KENNY ROGERS RECORDED A SONG FOR HIS TWIN BOYS AND LEFT IT IN THE VAULT.
Some songs do not arrive loudly. They wait in a vault, tucked away for years, until the right moment gives them a life they were always meant to have. That is what happened with “Catchin’ Grasshoppers,” a tender Kenny Rogers recording sung to his twin sons, Justin and Jordan, and later placed on his final album by the person who knew his archive best: his wife, Wanda Rogers.
The story reaches back to July 6, 2004, when the twins were born and Kenny Rogers was 65. By then, he had already lived several musical lifetimes, but fatherhood still gave him something new to write toward. “Catchin’ Grasshoppers,” written by Laura McCall Torno and Earl Torno and produced by Kenny Rogers with Randy Dorman from his band, became one of those private gifts a famous father could make without an audience watching. It was personal, gentle, and meant for two boys who were still too young to understand how rare that kind of message was.
A final album built from memory
After Kenny Rogers died at home on March 20, 2020, at the age of 81, under hospice care with family around him, Wanda Rogers was the one who went through what he had left behind. She married Kenny Rogers on June 1, 1997, at his ranch outside Athens, Georgia, and for years she had lived close to the private side of his life, the side that did not always make it into the spotlight.
That closeness mattered when she curated and co-executive produced Life Is Like a Song, released on June 2, 2023. The album became Kenny Rogers’ 29th and final studio album, and it was not built like a random archive dump. It was carefully shaped. Eight of its ten tracks were recordings made between 2008 and 2011 that had never been released before. Among them was a duet with Dolly Parton, “Tell Me That You Love Me,” which fans had long been unable to stream.
The meaning of the choices
Wanda Rogers said she wanted to make sure Kenny Rogers’ legacy grew and stayed alive, and that intention is easy to hear in the way the album unfolds. It is not only about catalog history. It is about memory, family, and the quiet choices made after a loss.
For many listeners, that is what makes the album feel different. It is not just a collection of songs. It is a conversation across time.
One track, “Goodbye,” written for Kenny Rogers by Lionel Richie, had also been hard to find for years and was played at Kenny Rogers’ memorial. That detail gives the album an emotional center. A wife sorting through her husband’s tapes, choosing the songs that would carry him forward, including one about leaving, creates a kind of story that feels larger than music alone.
And then there is “Catchin’ Grasshoppers,” the song for Justin and Jordan. It stands as a reminder that the most lasting legacies are sometimes the most intimate ones: not the biggest hit, but the song saved for the children at home.
