Robin Rogers

Back In The Fire

Blind Pig Records 

By Stephanie Schorow

“Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans, “John Lennon once famously sung. The raucous song “The Plan” from blues queen Robin Rogers’ exhilarating new album, Back In The Fire, reverberates with a similar sense of life’s paradoxes and our tenuous grasp on joy. Rogers’ honey-whiskey voice (with two parts whiskey to one part honey) shears right through lyrics declaring, “I couldn’t feel much better, even if I tried.” The final refrain of “You know that everything is going as planned “gets a sendoff wail of raw energy. 

Rogers doesn’t just own the songs in Back InThe Fire, she possesses them. She doesn’t just plumb their depths; she tears into them like a wolf on a hunt.

Rogers belongs to a certain cadre of singers. Like Janice, like Judy, like Billie, she holds nothing back – she pours her soul, heart and guts into her singing, right to the point where the power verges on the painful, her fervor compensating for any lapses in technique. You want to whoop and holler at her energy and you want to hug her like you would a good girlfriend who is pushing herself maybe just a bit too hard.

Back InThe Fire follows Rogers’ first studio album for Blind Pig Records, Treat Me Right, which was released in 2008. Back InThe Fire has already reached number one on the Blues Chart of the Roots Music Report. (The chart position, compiled from radio station airplay reports, means it was the most played record at blues radio that week). Like her previous albums, the new release is a collaboration with her husband Tony Rogers; the pair share songwriting credits on most of the cuts, with Tony on guitar and Robin on harp.

Beginning with a hard-ass kiss off to a bad lover, in “Baby Bye-Bye” Rogers takes control of the material. She praises the virtues of keeping a long-term relationship in the rollicking “Second Time Around,” and laments the personal temptations that ruin such relationships in “I Know I Done Wrong.”  Keeping pace is the tight band with Kerry Brooks on acoustic and electric bass, Jim Brock, drums and percussion (he also produced the album), Mark Stallings, piano and organ, Jon Thornton, trumpet and Tim Gordon, sax.

Rogers revs up the pathos with a Big Maybelle song, “Ocean of Tears,” but makes its plea for salvation convincing not cloying.  The haunting, country-infused “Don’t Walk Away, Run,” written by Chuck Glass, is an antidote to songs that praise a woman for standing by their man no matter what. Here Robin gives us the truth: no love is worth sticking with an abusive partner. A jaunty cover of Irma Thomas’ “Hittin’ on Nothin’” with its funky keyboard action is balanced by a more languid take on the Little Willie John classic “Need Your Love So Bad,” spiced up with a mean guitar solo by Bob Margolin.

But it’s the Robin and Tony Rogers songs that drive arrows into your heart. “You Don’t Know” is a poignant description of daily despair, a kind of blues tribute to depression that becomes depression for depression’s sake. “Why do you think something’s wrong with me when I just want to be alone,” she says in a lyric many of us have shouted to well-meaning friends.

If there’s any fault to the album is that Rogers keeps the dial ratcheted up to 100 with every cut, like a band that just can’t quite settle into a slow song to let folks catch their breath.  Still, you can’t really fault the intensity, not when you understand what’s driving it.

You don’t need the liner notes to tell you Robin has lived just about every one of these songs. You can hear it in every note of pain, every note of gratitude for the chance to let music ease that pain.

A runaway teenager, Rogers hit the road at a young age; she turned to alcohol and drugs and, more fortunately, to music to cope.  Rogers finally got herself clean and sober in 1989. Settling in North Carolina, Robin and Tony began performing and writing songs together. Recognition has followed, hitting a high point in 2009 when Rogers Received a Blues Blast Award for "Best Female Artist,” and a Blues Music  Award nomination as "Contemporary Blues Female Artist of the Year” for Treat Me Right.

More honors are sure to follow for Back InThe Fire, but life took a hard turn for Robin. She has Hepatitis Type C; this condition attacked her liver and has caused multiple complications. Earlier this year, a CT scan prior to a scheduled surgery revealed a cancerous tumor on her liver. The tumor is untreatable given the condition of her liver. Currently she is in hospice.

Those are hard facts and it is hard to keep those facts out of your mind while listening to Back InThe Fire. Not everything goes according to plan, and blues artists like Robin Rogers can teach us to treat each day like a precious gift.

Editor’s Note: A number of benefits have been held to assist Robin and Tony with massive medical bills, as they have no health insurance. There is a Facebook Page devoted to the benefits and fundraising.

Stephanie Schorow is a Boston-based freelance writer and book author. Her web site is www.stephanieschorow.com