Bonnie Bishop was back in Texas briefly last week as she was invited to play the Inaugural Ball for the Governor of Texas, on the bill along with the Eli Young Band, Clay Walker, and Pat Green. So I found myself at the Palmer Center in Austin a week ago Tuesday. Bonnie and the band rocked it hard to open the night's entertainment. Yeah! And you just never know who you are going to run into backstage at one of these gala events. There was Kevin Fowler, and then Randy Rogers. I watched both of them and their beautiful wives pose for the photo op with Governor Rick Perry. Then Randy and I were chatting. Said he, "Hey are you ever going to put my video up? Did you even record it?" "Yeah," I said, "It is coming this week." And then I told him about how many hits the Cody Canada & The Departed (with Seth James) video had gotten already. He said, "Oh yeah??" in such a way, that I knew it was a throw down for Texas-Red Dirt fans everywhere. So here we are with a friendly competition! Which video will grow faster? Now you have to realize that the CC&TD went up on Music Fog on January 7th, so it has an unfair head start. But Randy and band just played the Tonight Show with Jay Leno on January 14th, and when something like that happens, we Music Foggers have watched our video views go crazy from the Google and YouTube searches that follow. That's big time stuff.

None of that surprises me at all. Randy Rogers and the band just keep doing remarkable things. The new album Burning the Day (GREAT title!) came out in August of 2010, and is their 6th studio album. Randy told us about a magical afternoon with Bruce Springsteen they recently had---talking music with The Boss for an hour during soundcheck. If their latest single "Steal You Away" sounds familiar, that's because there is a version of it on the new Country Strong soundtrack, by the songwriters The Mulch Brothers and Jeff Middleton. There is another song that lives on the compilation When They Come Back, an album to benefit our troops. Who says good guys have to finish last. I had a chat with Randy a year ago Labor Day, at the Red Dirt Roundup in Ft. Worth. He said, "You have to believe in yourself." And in that is a lesson to us all, that everything really is possible. We are so proud of you guys!

- Jessie Scott