Folk Bands and Artists
Rod Picott
Nashville
Rod Picott is the songs he sings. Since before Woody Guthrie songwriters have soaked their public image in the sepia tones of the working life but Picott bears the real life scars of living that life. Rod Picott’s songs are inhabited by sheetrock hangers, drinkers, circus hands, boxers and working girls and he sings about his characters with intimacy. Listening to a Rod Picott album you can smell the gasoline on a mechanics hands and the perfume of lovers in dark corners.
The son of a welder from rural New England, Rod Picott is a masterful songwriter and soulful singer who carries with him as fine a suitcase of songs as you’ll find anywhere. Slaid Cleaves, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Fred Eagelsmith have recorded Rod Picott songs. A former construction worker who hung up his tools when he released his debut CD in 2000, Picott has carved a career for himself with a run of eight beautifully crafted self released CDs over the last 15 years and a well earned reputation as a engaging, emotion fuelled performer.
On the latest album, Fortune, he turns his focus inward, using himself — not the people around him — as the album’s main character. It’s his seventh solo release, written and recorded after years of heavy touring. Looking to make a record that could serve as a raw, authentic document of his live show, Picott recorded Fortune quickly, cutting six songs during his first day in the studio and finishing the entire album within a week and a half.
“I wanted to make a record where we captured performances, as opposed to imitating performances,” says Picott, who grew up in rural New England before relocating to Nashville. “Technology makes it so easy to do an imitation of what your best performance would sound like, but that’s not a real performance. That’s just what you would want yourself to sound like. I didn’t want to do that. For better or worse, Fortune is what I actually sound like.”
“A lot of these songs explore a sense of chance, of what might happen with your life,” Picott says. “Jeremiah” is the story of a soldier who doesn’t home from Iraq, “Uncle John” is a wry look at family dysfunction, and “Alicia” is a naked telling of a romantic break. The songs come from his life, and the details tell a vivid story. “There’s a sense of luck, and how things might unfold for someone. I thought that calling it Fortune would put a positive spin on that idea of chance and circumstance. It helps wrap up the feeling that runs through the record.”
