy’s co-writer on “In My Arms Instead”).
“That’s just me muscling my songs on the album, to be honest,” Randy says with a laugh. “Lots of the guys in the band have songs, but it is the Randy Rogers Band. All jokes aside, I can’t answer that question and say that they’re the best two songs of the bunch. There are probably a dozen songs or more a piece that all of us want to get on a record someday. It’s probably my fault.” [laughs]
The Randy Rogers Band’s Homemade Tamales Live at Floore’s is out now.
