Music

If there's such a thing as a happy divorce record, Charlie Robison may have recorded it. Beautiful Day, the Texas country singer-songwriter's first studio album in five years, explores the emotions he felt after the disintegration of his nine-year marriage to fellow country musician Emily Robison, a Dixie Chick.

In a 10-song cycle, six of which are from his pen, the 44-year-old Robison travels through anger, sadness, hope, resilience and liberation. The disc ends on a jubilant note with a rocking cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Racing in the Street."

"I had never done a record like this before," he says by phone from his home in San Antonio. "I started writing exactly what I felt in that moment. I had to do it that way. The first two songs aren't vitriol or anything like that, but they are more aggressive."

It took two months to write and record Beautiful Day, which is in stores. During that time, Robison was holed up in a one-bedroom apartment in San Antonio.

"It was a New York-style loft, but this is San Antonio," he says. "It was very conducive to writing a record like this. I had a little bit too much privacy, seclusion and space for myself. Things were happening at such a quick pace at the time with the divorce that by the time I got to the studio, everything seemed dated. I discarded some songs because I was in a totally different place. It felt better to have things very fresh at the time, and I went with songs that I wrote the night before we went into the studio."

The disc spans his separation from his ex-wife as well as the decision to divorce. The divorce was final last August. They share custody of their three children – a 6-year-old son and 4-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

"We live about 10 minutes apart from each other," he says. "The kids have both parents very close. It's a very amicable thing. We get along very well."

As with all records about divorce – Rosanne Cash's Interiors , Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear and Bob Dylan's Blood On the Tracks come to mind – the key question is this: Does Robison really want an album about his most personal thoughts out there for public consumption?

"If I would have written a vindictive record, right now I would be kicking myself," he says. "It's water under the bridge, and neither one of us feels the hurt now that we did at the time. Even then, I knew that I'm not going to feel this bad forever. And it would also date the record. I wanted it to be metaphoric. I wanted these songs to stand the test of time. I wanted the overview of ups and downs with feelings instead of specific details about me being married to a musician.

"Fifteen years from now, should I go through a divorce again, and I'm hoping that doesn't happen, I'm not going to need to rewrite this record."