Rod Picott photo by Neilson Hubbard
Rod Picott on Starlight Tour, Hard Work, and Dreams
Singer/songwriter and author Rod Picott’s latest album, Starlight Tour, arrived in early February for US release. Produced by Neilson Hubbard, the album comes at a time when Picott has also been hard at work on his next novel. The songs hail from a unitary period of time and therefore share some of the same sonic and thematic DNA, though Picott also allows plenty of room for exploration, from drawing on high energy rock ‘n roll to peeling back the layers to deliver confessional moments.
Picott’s storytelling is often inspired by the darker side of life, and that’s still true for Starlight Tour, but those breathing moments that allow something of a lift in the collection also pack a punch and leave you reconsidering whether there might be some hope in the world after all. I spoke with Rod Picott about his perspective on music, having been a songwriter for over twenty years now, how these songs came to possess their own unique personalities, and where fiction writing fits into all this for him in the grand scheme of following your dreams.
Americana Highways: This album seems like a quick turnaround based on your previous work. Do all these songs hail from that short period?
Rod Picott: I was looking this up recently, and I was only sending out orders for my last CD one year ago, so all the songs were written within one year. I think that there’s something that happens when it works that way. The songs feel connected to each other a little bit. They come from a period. I love that about Leonard Cohen’s last three records, for example. You can tell that those songs were written as a group and they hold together so nicely. They are all sad, but they are really beautiful. I think that happened, in a way, with this record.
AH: I felt that way looking at these songs, but I wasn’t sure if I was imposing that viewpoint. They do have a lot that ties them together, including similar imagery in places. I’m sure that psychologically we go through certain periods where related images and ideas are popping up a lot.
RP: Absolutely. There’s a great example of exactly what you’re saying on Springsteen’s Nebraska where he uses the same line twice in two different songs. [Laughs] It’s a beautiful record and he just left it all in there. Those songs came from a very short period of time, about a month, I think.
AH: I appreciate it when songwriters don’t self-edit by removing those traces that tie songs together afterwards.
RP: I’m a firm believer in that. I think a tiger’s got to be a tiger and an antelope’s got to be an antelope. Whatever you’re compelled to write about is what you should be writing about. I don’t mean this in a heavily negative way, but when I write with co-writers sometimes, you can feel them push for a certain type of song. “We need something that works this way.” I really resist that. If you end up with six songs that clock in at ten minutes, that’s the record you need to make. In my world, in terms of art, the stakes are high, but in terms of career, the stakes are incredibly low because I have an incredibly loyal, small audience. They’ll accept whatever it is that I bring to them, and I know that. I’m incredibly grateful for it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m also at a stage where I tell myself, “Take an afternoon off. Go and watch The Godfather. You don’t have to push so hard.” I’ve pushed myself so hard and part of that was because, honestly, when I started, I wasn’t very good, and I needed to work on my voice, my performance, and my writing. I worked very hard during that whole time I was working construction, then going out and playing open mics all night long. I really did it! And I’m paying the price for it now, but it’s alright.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EdoT_Y9WlAI%3Fsi%3DDbaXkXUGSCkFikH9
AH: I know a lot of people who are currently in that stage of doing double-duty on both a full-time job and as much time as they can give to performance. It’s hard-going. I imagine once that’s you’re pattern, even when you don’t have to do it that way any more, it’s hard to let go. Because that’s how you come to approve of yourself.
RP: You’re exactly right. There’s also a history behind it for me, because it’s how I grew up. It’s how I saw men in my life work. So I didn’t know anything else. You work till you bleed. A lot of what makes us up are the things that happen when you’re between 2 and 3 years old and 10 years old. That makes up how you see yourself, and it’s still there.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5A3cOwyrUjQ%3F
AH: Regarding this idea of feeling guilt, if you don’t work in the way in which you were brought up, does that relate at all to the idea of the album’s final song, “Time To Let Go of Your Dreams”? I saw from the liner notes that you see this as a really sad song, but I found it very familiar that people in the arts often feel guilty if they don’t do exactly what people expect of them.
RP: You’re dead-on. That’s exactly what the song’s about. I spent the first third of my adult life working incredibly hard in a very physical job. I spent the next third as a touring musician, which I can say is harder than working construction. You might not end up with as many burs your fingers, but it’s a harder life because you never, ever stop. At midnight, you’re getting e-mails that you need to address. That last song is me coming to grips with the question: What do I want the last part of my life to be about? I’m 59, and 59 is a strange age. For me, I’ve really started to address and look at my mortality. After next year, I’ve got 15 more years, or if I’m lucky, 20. How do I want to spend it? Is it time to let go of this dream?
I’ve worked very, very hard at it, but while I appear invisible to some people, I’ve had a lot of success in terms of being able to make a living as a touring songwriter. I’ve had songs in movies, I’ve toured with Alison Krauss, I’ve done a lot. There does come a time where it just keeps getting harder and harder, and my body is not holding up. It gets harder walking through those airports in Europe with the guitar and all those CDs and clothes. It’s just me, and I think, “How much longer can I do this?” [Laughs] I don’t know. It’s a question. And it was a moment when I wrote that song.
AH: It’s a very bare-bones song in its presentation. You almost don’t want to breathe too hard to dispel the mood the song is capturing. It’s very still.
RP: That’s exactly right. The only other thing that comes in is that short, quiet, gentle trumpet solo. The rest is just me and a nylon string guitar. It’s about as quiet as you can get. It’s also at the very bottom of my range, and I felt like that suited the song. I was trying to get down there in Leonard Cohen’s basement!
AH: It definitely feels like a midnight confession, just barely spoken.
RP: That’s a beautiful way to put it.
AH: I was talking with Maia Sharp about her latest album, and we were talking about our dreams in life. She felt there was a lot of guilt around updating our dreams, but that we ought to be allowed to do it. We ought to be able to have it out with our dreams and take into account everything that we’ve learned in the meantime.
RP: It’s a mental struggle with myself. I’ll always write songs and I’ll always play shows, but it’s a real fight. In the music world, there’s this kind of built-in litmus test of, “Are you a lifer? Do you really mean it? Are you really a singer/songwriter?” I had a conversation with Mary Gauthier twenty years ago, and she said, “We understand because we’re lifers!” And I said, “Yeah, we’re lifers!” But now I second-guess that. Why can’t it be okay for me to go for writing fiction? I was in a workshop with Andre Dubus [III,] and I had turned in a chapter of my novel, which is about 80% done. He said, “You can write. You’re the real deal. You were meant to write fiction.” Who am I to not follow that new dream? I’m letting myself have that by giving myself time this year to finish the novel.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=n83aBzy9SAU%3Fsi%3DntjE-En0X7tFZSyl
AH: I notice that some of these songs do feel a bit more positive, though there is heavier stuff here taking a hard look at life. Songs like “A Puncher’s Chance” and “Wasteland” actually both have a lot of energy to them.
RP: “Wasteland” was actually written a couple years ago, so that’s the one song that’s a bit of an outlier. I had an acoustic version of it, but we tried this band sound and we all just kind of loved it. It sounded more defiant. This character sounded more defiant in this rock ‘n roll setting.
As for “Puncher’s Chance,” so much of my material is dark, but that idea was brought to me by screenwriter, showrunner, and director Brian Koppleman. I wrote a song on the idea and sent it to him, but he said, “I think this title is a metaphor.” I thought he was right, so I completely went back to the drawing board and wrote a different song. I loved having a little bit of hope in there. It’s a person asking for another person to have a little bit of faith in them, asking for a chance. It felt lovely to place it on the record, and its spot on the record is important, too. It feels like a little bit of relief after a few heavy things. “Digging Ditches” is fun but it’s also a little bit dark. “Television Preacher” is pretty dark, too. [Laughs] But “Puncher’s Chance” lets the record breathe a little bit. Brian did a great job co-writing with me.
AH: That’s one of those songs which is very unhurried, and you don’t rush it, which completely fits with the theme of the song, too.
RP: Yes, that’s exactly why it works the way that it does. There’s a reason why the songs are placed where they are, and we worked really hard to make the album flow. You want to have light and shade. I love records where songs sound similar, like on Nebraska, which makes them all fit in a group, but with this group of songs, I had various things on my mind, so it feels more like an album in the sense that it’s a photo album. There are different moods and views. I like that as well.
AH: I’m not sure I’ve ever asked someone this question, but given that you work so much with characters in your songs, do you feel like you sing differently in character? Your vocals are quite different between these songs.
RP: Yes, I do. It’s something that I’m not conscious of when I’m doing it, but I think there’s a little bit of character acting in that. The vocals in “Digging Ditches” and the vocals in “Puncher’s Chance” are coming from completely different characters. It still sounds like me, but absolutely, I think it’s a subconscious thing. I’m trying to put that lyric across. I’m not being phony, but there’s a little bit of acting to pull that character to the front of the song. I’m trying to find something in my voice that expresses that character and that thought better than other parts of my voice. I think there are lots of people who do that.
But this is interesting because I do have a natural proclivity to do voices. I can do a Truman Capote imitation where you can’t hear any of my own voice. There’s a little bit of a natural mimic in me.
AH: That’s got to be helpful with your novel writing, too, speaking in the voices of characters to get them right.
RP: I was kind of a weird kid. From a young age, I was incredibly observant. I was a kid who would watch the room. I would hear the dishes hitting the other dishes a little too hard and know there was trouble in the room, that mom was a little angry. Not all kids are like that, but I was always very aware. I think the mimicry is part of that. It’s being aware, not of what it looks like is happening in the room, but of what is actually happening in the room. That is usually, almost always, very different. [Laughs]
AH: That picks up on peoples’ interior world as well as their exterior world. Did this trait get you in trouble as a kid?
RP: I was very quiet, but yes, it got me in trouble. As a kid, I was very gentle and nice, though I could sometimes have a bit of a sharp tongue. I had that because I could observe and cut through things. That makes a lot of adults very uncomfortable to have an 8-year-old that can call you out on something. I didn’t know enough to not enter the adult world. I was kind of always like a little old man! I just went right into the adult world, and I did get into a fair bit of trouble.
Thanks very much for the conversation, Rod Picott! Find more information here on his website: http://rodpicott.com/
Enjoy our coverage of the album here: REVIEW: Rod Picott “Starlight Tour” and here: Interview: Rod Picott on Telling the Truth, Shaming the Devil, Family, and Writing
