This is Ozarks at Large. I'm Kyle Kellams.
Kellams: Drew Hutson Rogers is a Northwest Arkansas-based singer-songwriter and musician, and he's been writing songs for a while. And this spring, he and his band have been playing those songs well beyond our part of the world. Their nearly completed spring tour included dates all along the East Coast. It's a nearly completed tour because the final show is at George's Majestic Lounge in Fayetteville Friday night, with a lineup of special guests to help wrap up this tour.
Yesterday, Drew Hutson Rogers and Jake Schaffer, drummer and backup vocals in the band, came to the Carver Center for Public Radio to play a new song, preview Friday night's show and to tell us more about the spring tour.
Hutson Rogers: We did a big — what was it, about five and a half, six weeks on the road?
Schaffer: Almost six weeks.
Hutson Rogers: We started with three shows in Arkansas. All of those were really good. We hit Russellville and Little Rock and then made our way to Nashville for a couple shows, and then spent a bunch of time in Virginia and North Carolina. Did some shows up there. We've got some buddies that we were able to stay with.
Schaffer: They were very hospitable. Pro tip: when you're trying to go on the road as a startup band, find friends that you can stay with for free.
Hutson Rogers: Find lots of friends. Lots and lots of friends to stay with. And then we kind of worked our way up north. We hit D.C. and New Jersey. It was my first time in Asbury Park, which was amazing. Got to stop by the Stone Pony. Which was very cool.And then three shows in Vermont.
Schaffer: If you go to Vermont, everyone should go to Vermont.
Hutson Rogers: You ever been to Vermont?
Kellams: I have been to Vermont. I've been in Burlington.
Hutson Rogers: The word of the tour was "quaint." We were in the most quaint of quaint places you could be.
Kellams: The one time I've been to Vermont, I landed at the Burlington Airport — I'm not making this up. You get off the plane and there's a sign. It says baggage pickup here, ground transportation here. And the only other arrow is "syrup."
Schaffer: That is hilarious.
Kellams: So as you described a startup band, you probably played in front of a lot of people — especially once you got out of Arkansas — that might not have been that familiar. Is that fun?
Hutson Rogers: It's awesome. As the saying goes, you're never a prophet in your own hometown. They actually loved us in New Jersey. The further north we went, the more that we were sort of endearing to them.
Schaffer: That twang carries, you know?
Hutson Rogers: They could tell we were fish out of water, but I think they liked it. And we were surprised — we played with some bands in Vermont that were like excellent country rock bands.
Kellams: When you're on the road going from Virginia to New Jersey to Vermont, does that give you a chance to talk about the set list?
Hutson Rogers: It just depends on what the venue needs. Sometimes they need us to cover three hours.
Schaffer: Sometimes it's a 45-minute opener, sometimes it's a 30-minute throw and go.
Hutson Rogers: You get used to doing a lot of different things.
Schaffer: We've had a really good time on the road the whole time, just exploring the country, getting a lot of song ideas and enjoying being out there.
Kellams: What makes a tour work?
Hutson Rogers: The willingness to work. You have to be kind of crazy.
Schaffer: Yeah, be a little bit crazy. And you really have to want to go out there and build something and have a long-term vision. You want to go and build a circuit. That's what we're trying to do with the big circuit out east and in the Midwest. We're about to start doing a little bit more East work. And then in August, we're going to Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Kansas. And then in the fall, we're going right back and doing the Midwest all the way up to the lakes, all the way back over to Vermont and Asbury Park and New York, and back south all the way to Florida.
Hutson Rogers: A big mantra we carry with us is no expectations. You might have a show that surprises you and it's the best show you've ever played in a town you've never been to. And then you might have one that you thought was going to be great and there's six people there.
Schaffer: A good example: we played one show and made a really decent amount, made a lot of new friends and we were real happy. And the next show, we made negative $64.
Hutson Rogers: We’re keeping that receipt forever. It'll humble you pretty quick.
Kellams: Sometimes it's a 30-minute throw and go, meaning …
Hutson Rogers: We literally roll up, no sound check, barely even a line check.
Schaffer: I might be sitting behind a back-line kit or having to set up a cajón to play our set, and we just throw our best stuff out there and get on out.
Hutson Rogers: There's variance in the equipment too, show by show. We've got a whole in-ear monitor system that we've built over the last year or so. If it's a bigger venue, a bigger show, if we've got time to set up and they want a longer set, we'll run that in-ear system. But a lot of times it's a throw and go.
Schaffer: Sometimes it's an acoustic duo, sometimes it’s an acoustic trio, sometimes it's Drew solo. You have to be very versatile. To build a touring circuit, you have to be able to cover four hours or 30 minutes or five minutes.
Hutson Rogers: A willingness to be flexible.
SchafferL Artistic, but flexible.
Kellams : Drew, does this allow you time to write? Because you're a pretty prolific writer.
Hutson Rogers: Thank you. I appreciate that. For the first couple years of this project, I was able to crank out a ton of songs. When you're on the road all the time, you find that there's a little less time to sit with your thoughts and write. But I've gotten better at writing in hotel rooms and in the van, on little side-of-the-road stops. You jot an idea down and maybe you finish it later.
Kellams: It sounds like you write by hand.
Hutson Rogers: Yeah. I've got like seven notebooks that just go with me everywhere.
Schaffer: We'll get to go to places like Vermont and stay in a house that was built in 1850 that's full of vintage instruments from 1890, for three or four days, and we'll get some writing done.
Hutson Rogers: One thing I'm trying to get better at is removing the pressure of "I have to write, I have to crank out songs." Sometimes you just need to go live your life — do a little living and then you'll have a song to write. Being on the road is good for that. You come back home and the creative juices start flowing a little bit more.
Kellams: Are we counting the George's show as the end of the tour?
Hutson Rogers: Yeah. We've technically been home for a couple of days.
Schaffer: But we played in St. Louis Saturday night. That was the edge of the tour. And now the spring tour finale is George's, this Saturday, June 6.
Kellams: What are we going to hear?
Hutson Rogers: Some new stuff. We've got a couple new songs we're going to break out — didn't want to just rehash all the same old stuff that people have heard me play for the last couple years. We've got one called "Under the Sun" that's coming out later this summer. And we're really fortunate — we've got a great bill built for this show. We've got some Tulsa staples: Desi and Cody are really good friends of ours. They're popping over to open the show. And then we've got Sarah Lily, who was the 2025 Arkansas Tiny Desk winner.
Schaffer: She's going to do her set, and she's also going to sit in with us on a couple of songs that are very special. One of them's a Fleetwood Mac song. It’s going to be good.
Hutson Rogers: We won't spoil too much, but it's going to be fun. And then Fayetteville's favorite funk band, The 1 oz. Jig, will be on the show as well. We're going to feature some of the horns from that band. It's going to be a blast.
Kellams: Drew, the last time you were in the studio, we talked about what it's like to connect with musicians in the age of Spotify and Apple Music. It’s not the same as it used to be. Y’all mentioned a show where you made a lot of new friends. How do you make sure you stay in touch with them?
Hutson Rogers: You can't just go play that show once. You have to go back a couple times a year. Our whole thing is we want to trick people into thinking that we're from towns that we're not from. Consistency. It's one thing to go on the road once. It's another thing to keep going back a few times a year. And honestly, Jake and I are pretty stubborn.
Schaffer: We're just stubborn Arkansas kids, we can’t help it.. We just keep going back. And the golden thing about social media is we can stay connected with all of these people, stay connected. I get a lot of phone numbers and I still text a lot of people. We have so many friends that host us where we’re going. They tell their friends, we meet their friends, they come to shows. We just build a big network of wonderful people who like to have a live music experience together.
Hutson Rogers: What we're trying to do is build community through music. One of the downfalls of the social media thing is that you are your own content creator, your own videographer. You’re your own artist. There used to be a necessity for community behind all of that stuff. I want to continue to forge that even though, it is a reality of the world we live in. We have to promote ourselves on Instagram. If you have a band, you should be putting yourself out and promoting.
Schaffer: We always look for local bands in all of the markets we go to — to play with, to connect with, to help build careers together — to uplift everything for what we're doing.
Hutson Rogers: When I think back to when I was a kid — even before I could play guitar, I always loved to sing. I would always be jumping around on the bed and singing, listening to my parents' records. I had this feeling, as a kid you don't even know how to put words to it, that if I could just write a song, put the right words in a song and give it to the world, there might be some way I could connect with people that I didn't know how to before. That there would be something special there. Continuing to chase that feeling and find it as an adult is important to me. You kind of have to keep that childhood magic alive a little bit if you can.
Kellams: You mentioned you might have a show in a new town with six people, or you might have that receipt that says negative $64. But those shows when you connect — what's that like?
Schaffer: Gold, silver, platinum, all of it together. Even if it's four people and we're connecting with them and making new friends and they enjoyed the music and we enjoyed their company — you can't put a price on that.
Hutson Rogers: We're a relatively sober, hardworking band. But that feeling is what we're addicted to, what keeps us coming back.
Schaffer: There's some places we've been a few times now where you go back and see all those people again. I don't even really know how to describe that emotional experience of how good it makes you feel. Nothing else does that.
Hutson Rogers: On a broad level, it gives you some faith in humanity. There's a lot of doom and gloom out there. There’s a lot of bad news. We had these friends, Heather and Rick, in Vermont, loveliest people.
Schaffer: The ones with the house from 1850.
Hutson Rogers: As Southerners, we have this expectation of everybody from the Northeast that they're kind of cold, brusque. That's not true. Everybody we met from Buffalo to New York to New Jersey was actually really, really hospitable. It gives me some faith that, I think people generally are good.
Schaffer: Our accents were fun to them and their accents were really fun to us.
Hutson Rogers: We had a girl in Buffalo. We ordered a salad at a restaurant. She said, "How's your salad?" And I was like, wow, we don't say it like that.
Schaffer: And then we found beef on weck
Hutson Rogers: B-E-C-K — it's a Buffalo thing. It's like an au jus French dip, but they've done the dipping for you already. The bread is soaked in au jus and you put horseradish on the bun. It was actually delicious.
Schaffer: That's another thing about touring — the food. We get to go everywhere and eat different food.
Kellams: Tell me about "Under the Sun."
Hutson Rogers: It's a new song that we've sort of modeled after "Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty — that was the big inspiration. Lyrically, it's about growing up in the Ozarks around small towns and the characters — the townies — that you see in these different towns. The first verse of the song is, "I saw Danny at the corner store cafe / with a pack of smokes and a scratch-off to play / that's his thing, man, he runs it back each day / just waiting on karma."
Hutson Rogers: It's about the guy at the gas station who buys his scratcher every day, waiting to hit it big. Songwriters I really respect are always able to create characters in their songs, and I felt like I hadn't done enough of that. So with this one, it was all about the characters — the townies — an homage to my Ozark upbringing.
Kellams: Give yourself some grace, because to write characters you've got to age a little bit. You've got to have seen the world.
Hutson Rogers: When you put your first record or two out, it's all about me, me, me. I have something to say, I want the world to know. But there is a musical maturation and songwriting maturation where you say, OK, I'm going to write about something else. I'm going to observe something and write that rather than think about me the whole time.
Kellams: You teased playing it.
Hutson Rogers: You want me to play it?
Kellams: I would love for you to play it.
Hutson Rogers: Let's play it.
(Drew Hutson Rogers performs "Under the Sun")
I saw Danny at the corner store cafe with a pack of smokes and a scratch-off to play. That's his thing, man, he runs it back each day, just waiting on karma. I saw Rosalyn at the JV football game slinging sodas for the PTA. I cracked a smile as I was walking away, 'cause she's just like her mama.
And there's nothing new out under the sun. No, nothing much ever changes. There's nothing you can do to outrun what you know is just in your nature. There's nothing new out here under the sun.
About once a week these days when she checks me out from the disposal line, she's got three other mouths to feed, she says, but she's doing fine. It ain't the kind of habit I'm proud to keep — I think I'm really gonna quit this time. I know these vices don't come cheap when you're further down the line.
And there's nothing new under the sun. No, nothing much ever changes. There's nothing you can do to outrun what you know — it's just in your nature. There's nothing new out here under the sun.
Kellams: That is so good. I feel like that song is the sound of the band now.
Hutson Rogers: That's what I want the band to sound like. Four chords and the truth, brother.
Kellams: Let's remind people about the George's show. Doors are at 7 p.m., show starts at 8:30. We've got Desi and Cody from Tulsa opening the show — they're going to do an acoustic set — and then Sarah Lilly with her band, followed by The 1 oz. Jig, and then Drew goes on around 10 p.m. A lot of sound, a lot of fun.
Hutson Rogers: Thanks for having us, Kyle. Always a pleasure.
Kellams: And where can people find out more?
Hutson Rogers: Instagram.
Kellams: Drew Hutson Rogers and Jake Schaffer in the Anthony and Susan Hui News Studio yesterday. More about the Friday night show at Drew's Instagram feed or at the George's Majestic Lounge website.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
