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Posted on Jan 11, 2024 in Album Reviews

Rod Picott – Starlight Tour Reviewed

Rod Picott’s ‘Starlight Tour’

Out 2 february, 2024.

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By Rob Dickens

Rod Picott is prolific. Not quite Charley-Crockett -like prolific, but he has amassed a stellar catalogue since his debut. Fast forward twenty-three years, twelve albums, three books and we have the stellar Starlight Tour .

His blue-collar beginnings, the son of a hard-drinking welder, are a critical ingredient in the brilliant, descriptive and evocative stories contained in his songs. His past featured a restless and fractious youth, self-sufficiency and working construction until he arrived in Nashville where he turned down a record deal so he could forge his artistic path unfettered.

The new album was produced by Neilson Hubbard and released late last year in Europe and will be officially released in the USA on February 2. Hubbard is a renowned musician and filmmaker who has worked with icons such as Lucinda Williams and John Prine .

Picott’s writing on Starlight Tour is exemplary and razor-sharp. It’s hard to pick a favourite song, but there is none better than “Pelican Bay”, the wonder of watching pelicans dive for fish weaved with the vivid dramas that evoke that scene:

“ I was just out of the army not a boy not a man Two tours out in the jungle of Viet goddamn nam It scrambled something in my head Left me shaking down inside In the place no one can see and stripped of my pride I came home on a dc 10 changed my clothes in an airport stall Kept my head down low they were spitting on us for answering the call Made my way to Florida a greyhound bus to Pelican Bay I met Mary in a diner on the ghost of my last pay “

There’s so much reward in this album. Watching his father age in “Next In Line”, the beauty of hard work in the Dylanesque “Diggin’ Ditches”, the hypercritical fakeness in “Television Preacher”, the fall from grace in “The Homecoming Queen” and exposing the brutality in “Starlight Tour” (the term for the practice of the Saskatoon Police for driving drunk indigenous peoples out to the edge of town and leaving them there to die of hypothermia during the brutally cold winter months).

“I’m not reinventing the wheel. These songs have been sung before. But what I bring is detail only someone who has lived that blue-collar life can bring. I can tell you what it feels like to dig a metal burr from your fingertip with a utility knife; I can tell you how holding 110 pounds of sheetrock over your head day after day slowly crushes your shoulders. This is what I bring” Rod Picott

Starlight Tour was recorded at Skinny Elephant Electric in Nashville with acoustic guitar, pedal steel guitar, piano, glockenspiel and trumpet by Juan Solorzano , bass, mandolin by Lex Price , acoustic guitar and vocals by Picott and drums and percussion from Hubbard

Rod Picott’s copious output may be due to a blue-collar work ethic. Whatever the reason, it in no way detracts from the sheer quality of his work and we are the better for his constant presence in our lives.

Starlight Tour Track List

Next Man In Line 4:05 Digging Ditches 2:43 Television Preacher 4:31 A Puncher’s Chance 4:42 Combine 4:26 Homecoming Queen 3:54 Starlight Tour 3:47 Wasteland 3:39 Pelican Bay 4:02 Time to Let Go of Your Dreams 3:31

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Rod Picott tour dates 2024

Rod Picott is currently touring across 1 country and has 1 upcoming concert.

The final concert of the tour will be at Sam's Burger Joint in San Antonio.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Rod Picott Steers Through Darkness on ‘Starlight Tour’

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Rod Picott so vividly conveys the lives of those on the edge, struggling to earn a living or those just too exhausted to carry on. Much of his inspiration is personal; he has lived that life himself. A trademark of his writing are the characters through whom he portrays his vista of bleakness. Starlight Tour is a bit different.

Unchanged is Picott’s relentless melancholy. What is different is his perspective. He looks back at his life but also ponders darkly what lies ahead. With far fewer years to go than have passed, Picott, who lost his mother three years ago and fears for his elderly father, thinks about his own mortality, a theme that runs through the entire album. There is a sense of reckoning but also defiance, grace, and dignity.

Starlight Tour opens with “Next Man in Line,” which sets the scene as only Picott can. Who can’t imagine “Two old dogs sitting on a Goodwill sofa / One wears plaid on plaid / You couldn’t wake him with a Louisville Slugger.” But this is no illustration, this is Picott Sr., once a boxer and now frail. Picott the son knows that he really is now the “next man in line.” The band’s jaunty beat belies such dark thoughts.

Behind Picott on the album is a first-class group of musicians; Lex Price on bass and mandolin, Juan Solorzano on guitars and keys, and drummer Neilson Hubbard who, as producer, pulled the whole effort into a distinct sound. Tight, at times upbeat, these players create the oxygen for Picott to breathe his songs.

“Digging Ditches” is autobiographical. To a bluesy backdrop Picott rasps,”decorated with scars and stitches / guys like me digging ditches.” A dad who says little, mom keeping house, and everyone working themselves to the bone. Picott rams home a sense of inevitability. There is no other life for these folks. From the general Picott knows when to zoom in to the particular. A respite from a life of toil could be that of a “Television Preacher.” In a voice laden with sadness yet with deep sympathy, Picott mourns how these charlatans prey on the vulnerable.

Screenwriter Brian Koppelman and Picott’s long-standing collaborator Slaid Cleaves had written “A Punchers Chance,” then sent it Picott, who put it to music and gave all the boxing references a metaphorical ring — essentially, “Will you take a chance on me?” For “Combine,” which originated with Koppelman, Picott added details that only one who has worked on such a machine could. His intense anxiety about bringing in one more harvest is palpable. With Amy Speace, Picott wrote “Homecoming Queen,” a story of hope and potential that never survived youth. Picott’s wistful vocals outweigh the band’s cheery tempo to ensure a desolate ending.

As Picott admits in a press release announcing the album, melancholy is “my stock-in-trade.” “Pelican Bay” is the tragic story of the total disintegration of a Vietnam veteran’s life. In scarcely more than a whisper, Picott takes the listener right to that seashore, where the vet is all alone, “watching birds dive on Pelican Bay.” Closing song “Time to Let Go of Your Dreams” is by his own admission the saddest song he’s ever written. The character is a 59-year-old singer-songwriter facing up to his life, his work, his aging father, the profound depression he’s suffered, and his future. Leonard Cohen and Tom Waits must be looking down as Picott’s gravely funereal voice and accompanying distant horn seem to signal the end. But it isn’t. Picott ends on hope: He will do things differently because “it’s time to find a new dream.”

Starlight Tour is raw and totally absorbing. Rod Picott has bared his soul to such an extent he rates this one of the best albums he’s ever made. It’s hard to disagree.

Rod Picott’s Starlight Tour is out Oct. 20 via Welding Rod Records.

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ALBUM REVIEW: Vivid Characters Make for Memorable Songs on Rod Picott’s ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’

By Henry Carrigan on June 9, 2022

Rod Picott’s Truth Gets to the Heart of Life’s Matters

By Henry Carrigan on July 18, 2019

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Rod Picott Displays Classic Blue Collar Songwriter Gems on ‘Starlight Tour'(ALBUM REVIEW)

By Jim Hynes
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Over the past two-plus decades, singer-songwriter Rod Picott has consistently delivered insightful and often searing work across fifteen albums, three published books, and countless shows. He’s back with Starlight Tour, like his last few albums, rendered by a small band and helmed by Neilson Hubbard , his go-to producer. Some may interpret the title as a sarcastic swipe at a farewell tour, but instead, in typically dark Picott fashion, it regards something altogether different (more on this later).

The opening “Next Man in Line” is the linchpin track as Picott reflects on his dad’s weakening in old age, and his own role as the next up in carrying on the family legacy. There’s both the theme of existentialism and an inevitable echo of Dylan as there often is in Picott’s songs with his “How does it feel to be the next (or in the last verse ‘last’) man in line” taking us to Dylan’s chorus in “Rolling Stone.” The blue-collar ethic that imbues so many of his songs is at the heart of the stomping “Digging Ditches,” a metaphor that applies to his work as a troubadour too. The quietly dark “Television Preacher” has a couple of different levels. Sure, like many of us, Picott hates the hypocrisy of these hucksters but in this case, even though he wasn’t exposed to such in his own growing up, many of his friends were. He pities them for being suckered in, but the theme of song runs much deeper. It’s another view of mortality and the fact that while we may know what’s here, the other side will forever be a mystery. In “A Puncher’s Chance.” Picott uses the analogy of the underdog boxer to frame the narrator’s longing for a personal relationship as he knows that both hope and strength can be fleeting.

In this writer’s review of Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows, mention was made of Picott’s oft-distinct lack of hooks and melodies in favor of authentic narratives with spare accompaniment and weird flashes of melody in the choruses. Such is “Combine.” Like “A Puncher’s Chance,” he penned it collaborating with screenwriter Brian Koppelman. It’s a brilliant tale about one saddled with broken farm equipment due to excessive gambling, citing the recently retired (though he didn’t know it at the time) Alabama football coach Nick Saban, and righting the ship if he can just make it to one more decent harvest. The generally upbeat pulse to “The Homecoming Queen” disguises the sad tale of the subject’s succumbing to the proverbial sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll in a co-write with Amy Speace.

So, that title track – “Starlight Tour” was a skeletal concept from singer-songwriter Nick Nace (who can be found on these pages). It’s the name given to the practice of the Saskatoon Police for driving drunk indigenous peoples out to the edge of town and leaving them there to suffer and eventually die of hypothermia during the winter months. The story is told in both first and third person narratives sung in a haunting, whispering style as if crying his way through it – “It’s a dirty needle it’s a broken glass/Don’t make no difference can’t change the past/The future’s a ghost that’s for goddamned sure/Another man gone on the starlight tour.”

Picott thankfully turns rocker in “Wasteland,” almost as a raised index finger to citified folks, it becomes an anthem for off-the-grid types with the synching line – “If you think you’re better with your city lights – you best stay there ‘cause out here it’s dark at night.” While that character revels in it, the narrator, a widower, and Vietnam vet, in “Pelican Bay’ is clearly reduced to monotonous, brutally sad existence. Yet Picott grows sadder in the closing “It’s Time to Let Go of Your Dreams,” accompanying himself only on acoustic guitar essaying his current state – the guilt of not doing all he can for his aging dad, coming to grips with his bouts with depression, and turning his talents to writing longer forms than just songs.

Picott isn’t about making you smile; he’s about making you think. Be grateful. It could be some time before we hear his songs again.

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Interview: Rod Picott on his life’s mission to become the best songwriter he can

How a throwaway remark by Jason Isbell changed Rod Picott from a tenor to a baritone.

Rod Picott grew up in South Berwick, Maine, and originally worked in the construction industry. However, he knew he wanted to be a songwriter even though he didn’t at the time have the requisite skills or even the support of his community as he thought about his future. From this uninspiring beginning, he has made a name for himself as a songwriter’s songwriter with a critically acclaimed catalogue of 14 records, of which his latest, ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’ , is possibly his best. Americana UK’s Martin Johnson caught up with Rod Picott over Zoom to discuss ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’ and what it feels like to be a dedicated songwriter. Rod Picott also gives a glimpse into the life of a hard-working singer-songwriter who has critical acclaim and a fanatical but niche fanbase, and for any aspiring musicians he also explains the sheer thrill of playing a chord on an electric guitar and why playing live is one of life’s real joys, but he also explains the harsher reality of what needs to be done to be able to play to a live audience. Finally, accepting he is not getting any younger, Rod Picott ponders on whether he will increase his current literary side-line activities and cut back on his 200 gigs a year touring regime.

How are you?

Like all the other musicians playing on the margins of this industry, it has been a struggle, but I keep fighting the good fight. We have lost a lot of good people, and I think of some of the good musicians who have gone through the last two years who have just thrown their hands up and said it is not working the way it needs to work for me, so I’m going to have to move on to something else. I wish the arts were more supported than they are, particularly in The States where there is not a lot of support for the arts. Being an artist is basically a vow of poverty, haha.

During the pandemic, you released an album of self-covers of Slaid Cleaves co-writes.

That was basically an idea I had had for quite a while, it is called ‘Wood, Steel, Dust & Dreams’ and it is basically all the songs Slaid Cleaves and I wrote over about the twenty-seven years we’ve been writing together. There is a great body of work there, and to be honest, a large part of it is the best part of my body of work, and a lot of it is part of his best body of work, and there seems to be something about the combination of us as writers and we keep thinking it’s going to end soon but we always manage to come up with something else, haha.

Did ‘Wood, Steel, Dust & Dreams’ influence ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’ in any way?

No, not really. I had to sort of figure out ways to make a living during the pandemic because overnight my entire 50 dates I had booked had gone, and of course, there weren’t any more shows booked the next year, so I had to work out a way to make a living. I came up with these different ideas, and I put together the album of co-writes, and some of the arrangements were similar to the originals, and others were very different. I have a very small audience and I have a rumour of a career, haha, but they are just so incredibly supportive. I printed up a 1,000 copies of that album because, as you know, with the manufacturing there are breakpoints and I’d already sold about 450 copies before I made the record, so it wasn’t worth printing 500 copies, and I think I’ve got like 60 left.

So people have been very supportive, and I also did these very bespoke recordings. People would send me their ten favourite songs with sometimes a cover, and I would sit down and record the album even if people asked for more songs because it was no skin off my back. I would record it all in one go, and if I messed up I would just start again, and you got whatever happened during that time I was recording. Sometimes I would talk to the people with stories about the songs, and if I knew them personally I would ask about their kids or how things were generally. Some of them were like a straight run-through of ten songs, and some of them were very entertaining because I did them at my father’s house way up in the woods at Maine. My father doesn’t really get what I do and he was prone to start the chain saw up right outside the window when I was recording, or he would come through the door with a beer at ten in the morning, haha.

You were obviously responding to an economic need, but did you learn anything about yourself as an artist?

I did learn something, and that is recording can really be fun if you allow it to be, and they were really unique because they were all just one long track, you had to listen to the whole thing, and so they were very unusual pieces of work. I think I’ve finally learnt how to have fun recording after all these years, and how to focus when it is time to really focus. Relax, just relax between takes. I also learnt how loyal my listeners are, they really kept me going because without those two projects I would be working at the hardware store, haha.

What was it like when it was time to record ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’?

I’m very comfortable with the producer, Neilson Hubbard, and he is a real artist and you get the real sense of that. I suppose it is like that thing that John Lennon said years ago which was something like Nilsson is the kind of guy you could give a crayon and a block of cement to, and he will make something out of it because he is an artist. Neilson Hubbard is beautiful, and I like working with people like that. We had a wonderful moment in the studio when we were doing a song called ‘Valentine’s Day’ and we recorded it with the band, and it sounded great but it sounded too slick if you know what I mean, almost too perfect. My vocal was really good, and we were listening down to it and I could see all the players, the guys, weren’t excited they weren’t enjoying the feeling of listening back to the song. I said to Neilson, “You know what we have here, we have an Eagles’ song where the guy can’t sing.”, haha. It kind of sounds too slick. I just picked up my guitar and played it quiet and kind of rattley, more like it was coming from inside my head, and it came out great. It is a small song, it is not an important song on the record, but it is quite touching if you allow yourself to go in there. That is what I love about working with Neilson, he will screw things up to make them better, haha.

Neilson Hubbard is a busy guy these days.

He certainly is. We filmed the first half of a video yesterday, and he is working all this week so we are going to pick it up again at the weekend and film the rest of it. He does a lot of film stuff now, stuff with Lucinda Williams, and of course, he did a lot of work with John Prine. He has kind of worked his way up with this videography job, and he is moving more towards that than producing records.

In terms of ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’, how much is Rod Picott, and how much is Neilson Hubbard?

It is definitely a partnership, we work things through and I brought in twenty-five songs I think, and I wanted this album to be really lean. It is me sort of guiding, and him making it happen. We picked through the songs and said this song is covering a similar area to this one, but it is the stronger song so we will just push that one aside. It worked kind of seamlessly, and I used to work with a producer called David Henry, and David was a very different guy to Neilson’s personality, but we seemed to agree on almost everything like this is a better take than that, and what have you. I’ve been very lucky that way because a lot of people really struggle to find the right producer because they can have a very heavy hand. If you listen to Emmylou Harris’s ‘Wrecking Ball’ album it sounds nothing like Emmylou, I mean I love the record but it is an Emmylou Harris and Daniel Lanois record. I’ve been very lucky and I’ve worked with guys who wanted to get on tape, onto the computer, what I wanted, they have been very accommodating because usually when there is a disagreement, I’m usually wrong, haha. Except for ‘Valentine’s Day’ of course, haha.

You are quite away into your career now, what makes you want to keep going?

That is another fantastic question. It is hard, and I’ve said this before to friends in private, for the first third of my life becoming an adult, working at construction and working very hard, and to turn that corner and make myself a singer-songwriter which is what I have always wanted, was very hard because I had little natural talent, and it was a long haul for me. It took me a long time to find my voice and understand how it worked, I was not a natural guitar player. I then spent the second third of my life being the person I had worked so hard to become. Here I am about to become 58, which isn’t old, but I am staring down the barrel of the last third of my life, and I am thinking about how I want to spend it, do I actually want to spend my last third doing this thing I’ve been doing for 22 years. It is a good question, it is like the balance of scales, you know, you have the show which is very weighty and is a wonderful experience, it is just the best part of it getting on stage for people who are engaged.

Then you have all the other stuff you have to do to do to make it happen that is not a lot of fun, the driving, the traveling, the flights, the booking, the trying to find something decent to eat, the trying to stay out of the worst hotels, the drive back from the gig after a great gig because 40 minutes later you are back by yourself, haha. You are all wired up and there is nobody to share that experience with and those scales they start to tip in the other direction, you know. It does become harder, I’ve got some injuries from working construction so driving long distances is quite hard on me, and I’m also getting older, I have arthritis in my hand so finger-picking takes a while to warm up. So while I will never quit, I will always play, I don’t know if I have the strength to be a 200 gig a year guy going into my sixties, so I may be more picky and just play the good shows, haha.

Your voice, as everyone’s does, changes with age. Has this influenced your songwriting?

It does. When I made the first record I was singing quite a bit higher than I am now, and I was singing slightly out of my range, I think, but you are always learning. Five, or maybe ten, years ago I had a short conversation with Jason Isbell who came to a show I was playing with Amanda Shires who he was dating at the time, and he said I had a nice voice, a nice baritone, and my head sort of turned I was like, I’m a baritone, haha. That is the problem, I’m not a tenor, haha. I can’t sing ‘Born In The USA’ in the same key as Bruce, haha, I’m a baritone I need to be down there with John Prine. I sort of started changing the keys of the songs, and it was very funny that one simple statement made the difference, but nobody had ever told me that. I do write around that, the limitations of your voice and writing to its strengths and idiosyncrasies, and sometimes that is the best of what you do, all those idiosyncrasies.

I think the vocals on ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Dreams’ are the best vocals I’ve done, and it is hard to say why but because I’m singing lower I’m able to sing out a little bit more. I don’t mean harder, but I’m able to hold notes longer, it is not a struggle, I’m not fighting with it. You can hear that on the first few records, even though I’m proud of those records, you can hear me fighting with my voice a little bit, trying to hit that note and tensing. So yes, I do write to my voice a lot more, I used to think well, Steve Earle can do it here, why can’t I, haha. My voice has changed a lot, but some people’s voices don’t change that much, there is a wide range there but most singers do change. John Prine is a perfect example, on those first few records he has the nasally, whiney, nasal voice, and on his later records he has the beautiful loose gravel sound, sometimes he doesn’t even hit the note, haha.

What made a New England lad want to be a songwriter?

I don’t know, it is the only thing I ever wanted to do, it is the only thing that ever came into my head that I said that’s it. It is hard to explain, and I don’t want to over-exaggerate, but I grew up in a place where it was very difficult to express yourself and be different from everybody else, it was dangerous to do that so I was a very frustrated kid. I think when I started seeing songwriters writing about things I recognised, on the poetic side people like say Jackson Browne, and on the more prosaic end of things, Springsteen, Petty, and even some of The Kinks’ stuff. When I started hearing people write songs about what they had actually experienced I was like ah-ha, you can do it that way. I was a huge Zeppelin fan when I was a kid, and their stuff was very esoteric lyrically, I mean I didn’t even know what a hedgerow was, haha. That was sort of the awakening when I discovered singer-songwriters that were writing about people, and Springsteen was really big for me because I knew those guys, those characters on ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ specifically, ‘Born To Run’ was more romantic, but ‘Racing In The Streets’ I know these guys, I know that Barracuda, I know that Chevelle SS.

So it was a big awakening that you could write in that way and express yourself in that way, I wasn’t any good at it but it was like a magnetic force drawing me to it. Once I learnt a few chords on the guitar, I couldn’t not do it, I just wrote all the time but don’t think I wrote a decent song until I was 35 years old. It is also romantic as well when you are a kid, a dance with a beautiful young girl doesn’t come close to what it feels like to strap on a fender guitar and plug it into the amp, that electric click, and then hit that chord. There is nothing like it, in that instance, you become a different thing, the minute you put on that guitar and plug it in you become something different from what you were just seconds before, and it is just beautiful. It is great therapy for anybody, even if you don’t play guitar, just get one and someone to tune it and show you a chord, and amp it up and just hit that chord. Change your life, haha.

You have also written some poetry and short stories, is that an extension to your songwriting or is it something separate?

No, I think it is an extension. I started writing poetry just for fun, and I immediately found it was sort of like taking the handcuffs off songwriting because songwriting has these very strict rules that you can break, but you have to know them to break them wisely. You have meter, syllable count, rhyme scheme, and you’ve got progressions and the rhythm of the lyric, and all these things you have to be aware of when writing a song. With poetry, you are just free, the cuffs come off and I just enjoy it as entertainment for myself, the different form of expression. I was incredibly lucky to get published and the first two books were published by a small company called Mexcalita Press out of Norman, Oklahoma. It is run by this great poet Nathan Brown, I’m not really sure why he wants to hang around with me but I passed the test, haha.

Then I started moving away from writing poetry to short stories, and that was an extension of songwriting as well. You are able to use all that stuff from songwriting because when you write a song there is a lot of excess because you keep weeding stuff out and thinning it, and with short stories you don’t have to do that, you can leave all your favourite little bits in, those beautiful sentences, instead of subtracting. For a song you want everything to be really lean, and so it allows more subtext which is really fun to play with, to try and say more with the story than the language you are using, which is something I think all great language does, something gets revealed, the reader or the listener understands more than the words that you are using. Now I’m moving into more long-form fiction it is a lot more daunting, but I have three books ready for editing, I need to finish the third one, and fingers crossed I will find a publisher for those. In my later years that may be where I end up headed. So if anybody is out there looking for an author who writes dark depressing working-class stories I’m your guy, haha.

What can UK audiences expect on your tour?

We are still in this COVID thing, so in terms of the audiences it is going to be a roll of the dice and some shows will sell well, while others won’t, and I know that going in. I love playing in England, I feel a deep connection, it is where my best audiences are, and by best I mean they really listen. They really bear down and ask questions about the songs after the show. I feel quite comfortable in those venues. Another thing I found that was interesting was that I made a setlist for the UK tour, you know, these are the songs to play and ten of them are from the new record. Now that is very rare because once you have played the songs from a new record live you find maybe three or four that work, but for some reason, these particular songs from the new album, and I did a short tour a few weeks ago, they really sing live, they just come alive and they feel very in the moment. They feel important in a way, and I will be doing some of the favourites because I know people will be showing up to hear certain songs. I’m not that guy who says you want to hear it so I’m not playing it, haha. I don’t want to overstate it, but it is an enormous honour for someone to put down their £12, and if they ask for a specific song and I can do it, then I will gladly do it. It is a wonderful thing and a huge compliment, it means you have touched them in some way.

At AUK, we like to share music with our readers, so can you share which artists, albums, or tracks are currently top three on your personal playlist?

The last time I had a long drive I dug out Lucinda Williams’ ‘Essence’ record. ‘Car Wheels On A Gravel Road’ is probably my favourite Lucinda Williams record but ‘Essence’ has a sound and a mood to it that is really beautiful. I don’t know, there is almost something erotic or sensual to me about the record. I’ve been listening to Jason Isbell’s ‘The Nashville Sound’ , can you remember how beautiful LPs were when you were so connected to the music, and now it goes in the thumb drive and that’s it, haha. John Prine’s ‘Souvenirs’ is always on rotation. I’m trying to think of a new artist, there is a young woman called Rachel Baiman who is quite good, she did a lovely version of a song I wrote with Slaid Cleves called ‘Rust Belt Fields’ which is the only reason I know of her. I think she should get a shoutout because her record company is the only company who have paid the proper royalties, haha. At this level when you talk to the lawyer he is like it is going to cost you more to hire me than the royalties you are going to get from the record, haha. Welcome to the music business, wackety smackety do, it is a very tough business, the record business.

I go to songwriting workshops sometimes, and that is great when you get into a room with people who have talent and you can help them put the pieces together, and I try and make it less of a mystery. One of the things I always say in there is don’t do it unless you want to do it because it is a really difficult world, and you can be incredibly talented but spend the rest of your life in the basement. As an artist you see people pass you by who are maybe less talented but they are more charismatic, and that can be a painful thing. A lot of people wouldn’t say that, but I’m saying it honestly. Then you also make friends with musicians who are more talented than you but they just can’t get any purchase on the thing because of their personality, or they are shy, or they just don’t make those magic connections that help you move forward. It is a very tricky business. You see it all the time, you will see people on TV and it is like, how did that happen, haha. Then there is someone like John Moreland who is an incredible singer, a great, great songwriter and you are how isn’t he playing to 3,000 – 4,000 people. I know he is doing fine, he has a great career, but to me, he should be playing to 3,000 – 4,000 halls, but for whatever reason, sometimes you just level off but you stay in the business.

Success isn’t always everything, sometimes it can lead to personal challenges.

Absolutely. I’m very happy in the place where I landed. Everybody in life wants more of the good stuff that is part of your life, I want more people in the room but that doesn’t happen at my shows, my shows are small, but they are very, very personal. I’m happy and grateful for what I’ve been able to achieve because I worked very, very hard to carve out this little piece of land, and I’m not about to give it up, haha. Like David Olney used to say, “There are not a lot of people who like what I do, but if you like what I do you’ve got to come to me.”, haha.

Finally, do you want to say anything to our UK readers?

I’m looking forward to the tour, I’ve got my voice in shape, and there are another couple of videos coming down the line and I’m very, very proud of this record which has got probably the best reviews I have ever had. Reviewers have been very kind to me over the years, despite my lack of slickness and the fact I’m rough around the edges. You have to be who you are, if you are a gazelle be a gazelle if you are a tiger be a tiger, I learnt that a long time ago. It doesn’t feel good to be something that you’re not. I’m just looking forward to playing again, I think I’ve played just eight shows in the last two years. I hope people do whatever they want to do to feel secure, if they want to mask up that’s fine, sit in the corner if they want to keep away from people, I just hope people come out and I’m ready to do a great show.

Rod Picott’s ‘Paper Hearts and Broken Arrows’ is available via his website which also lists his tour dates .

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At The Barrier

Live music, reviews and opinion / est. 2018, rod picott – starlight tour: album review.

“Ditch digger” gets a “puncher’s chance” of being “next man in line”. Rod Picott releases his Starlight Tour album.

Release Date : 20th October 2023

Label: Welding Rod Records

Format: CD / Digital

Picott is an old jacket you can’t quite ever throw away, a comfy pair of shoes or maybe just a simple convenience meal that you return to, time and time again, when exotica palls and you just want something straightforward and sustaining. He has been at his game a fair old while now, and, if anything, maturity adds to his appeal, like an old scotch or a vintage motor. So it comes as a shock to realise he is but a callow youth of 58, just over a week away from his next birthday. Or that his first album, of now 15, came out in 2001. Possibly it is his battered and roadworn chic, or possibly, and more likely, the timelessness of his music, a long simmering broth incorporating country, blues and folk; americana, if you must, where an acoustic guitar and harmonica are never that far away.

Starlight Tour is his latest, the title just possibly ironic, and exposes perhaps his most personal writing yet. And, if that mines a thread of melancholia, well, he calls that his “ stock-in-trade “; “ this is the album where I wrote my own story and tried very hard not to hold back either the tears or the anger “. A lot of that equates to raw, but never ragged. He thinks it his best work so far. I am disinclined not to believe that. Produced by Neilson Hubbard, himself no stranger to rounding out the sound of such contrary souls as Lucinda Williams and John Prine, Picott has asembled a tight little band, comprising the producer on drums, Lex Price on bass and mandolin, with everything else, bar Picott’s input, coming from multi-instrumentalist Juan Solorzano, who, if you can pluck it or plink it, is your man.

It is with a classic shuffle that this album opens, immediately evoking comparison with J.J. Cale, from the flip flop of drums to the shimmery electric piano. Next Man In Line, it is a reflection on being the next one along, the relentless chase of life and the fickle impatience of fate. Next in line for what? With lyrics like “ in the rear view mirror is the devil you know “and “ each beat of your heart is counting down time “, it certainly isn’t the lottery, with a distant and detached guitar solo arriving as you gulp and realise, the buoyancy suddenly stuck in your throat. Picott’s voice comes again, as always, as a surprise, a clearer and pleasingly wobbly instrument than his grizzled exterior belies. OK, no Garfunkel, but much sweeter than the coarse honk expected. Digging Ditches is then a bluesy chug, again the electric piano all of an echo, strummed guitars like a blurred heat haze. Positive? Uplifting? Probbly not, a glass half empty treatise, with swirly organ, on which side of the slippery pole most of us end.

Televison Preacher could be off Nebraska, with hollow voice and acoustic, had Bruce had been forward enough or able to include pedal steel on that album, the sweep thereof here just perfect, pathos and paradise vying for attention. The downwind in tempo is chilling, drawing in any less than full attention immediately. A Punchers Chance remains still slightly subdued, even as the band slot in, some more rueful musing built around a melodic guitar motif: “ I’m no butterfly, I can’t sting like a bee ” but “ I’ll be in your corner what ever will be “, a song of dogged love and its pursuit. Combine has him drop a semi-tone, his mood and the tempo, for another slice of wideplains middle America country folk, uplifted by both steel and mandolin, an update, maybe of Nanci Griffith’s Trouble In The Fields. Probably a metaphor.

Homecoming Queen makes no mention of any sleepy Jean, but is a broadly conventional 4:4 daydreamy reminisce, with a charming country waltz accompaniment, until you clock the lyrics , with a verse around the trajectory of a schooldays love and her subsequent trajectory as “ a footnote in Rolling Stone “. If this references Picott’s pre-Isbell relationship with Amanda Shires, it is disguised well, with me reading maybe too much into Picott’s claim that the record digs deep into his own experiences. It is, after all, a co-write, with screenwriter, Brian Koppelman, as are a couple of other songs, with longtime buddy, Slaid Cleaves, and country chanteuse, Amy Speace. The title track tells the tale of a Daddy “ good to my Mama and the liquor store ” and the singer being the “ walking reminder of an other man’s sin “, again possibly tapping hard on the door of Picott’s own background. If it starts as the stuff of cliche, it becomes increasingly and impressively poignant, the Starlight Tour a reference to the aftermath of an early and unatural death. Think of it the possible next chapter of Springsteen’s Highway Patrolman, this time from the perspective of Frankie’s son, rather than his brother, referencing the next stages of his life. It is a belter.

Needing an uplift, the next song is a good old rockabilly rollick, Wasteland, perfect placing in the running order, and leading to a quite reflect on quite how well put together this whole set is, and if anything is going to give some break-through traction, it is this album. Pelican Bay is his The River, I guess, if the Springsteen references aren’t beginning to pall, (But, hey, if he’s going to call her Mary…… ) One of the simpler songs here, it has a downbeat ambience of wry acceptance . Finally we get the closing track, and I’ll swear his voice has been sequentially getting lower and lower, track by track. Time To Let Go Of Your Dreams, which could have jumped out of a later American Recordings by Johnny Cash, with a similar hymn like structure, is just voice and guitar, unadorned. The title says it all, about running out of tomorrow. What sounds initially like some mournful harmonica, turns out to be trumpet, but it adds to the feel of dashed hopes and dreams, until the final line, offering some sliver of opportunity: “ time to find a new dream .”

I think it is clear just how much of a quantum leap forward this album is for Picott. It deserves time to take it all in at one sitting, to absorb and accept the build, rather than any casual cherry picking in and out. I wish it well, and likewise wish the author well, hoping his real life is just a little lighter than the tales told here

Here’s the opener, Next Man In Line:

Rod Picott: Website / Facebook / X (previously Twitter) / Instagram

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Published by Seuras Og

"Well, what sort of music do you like, Seuras?" Ever since that question was first aired by his mother a decade or six back he has struggled with the answer. And struggles still now. Call him a folkie, a country dude, a bluesman and he'll be happy, but don't forget the whiff of jazz, electronica and more. Not so keen on the charts, mind. View all posts by Seuras Og

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Americana Highways

on the road collecting the stories of Americana music

REVIEW: Rod Picott “Starlight Tour”

Rod Picott – Starlight Tour

Rod Picott is a born writer. The Maine-via-Nashville singer pens songs that spring from rough living and hard drinking, as well as the bruised-knuckle jobs that have occupied most of his non-artist life, but he also writes books and short stories that allow him to further flesh out those types of characters. It’s these two worlds that Picott finds himself between now – the dream of writing and playing his songs, and the delayed gratification of writing books and hoping they find their own audience. Now, Picott has recorded what could be his last full album. Out late last year in Europe and finding its official release here in the US this week (February 2), it’s the work of a man in his late 50s who finds himself making the type of decisions not encountered in songs we hear in the radio – between telling stories and creating art, working back-breaking day jobs, and taking care of a father in decline. It’s deciding what you’re going to do in those last years of your life when you can truly make a difference.

Picott begins Starlight Tour with a glance at his dad and a look in the mirror. “The Next Man in Line,” burbling under with excellent electric guitar work from Juan Solorzano, has the singer seeing more in common than he ever has with the Old Man – “Now your knuckles are hard and your limbs are slow/In the rearview mirror is the devil you know.” By the end of the song, he’s assumed his own place on the mortal coil – “How does it feel to be the last in line?” His reflection of his father continues on the subtly menacing “Digging Ditches.” Picott spits out lines on lives sunk in the blue collar grind – “Work ‘til you bleed, that’s how you know you’re done/You gotta punish what you’re not where I come from.” Picott puts his earned scars to work here, while also relying on his artistic soul to help him see a life beyond his own inherited world.

Picott’s songwriting approach often benefits from bouncing ideas off other writers until the words coalesce into something that can become a proper song. That’s the case with “Puncher’s Chance,” a more upbeat (and maybe a little bit optimistic?) tune that evolved from a back-and-forth with screenwriter/showrunner Brian Koppelman (Billions), where your average palooka, represented by an actual boxer, finds advantage in experience and, well, taking more than enough hits – “I’ve been caught with life’s hard left, it rattled my cage/But strength is the last thing you lose with age.” Other times, it’s a story from a friend, a scrap of a remembered tune, and a gift from the songwriting gods that all lead to something like the beautifully sad “Pelican Bay,” in which a fresh-from-VietNam vet finds love in life’s scraps – “I met Mary in a diner on the ghost of my last pay” – with PIcott following that story along its quiet joyful timeline to its naturally sad end.

All of Picott’s lived experience inhabits album wrapper “It’s Time to Let Go of Your Dreams.” The largely acoustic tune feels like a lullaby as Picott bids goodbye to three-quarters of a life-full of hopes, more dashed than delivered upon – “It’s a bitter taste, and it all goes to waste/When you’re running out of tomorrows.” Solorzano’s mournful trumpet line brings home the sense of loss in what the 59-year-old Picott calls, “quite literally the saddest song I’ve ever written,” but this 52-year-old might respectfully disagree. The last line in the song – on what may well be his last album – says “It’s time to find a new dream.” There’s value in knowing that it’s time to set aside your deepest dreams, and maybe even a little bit of optimism in realizing that you still have time – just enough time – to accomplish a new one. I’m looking forward to those books, Rod, and whatever might come after that.

Song I Can’t Wait to Hear Live: “Homecoming Queen” – the mid-tempo, pedal steel-inflected, written over a period of ten years with Amy Speace, brings back a flood of summer memories. Suitably, for a Rod Picott song, not entirely happy, but all full of real life.

Starlight Tour was produced by Neilson Hubbard , engineered by Dylan Alldredge and mastered by Alex McCullough. All songs written by Rod Picott, with co-writes going to Amy Speace, Nick Nace and Brian Koppelman. Musicians on the album include Picott (acoustic guitar, vocals), Juan Solorzano (electric, acoustic and pedal steel guitars, piano, glockenspiel, trumpet), Lex Price (bass, mandolin), and Neilson Hubbard (drums, percussion).

Go here to order Starlight Tour (out February 2): http://rodpicott.com/physical-cds/starlight-tour

Check out Rod Picott’s books here: http://rodpicott.com/books

Go here for a list of tour dates here: http://rodpicott.com/tourdates

Enjoy our previous coverage here: Interview: Rod Picott on Telling the Truth, Shaming the Devil, Family, and Writing

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