Critical Voices: Rodney Atkins, Take a Back Road

Since his debut album Honesty in 2003, Rodney Atkins has been steadily gaining popularity, with several of his singles topping the Billboard Country charts. Like many country singers coming out of Nashville in the early 2000s, Atkins fell victim to the transition of country music into a more mainstream genre manufactured for a wider range of audiences. His new album Take a Back Road, as its title implies, veers away from this trend and recklessly hurtles into the backwoods of home-grown traditional country laced with a hint of rock ‘n’ roll.
The title track begins the album with twanging guitar riffs followed by lyrics that pair nostalgia with contemporary day-to-day activities. Atkins’s heavily accented voice soon transforms the song into an upbeat summer tune filled with wide, open fields, romance in a rusty pickup, and self-discovery in nature. These topics act as a springboard to launch the album onto an inexorable country path that lasts for the duration of Take a Back Road.
From “Farmer’s Daughter” to the comedic, harmonica-driven “Family,” the album speaks of southern life as only true country can. Aside from the occasional southern rock interlude, driving guitar lines and complex drum set beats give way to surprising simplicity and a heavy emphasis on the meaning piled into the lyrics of each track. Ostensibly unedited rhymes also add to this picture of a simple man concerned with weaving the moral fibers associated with father-son interaction appearing in “He’s Mine,” supporting the rebellious romantic escapades of “Cabin in the Woods,” and issuing well-meaning advice on life in “The Corner.”
Fans of If You’re Going Through Hell and It’s America will find these issues to be familiar, but the newfound simplicity and emphasized southern drawl may be a turn-off for mainstream listeners. Take a Back Road, though, was not designed with these average country consumers in mind. Instead, Rodney Atkins aims to return the roots of the southern tradition of making comments on life that can resonate with every American, but are only truly understood by those who value the art of country music.