Nashville record producer Frank Rogers talks about making yet another country hit

~ Wylie Bell

Nine-year-old Manny Rogers likes being the son of a famous Nashville record producer because you get to hear songs before anyone else does and help Dad decide what’s good and what’s not.
Not that Dad needs any help. Frank Rogers, a native of Florence, has produced 24 No. 1 country hits, with his 25th topping the Billboard Hot Country Songs last week.
“Alright” is the third consecutive single released off of Darius Rucker’s debut country album that Rogers produced to make it to the No. 1 spot on the country music charts.
Rogers and Rucker co-wrote the song, which Rogers describes as a “summertime, sing-along, feel good song.”
The song, however, was written in two segments several months apart because Rucker developed a staph infection in his knee after the initial song writing session and had to go to the hospital.
They two finished the song four months later in Charleston, but not without incident.
“We’d just finished the song up, and we heard this crash,” Rogers said. “There was a neighbor girl who was over visiting, and she’d pulled this aquarium down on her face and sliced her nose, and she had to go the hospital.
“So we had two major hospital trips in the middle of that song, but we kept saying, ‘Everything’s going to be alright,’” Rogers said.
Rogers co-wrote seven of the songs on Rucker’s debut country music album, “Learn to Live,” and expects two more singles to be released to radio. But which ones?
“You’ll just have to wait and see,” Rogers said last week when he and his two children, Manny and Ella, were home visiting his parents, Buzz and Rae Rogers of Florence.

The Gift of Music
Rogers started playing guitar and writing songs when he was 12. Growing up in Sumter, he performed in several bands around the area and was a member of the high school choir.
At age 17, he wrote a heartfelt song after Hurricane Hugo left its path of destruction through South Carolina. His father took him to a recording studio in McBee to have a professional cut of the song made. When the producer asked for a “B” side song, the younger Rogers sat down at the piano and proceeded to play a ballad.
“I was shocked at how melodic the song was,” Buzz said. “The studio owner and I were both impressed with the quality of the song from a high school student, and he said that he had never seen anyone that young so at ease in the studio recoding process. He remarked that he had recorded a lot of great singers with a lot of experience singing in public, but they would freeze up once in the studio and often had a difficult time getting a good cut.”
That experience in the studio stuck with him, Buzz said. He himself is a lifelong music man, having played guitar in bands throughout his youth and still jams in his home studio with his sons and grandson.

Nashville-bound
In Rogers’ senoir year of high school, they learned about Nashville’s Belmont University and its prestigious music business program.
“He already had a roommate at the College of Charleston; we’d even paid a deposit on tuition,” Buzz said, but he knew that Belmont was where his gifted son needed to be.
Rogers met Brad Paisley at Belmont, and the two’s gradual success in the music business is tightly interwined. Rogers has produced all eight of Paisley’s albums and has been a co-writer of many of his songs, including Paisley’s smash hit, “I’m Gonna Miss Her (The Fishin’ Song), as well as “Who Needs Pictures” and “Me Neither.”
Rogers has produced four of Darryl Worley’s albums, all three of Josh Turner’s, as well as Trace Adkin’s album, “Dangerous Man,” on which Rogers wrote the song “Swing,” which can be heard in all Major League Baseball stadiums across America. He has had other songs recorded by Montgomery Gentry, Kenny Rogers, Julie Roberts, Chris Cagle and Neal McCoy.
His discography goes on and on — much like his honors in the music industry: 15 Country Music Awards nominations (his first two coming at the young age of 25) and Academy of Country Music awards for Album of the Year, Vocal Event of the Year and Single of the Year. For Paisley’s album, “Time Well Wasted,” Rogers received Academy of Country Music’s Album of the Year as well as Country Music Association’s Album of the Year.

The Golden Touch
Like King Midas, everything Rogers seems to put a hand on turns to gold (or platinum), which is why the demo CDs pour in from aspiring country music artists.
“Everyone’s got a CD in their pocket in Nashville. It’s the Nashville handshake,” Rogers said.
Buzz said he has stacks of CDs that get dropped off with him here in Florence from artists looking for that “in” with Rogers, who is co-owner of Sea Gayle Music in Nashville.
Even young Manny gets CDs in the mail with a message that says “give this to your dad.”
“I listen to them first. They’re usually not that good,” Manny said.

Stamp of Approval
The Carter Twins is a new band that Rogers is presently working with in the studio. They already have Manny’s vote for best new act.
“I like them because we play football together, we’ll play basketball, we’ll just play around together.”
If only winning over all fans was so easy ...

The Road to Fame
In 1990, Frank Rogers moved to Nashville to attend Belmont University. In 1992, while finishing college, he started working part-time for EMI Music Publishing. In addition to EMI and school, Rogers worked as a freelance engineer in many studios and continued to write songs. He graduated from Belmont in December 1994 and started working for EMI Nashville Productions full-time Feb. 1, 1995. He signed co-publishing and production deals with EMI in 1996.
Rogers became vice president of EMI Nashville Productions and in 1999 opened Sea Gayle Music (a joint venture publishing company with EMI) with Brad Paisley and Chris DuBois, where he is a writer as well. Sea Gayle music has had more than 200 cuts and 20 No. 1 songs in its first nine years of existence. In his few years as a hit-maker, Rogers has had 15 Country Music Association award nominations. In 2005, after years of award nominations from the Academy of Country Music, the awards for Album of the Year and Vocal Event of the Year proudly sit on Rogers’ mantle. Rogers is revered by his peers as a hands-on producer, as he is known for playing electric, acoustic and baritone guitars, as well as banjo and keyboards on many of his records.