Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs LP (Sophomore Lounge, 2025)
"Kentucky singer, songwriter and poet, Grace Rogers, comes from a family of old time, traditional and string band musicians. Her great grandpa Charlie Rogers played guitar in the Kentucky String Ticklers, recorded on the Gennett Record Label in Richmond Indiana during the Great Depression. Grace, herself, has been playing solo shows and traditional music for around ten years. But on “Mad Dogs” her debut studio album, defying Pete Seeger and his vengeful axe, Rogers has ventured beyond the music she cut her teeth on. Armed with a mid-metal Ibanez S Classic electric guitar that her musician father bought for her on Facebook Marketplace and plugged straight into an amp with no pedals (cause she doesn’t have any), Rogers throws down with the help of a group of skillful, kind-hearted musician friends: Ian Gordon (Grandma’s Boys, Couch Cadet, Family Curse) on electric guitar, Chris Cupp (Ellie Ruth, Restless Leg String Band) on bass and cello, and Fiona Palensky (Eric Slick, Lindsay Lou, Turbonut) on drums and vocal harmonies.
Drawing nourishment from the deep roots of her home place in Bath County and watered by the freak waters of Louisville, Rogers has crafted eight original tracks that hum like hymns and drive like rain. Her lyrics are restless, anxious, haunting and hopeful. Steely and resolute. Observing with a poet’s eye, Rogers knows that in the time it takes to tune a banjo, lies a space to tell a story, a story about the places and the people who shaped your being. With a light and loving touch, she sings about the characters of her childhood: her Uncle Brett, savant hillbilly shut-in walking the woods and decorating the trees, Magoffin County fiddler Peachy Howard and Rogers’ honky-tonk piano player Aunt Zone from Hungry Holler, virtuosic fiddler Buddy Thomas, on the album’s cover (painted by fellow Bath County native Ceirra Evans), whose vivid story telling about rabid dog infestation inspired many of the songs. She weaves these stories together with themes and struggles of her own time and place, singing with a breathy and piercing voice, backed by jangly guitars, steady beats, and plaintiff strings weaving in and out.
The album was recorded by Jim Marlowe at End of an Ear (Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, Joan Shelley, Young Widows) in Louisville, KY, and mixed and mastered by Carl Saff at Saff Mastering. Grace Rogers’ previously released a cassette EP, “Cowpocalypse” on the Obsolete Staircase label.
Praying for our lost souls in a time when our bodies are filled with microplastics and our minds filled with memes, Grace Rogers sings:
when I am gone what will they find at the bottom of my well
but all of the songs it took to get me through this hell.” - Leigh Viner