Somebody Take Me Home

Randy Rogers of the Randy Rogers Band co-wrote this song with singer/songwriter Radney Foster. "It's the first song we wrote together," Foster told us. "We wrote it in a hotel room, and Randy had already written that chorus. And, actually, a lot later, when we got through writing it, he told me how much he hated the line, 'I hate this haunted bed, so down here's where I sleep.' He just couldn't get past the haunted bed. 'What the hell's the haunted bed?' He thought it was dreadful. And he said he realized about halfway through playing it for people that everybody was like, 'Wow, what a great line: I hate that haunted bed, so down here's where I sleep.' So he said, 'I don't know everything.' And I said, 'Well, I don't either. It could have been a lousy line, you could have been right.' But it was funny just because it just taught him. I said, 'Well, that's a good lesson in life for anybody.'"

Recording this song proved to be a challenge of a different sort. According to Foster, the song that he had in mind to be a mid-tempo ballad had mutated into a Punk music piece. The band had worked up an entire arrangement for it, and Radney says, "The Sex Pistols couldn't have played it any better."

Since this was the first song they'd recorded, Radney didn't want to put a damper on the excitement, so he toed the line very gingerly, diplomatically saying, "Let's slow it down a little bit." And when it was still too fast, he'd say, "Still a little too fast. Let's slow it down just a little bit more, couple more clicks." "Finally," says Foster, "I was like, 'Guys, I'm not sure this is working. We can go back to this, but can we try this one other way?' I finally got the drummer and the bass player on my side, and I was like, 'Think about U2 records, think about being spooky instead of being speedy.' And they said, 'Oh, we get it.' And when we got through it, everybody in the band loved it - except Randy. He hated it. He was so hacked off at me that he didn't talk to me for the rest of the day. And this was the first day we were making the record, so I thought, Okay, this is gonna be interesting."

The next day Foster asked him to listen to it again, and said, "If you still hate that song on the last day that we're recording, we'll do it your way. Just listen to it again for 3 or 4 days. Live with it." And it worked out. On the third day Rogers told Foster, "'It's my favorite track. I love what we did. I'm totally convinced. I was blown away by it.'" "And," says Foster, "I'm glad, because it would have a lousy speed metal song." (Check out our full interview with Radney Foster.)