Rod Picott brings his deep Americana songbook to IYE’s Studio A

Enjoy a delicious potluck meal too! It’s a night of music and food you do not want to miss.

Original music from our heartland in pristine Studio A!

A saw blade biting kiln-dried hemlock. The lonesome highway whine of long-haul trucks. A crude swallow of cheap whiskey that tears at your throat. Tears of loss and the easy laughter of old friends. This is the sound of Rod Picott’s world.

Over twenty-three years, twelve albums, three published books and a few thousand shows Rod Picott has worked; powered by the fuel of the blue-collar world he was born into. The son of a hard drinking welder and a homemaker, Picott’s youth set him on a road of self-reliance and fierce independence that at fifty-eight years still runs through his blood. Raised in the small town of South Berwick Maine, Rod Picott was a restless and rebellious youth and after high school, a construction worker by trade until moving to Nashville TN.

Through luck and white knuckled determination Picott has been fortunate to open a tour for Alison Krauss and Union Station, play the Shrewsbury Folk festival, appear several times on the BBC2 Bob Harris sessions, play the Maverick Festival and receive the “Song of the Year” award for his co-write (w/Slaid Cleaves) “Broke Down” at the Austin Music Awards.

“Rod Picott is one of our too-little-known songwriting treasures. Like Hemingway, he peers into the jangly tentativeness of the relationships between men and women. Like Harry Crews, he captures the spectral gothic shadows that haunt rural settings. Like Townes Van Zandt, Picott tells riveting tales about memorable characters — the moonshiner, Sonny Liston, his daddy — that plumb the misery and the fleeting moments of hope that mark the human condition.” – Henry Carrigan, No Depression (Roots music journal)

Rod Picott’s latest album, Starlight Tour, was produced by musician and filmmaker Neilson Hubbard (John Prine, Lucinda Williams). Starlight Tour features some of Picott’s sharpest writing to date. The album ponders the songwriter’s own difficult past and peers into an uncertain future. The album has a feel of noir cinema. There is a darkness and uncertainty roiling through the collection of songs but there is also hope and grace shadowing alongside.

We’ll be doing our traditional pot-luck before the show for those interested. We’ll provide plates, cups, bowls and utensils. You bring a delicious dish to share with fellow attendees.