Rodney Atkins

If you're looking for an artist with the bona fide credentials to sing
a country song, look no further. Rodney Atkins' latest album, If You're
Going Through Hell, captures every aspect of his life, from his humble,
multiple-adoption beginning, to his rural east Tennessee upbringing, to
his present-day, stick to your roots convictions. If You're Going Through Hell, recently
certified gold, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard country albums chart;
the title track spent four weeks atop the Billboard country singles
chart, earning Billboard Most Played Song of 2006 and SESAC Song of the
Year honors. The follow-up single, "Watching You," written by Rodney
about his son, Elijah, spent 2 weeks at #1 on both the Billboard and
Mediabase charts --life is pretty good "Every song I sing is about the
world as I know it," Rodney says. "Every word is real. I'm not going to
sing it if it isn't."

As an infant, Rodney was placed at the Holston
Methodist Home for Children in Greenville, Tenn. Two different couples
took him home, only to return him days later saying he was too sick for
them to handle. But the third couple, the Atkins family, took him as
their own, and though his condition initially worsened, they refused to
give him up. "It never crossed their minds to take me back," Rodney
explains. For better or worse, "I was theirs." Though times were tough,
his parents made sure his start in life was easier than theirs had
been.

Rodney grew up in Cumberland Gap, Tenn., playing baseball, doing
chores and hanging out with his friends. It wasn't until high school
that a guitar found its way into his hands. Music soon became a rival
for baseball, and Rodney began playing out at county fairs, festivals
and shopping malls. Upon graduation, Rodney attended Walter State
Community College and later enrolled as a psychology major at Tennessee
Tech in Cookeville. In his downtime, he started traveling west to
Nashville, playing more gigs and writing songs. Before long, word
spread around Nashville about a singer whose vocal sound was
full-range, powerful and emotive.

Mike Curb and Curb Records signed him up and have stood behind him ever
since. His well-received and critically acclaimed debut album, "Honesty,"
produced a top 5 hit of the same name in 2003. But Rodney wanted to try
something a little different for his sophomore effort. First off, he
didn't come into Nashville to record it. As if to tighten the ties that
bind his music to his world, he put together a simple studio at home,
about 80 miles outside of Nashville, down a blacktop road that leads to
a "Dead End" sign, then turns into a narrow tar-and-chip path that
winds through the woods to the house he and wife Tammy Jo found a few
years ago. They settled there because it reminds them of where Rodney
grew up in East Tennessee. "We have a 5-year-old son and we want to
raise him like we were raised"--not in a big city, Rodney says. "For
us, right or wrong, it makes more sense to be out on a ridge, where you
can see wild turkey and deer in the front yard every morning and you go
to sleep at night with the 'redneck lullaby,' as my wife calls it--tree
frogs and crickets. I wouldn't trade that for anything." Rodney wrote
six of the 10 tracks and laid down his vocals in between the
responsibilities of everyday life and spending time with his family.

"This could be the most inexpensive record Curb has ever done," he
says, "because there was no studio clock ticking away. I'd just go in
whenever I felt like singing, leave for a while to take my son down to
fish at the river, and maybe finish after putting him to bed at night.
I could look out a window toward our backyard and see the woods.
Sometimes I'd see a herd of deer pass while I was working. It just felt
right."

Five songs on the album carry a southern theme. Leading off is the
fiddle-filled, up-tempo "These are My People". According to Rodney,
"The best songs are the ones you can see yourself in even if you didn't
write them," and this one, he says, mirrors his life growing up in
Cumberland Gap. "Cleaning This Gun" is another real-to-life tune about
that nervous time when a boy first meets his girlfriend's father. "I
lived this song," Rodney says. "One of the first times I went courting
in high school I was met by a girl's daddy standing beside the driveway
with a .357." Two songs written by Rodney, "About the South", a tribute
to Rodney's Southern heritage, and "In the Middle," a heartfelt
portrayal about his rural way of life, along with "Man on a Tractor,"
an "amazing classic country song," Rodney says, round out the group.

Every word Rodney sings rings true because he understands country
music. "I've heard people say that good music is supposed to make you
laugh or cry -- I don't know if that's true, but I think that good
music is music that is not supposed to waste your time."