LOS ANGELES — For Rodney Atkins, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.
Atkins' single, "Honesty (Write Me a List)," marks the singer's first top-five country hit. A bittersweet analysis of a failed relationship, the ballad inspired by a Dr. Phil show is another belated happy ending following some heartbreaking starts for the 34-year-old singer.
As an orphaned infant, Atkins was so frail, two adoptions ended with him being returned to the orphanage. As a recording artist, an entire debut album was essentially scrapped, leading to a four-year search for new songs and a signature sound.
The resulting CD, "Honesty," has some critics hailing the arrival of a new Garth Brooks. In an interview with Associated Press Television News, Atkins spoke about how that came to be.
AP: Do you understand that there is more to the song 'Honesty' than just heartbreak?
Atkins: Sure. I get a lot of stories. People tell me how they feel. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a lady come up, and she just grabbed me. I could feel the tears rolling down my neck, and she was just hugging me. She said, "My husband had an affair and your song saved our marriage." She told me that she bought the album and went straight to him and she said, "This is what we have to have if we are going to make it."
AP: How did the song come to you?
Atkins: We had recorded 11 songs and we wanted to have 12. My producer, his name is Ted Hewitt, he got a phone call from a friend named David Kent. He said, "I just wrote a song with a lady named Patience Clemmons, and the song is Patience's true story of what happened to her when she was separated." Patience had never had a song recorded by anybody. We got the song, and it fit perfectly with what we were looking for.
AP: Some of the most interesting songs on the album are personal stories. You were adopted three times. Do you remember any of that?
Atkins: That happened in the first six months of my life. From what I understand — it's all secondhand — I was put up for adoption. A couple came and took me home; I don't know what the reasons were. I was pretty sick when I was little. They just decided to return me to the hospital. Another couple came along, took me home, they did the same thing. Then my parents, the only parents I've ever known, the only people I consider to be my parents. They had lost a baby boy that lived for a short period of time. About six months after they went through that, they applied to adopt. Once they got me, from what I understand, I had gotten more sick than I had ever been during that time period. It just never crossed their mind to take me back. I was theirs.
AP: You grew up modestly, but it sounds like you didn't even know it.
Atkins: They never kept it from me that I was adopted. It never crossed my mind to find out who my natural parents were. To be honest with you, I didn't think about it for years. I've got a 2-year-old little boy named Elijah. I was in the hospital in my wife's recovery room after he was delivered, and they had taken him under the heat lamps and brought him back to her recovery room and handed me Elijah. They said he's doing great. The nurse walked out of the room, and she came back, and said by the way his blood type is A positive. . . . That was the moment it hit me that I'm holding the only blood relative in the world that I know on this entire planet. That's when you realize how thankful you are to my parents for giving me family.
AP: Why is the birth of your son not mentioned on the CD?
Atkins: The process of this album, when he came along, it was so hard to find time to write because we were just starting to promote singles. I've written a couple since then, and there is one that I'm actually hoping to finish some day. He was 2 weeks old when I started writing it. I wrote a verse, had no idea I couldn't write anything. He turned a year old, wrote another verse. He'll be asking for the keys to the car by the time I finish the song.