Rodney Atkins, bargain shopping music maker

Who knew a pantry and eBay was all you needed to make great music?

Rodney tells the Leader Post, "I do all my vocals at home. It started out of fear, maybe. After we did the first album on Curb, Honesty, we made several changes . . . I didn’t know what type of budget I was going to get to work on the next album. I got on eBay and got a $200 microphone and an Mbox and a refurbished laptop. I set it all up in the pantry. That was my room, my wife let me use it. I got some packing foam out of the barn and put it up on the walls and started doing some vocals on some demos. The head of A&R at Curb at that time said, ‘Man, what did you do with these vocals? These are the best vocals I’ve ever heard come out of you.’ I told him I did them at home and he told me to keep doing it. So I built a vocal booth to isolate the sound a little bit more. That’s how I do my vocals. It’s great because you can wake up and if you feel like singing, you go sing. If you don’t, you don’t have to.”