Just when everyone was ready to be outside enjoying summertime without all the COVID constraints, Canadian country singer songwriter Rod Black served up the perfect song for a summer soundtrack. His latest release “Laketown,” co-written with Jeff Johnson, hit the air waves at the unofficial beginning of summer, Memorial Day Weekend. The song evokes all the ingredients for an escape from a summer heat wave—pink flamingos, margaritas, and singing along to cover bands.
Ironically, the song idea developed back in the February cold when the two friends were just sitting around. He says Johnson came up with a cool guitar riff. “We looked at each other and said, ‘Let’s write a summertime song.’”
“Laketown” is Black’s second 2021 release, a chance to show his fun side, following “Barely Gettin’ By” that came out at the beginning of the year. That single had more serious message—something he doesn’t shy away from.
Early this year, he began a vlog series called “Side of the Road.” He says he has always thrived on sharing his stories with the world in his music. One day, driving around in his truck, he was thinking back to conversations with his dad.
“Sometimes he would say, ‘Okay, it’s time to get serious’ and pull off to the side of the road. It didn’t matter what we had planned that day. We were going to have that heart-to-heart. I knew it was going to be a serious conversation,” says Black.
The brief messages of “Side of the Road,” delivered from inside his truck, are intended to inspire listeners. He said, “I never thought this was going to be a big MTV kind of thing. But we’re going through a lot in the world right now—not just COVID—and I think it’s important to let people know we’re on the same playing field, no matter the color of your skin or how you were brought up.” As he shares his own stories, he says he wants to encourage people to be good to each other and to know that good things will usually happen.
Rod Black has plenty of stories to tell, and since he’s lived all over the States, people in Nashville often asked if he was from Texas. He grown up in a rodeo family, the source of many of those stories, with a father he says resembles Kevin Costner’s character on Yellowstone. His father, a chuck wagon racer, influenced him in other ways.
Black landed his first role in a Christmas play at six years old. “I was the guy doing all the backgrounds because my dad was a guitar player, and my mama liked to sing. She was a little shy to go professional, but she could really sing.” Behind the scenes during rehearsals, he sang along to the lead role, so when the lead actor got sick, the teacher called his parents and told them, “He knows all the songs.” Finding himself in front of a gymnasium full of family and friends, he was hooked right away.
“I always thought myself to be an old soul,” said Black. “By thirteen, I had already put a band together.” His dad told him he needed to learn to play a guitar and write songs, but at the time, Rod said, he just wanted to sing.
Before long he and a friend were writing and playing together. He said, “I had just sold my ‘69 Mustang to help buy PA gear and build a studio. Here I was thinking everything was going great, and then he got a record deal. I said, ‘Go do that. You need to focus on that. I’ll be fine.’”
His friend was concerned that Rod didn’t know how to play a guitar, but he decide he would teach himself. The first day, he spent at least eight or nine hours learning. “I probably drove my sister up the wall, since we were sharing a house then,” he said.
“I wrote my first song. It wasn’t anything special or anything. I didn’t even know what I was doing really, but after a month, I put a band together. I was playing rhythm guitar and doing shows, so I looked at it as a blessing. I needed to have that to force myself to be a songwriter,” said Black.
Rod Black’s country music roots were also nurtured by his family. He says he was exposed to Waylon and Willie, Kristofferson and Cash, and Patsy Cline. “We were a rodeo family,” he said, “so that kind of music was always playing in the household. He didn’t get into Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, and Mötley Crüe until later, when he had a vision of mixing the two genres.
He got to know the late Terry Jennings, Waylon’s son while living in Dallas. When the two met in Waco, they had lots of heart-to-heart conversations about the fathers they both missed.’ Terry said, “Our dads would be so proud of us right now. It just showed how humble he was.” They were talking about a possible management deal at the time, and remained friends until the younger Jennings’ untimely death.
Rod ended up fronting Jet Black Stare, which he describes as a country rock band wearing cowboy hats. When they signed a record deal, the management company wanted them to be a little heavier. He pointed out that you could play the band’s country influenced single “Fly” for and then “Ready to Roll” off the same album, and listeners would guess they were hearing two different bands. The music was very country rooted in the writing, easily broken down to acoustic guitar, he said, but it got heavier in the studio.
During that period, he realized another dream. He recalls back in Regina in his early teens going to hockey games with his dad. He remembers listening to the music and telling his dad, “If I could have any goal for music, it would be having my song or any song I was a part of on the playlist.” He noted that once it gets on the play list, it stays.
In 2008, “Ready to Roll” was selected as SummerSlam theme song. Now, friends call him from NFL games and NASCAR races, saying. “Ready to Roll” is playing right now!”
He remains thankful for the band experience, but before his dad passed, he told Rod, “What started off was obviously not what you intended, and it’s time to go back to your roots.” Rod agreed and decided to take from the band a hiatus to focus on his solo career, turning first to his friend Jeff, who had co-produced the Jet Black Stare album. The two have continued to collaborate.
Black suggests there may be some unfinished business with Jet Black Stare, including, “I’m Breathing,” a song he and Johnson wrote together after Black had a near-death experience. He says he still gets calls asking if they’re going to re-record and release that song.
From the first song he wrote, as he was teaching himself to play guitar, Black has found he enjoys co-writing but also loves writing by himself.
“As I get more into writing, I feel that I’ve got to write at least eighty percent to get the message—my truth—to come out. I try to write the whole song the best that I can, and I know that if I bring it to a co-writer, people that I respect, they’re going to take it to a new level, but at least they’ll understand what the story is. There’s still that big part of me that moves along in the journey of the song. I love working with co-writers because they always bring something out that maybe I didn’t see.”
After living in Abilene and then Dallas, Black went to Nashville for a couple of weeks and then started living there, officially from 2016 and 2018, but when he returned home to Canada for Christmas, he ended up signing a record deal.
“I was supposed to go back,” he said. “I had a place in E. Nashville. I called up my friends and told them, ‘I guess I’m not coming back. I’m signing a record deal,’ then I took off for Arkansas, jumped on a bus, and toured all of 2018. Of course, I went back to Nashville for radio, but I didn’t have a chance to settle back in.” During the pandemic, though, he’s found time to be productive.
He said, “All the songwriters could probably relate, but I don’t’ sleep much. Probably 80% of my songwriting comes from dreams, so I wake up and use voice mail on my phone. When the pandemic came, I decided to go through my phone. I started right from the beginning of a year and a half of writing. I’d mark some with stars—better go back to that one!” He says that mining his voice recordings, he found several little gems he had forgotten.
Rod Black likes to look on the bright side—and to encourage others to do the same. Without the pandemic, he would have been on the road touring—which he loves—but during the pandemic, he’s had a chance to dig deep into his songwriting. “Living in a bubble has been a bit of a blessing. Number one, before anything else,” he added, “is the family getting to spend more time together, getting to spend more time with friends.”
Before touring gets back into full swing, he has planned some benefit show for his sister Sayde, also a singer-songwriter, who is recovering from a brain aneurysm in February. He is living out the message he wants to share from the side of the road: “Watch out for your fellow man, woman, and child.”