Nashville singer includes Tipperary in his European tour

Clonmel World Music is delighted to announce the first show of its busy Autumn schedule of gigs in Clonmel.
It takes place in the lovely intimate back room venue in Jerry Moynihan’s pub in Clonmel on Friday September 22 at 9pm.

Rod Picott is a fantastic solo singer/songwriter from Nashville and is on an extensive European tour, to promote his latest album. Clonmel is the first Irish show on the tour.
Over twenty-five 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. in 1994.

He turned down the one record deal he was offered at the start of his career and did not look in the rearview mirror, choosing instead to cut his own path and lay a bet on his own hard work.
“My parents had that worry over my future that all parents have. Their dream for me was to be an electrician at the shipyard but by fifteen years old I’d already seen Chrissie Hynde in leather pants, so I sort of had other things on my mind – and they weren’t in South Berwick Maine.” said Rod Picott.

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’s last album, titled A Puncher’s Chance, was produced by musician and filmmaker Neilson Hubbard (John Prine, Lucinda Williams).

SHARPEST WRITING
A Puncher’s Chance 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.
Rod Picott is a writer who mines the invisible, downtrodden, working class men and women of the background he comes from.
He does this with the grace and dignity only someone who knows the splinters of that life firsthand can conjure.
Picott has remarked that this could possibly be his last fully realized recording as his future work steers toward the literary world where he has three more finished books seeking publication.

“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,” said Rod Picott.
Tickets for this great show are on sale now, from clonmelworldmusic.com, or direct from Gerry Lawless, on 086-3389619