Rod Picott
Stray Dogs
Welding Rod
By Al Kunz
 Summer rains laying
down on the blacktop
I got a whiskey glass and an old TV
I left your name there on the mailbox
In case you come back home to me
Stray dogs howl and I know why baby
Yeah, the stray dogs howl and I know why
Ever since you left my side baby
Yeah, the stray dogs howl and I know why
Many musical careers hit the skids after a promising debut.
Thank God Rod Picott has more staying power than that. His 2001
debut, Tiger Tom Dixon's Blues, set a high standard. Stray
Dogs surpasses it. Stray Dogs has lyrical depth that's all-too-rare,
full of well-drawn character studies of misfits and everyday
people looking for love, doing whatever they must to stumble
through life.
On his debut, Picott's sound covered the normal range of roots-rock,
country-folk, and the occasional bluesy number, well within what
most would label as Americana. Stray Dogs stays within
these parameters with one exception, "Baby Blue." This
story of a runaway headed for a bad ending has a pop accompaniment,
at different times recalling Elvis Costello and the Beatles,
with a saccharine delivery providing the perfect counterpoint
to the dark lyrics.
Now it's short rides in Cadillacs
Just around the block and back
The faces, they all look the same
All the bad boys and scarecrows
You know they love you so
But they don't even know your name
Listening to Stray Dogs I kept seeing consecutive pairs
of songs as somehow related. The first (and most tenuously related)
pair is circus songs, "Angels and Acrobats" and "Circus
Girl." In the first of these, the narrator isn't in the
circus but sometimes feels the way he imagines an acrobat does.
("I ain't no angel, ain't no acrobat / but when you love
me, honey I fly like that") Allison Krauss harmonizes on
the second of these, the story of a circus girl who isn't flying
so high.
Dirt underneath, where the fingernails are
Greasy, greasy hair and a thousand dollar car
Holes in your pockets, holes in your shoes
There's a hole in your soul where the loneliness goes through
She's sleeping under the stars as they travel from town to
town, unable to keep track of where they are. As Picott concludes,
maybe the circus life ain't so great after all.
Well, the little towns stare and the cities put you down
But they all got the money when the circus comes to town
Hey baby, it's a mean ol' world
For a circus boy and a circus girl
The second pair of songs is sung from the viewpoint of older
men. "I Coulda Been the King" is the story of a guy
who abandoned a fledgling musical career for the straight life,
first the Marines and eventually as a family man. ("I got
a ring on my finger and some mouths to feed / And I wouldn't
give them up, even if I could / Most days I still feel pretty
damn good"). But on some days he can't help but wonder about
what might've been. The next man thought he had the solution
to recapture his youth when he heard that those fine young girls
"make an ol' dog whine." Turns out there is no Fountain
of Youth.
There's something that you ain't been told
That lack of sleep is gonna make you old
Up all night, up all night
They got too much love, they got too much fight
Can't get no sleep and that ain't right
Them young girls keep you up all night
Best known in some circles for his songs co-written with boyhood
bandmate Slaid Cleaves, Picott includes interpretations of two
tunes originally recorded on Cleaves' 1997 release, No Angel
Knows. I've assumed Picott and Cleaves were picturing a former
mill town in their native New England with the tale of a young
man determined to escape a dying community in "Not Going
Down." In "River Runs" another young man discards
his roots, possibly in that same community, for a rambling life,
searching for something or someone he can never seem to find.
But I'll keep searching' til I find you
We pawn the night to chase the moon
And the day to curse the sun
That's just the way the river runs
Right now Picott is doing some rambling of his own, touring
the eastern seaboard until mid-April before leaving for several
weeks in Europe.
* www.rodpicott.com
for tour dates and more.
Contact Al Kunz at kunz-at-rockzilla.net
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