There are 30 years of co-writes between childhood friends Rod Picott and Slaid Cleaves, both raised in Berwick, ME in this 26-song 2CD spanning work rendered by Picott. The idea is to reward his loyal fans with a limited package, a collector’s edition, dubbed Wood, Steel, Dust & Dreams that will only be issued physically with each copy numbered and signed, never to be printed again. Obviously, these tunes are all culled from his catalog with its first entry 2001’s Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues through his twelve CDS, the latest being 2019’s Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil. Consistent with most recent efforts, the collection is produced and mixed by Neilson Hubbard and features longtime collaborators Will Kimbrough and Lex Price. Matt Mauch joins to play acoustic slide and buddy Cleaves appears on harmony for just the defiant “Bring It On.”
We’ve covered both Out Past the Wires and Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil on these pages and this writer has covered Welding Burns and Hang Your Hopes on a Crooked Nail elsewhere. Those albums contain ten of the selections herein. What is remarkable is that many of them sound different than his originally recorded versions even with the same producer and some of the same musicians aboard. Of course, Cleaves, whose enjoyed a more lucrative career than Picott, has done several of these tunes too – “Broke Down,” “Welding Burns,” “Drunken Barber’s Hand,” “Primer Gray,” “Dreams,” and “Take Home Pay” come to mind immediately but there are others too as detailed in Picott’s 28-page accompanying booklet where he leaves little room for interpretation by providing a brief description of the background of each song. You won’t find his lyrics there but if you have the original albums, you can easily reference them that way.
It’s always interesting to contemplate why artists of higher stature like Dylan and Springsteen have garnered more success when arguably, Picott’s poetry and well-thought-out songs are on a par or superior to some of their efforts. Neither Dylan nor Springsteen have particularly great voices. Yes, Picott’s might be more monotone but it’s just as honest and real. Interestingly, this may on Picot’s mind too. There is an overt reference and even the lyric “Darkness on the outskirts of town in “Not Going Down.” He claims that the Dylan reference in “River Runs” is intentional.
The booklet is full of comparisons between how Picott and Cleaves treat the songs differently, Cleaves often opting for a more rocking approach. This statement speaks volumes on the difference between them – “My voice works like a lawnmower, Slaid’s voice in a fine-tuned instrument.” Each to his own, Picott is so unpretentious and humble practically to a fault. Yet, his raw, unassuming approach has served the former sheetrock hanger turned singer-songwriter well enough to garner a loyal base of fans who soak up each word of his blue-collar songs and detailed character portraits.
The beauty of this collection is that it unfolds rather chronologically, and the listener can detect a marked improvement in the songcraft on Disc 2 versus Disc 1. Also, the better-known tunes such as those referenced previously are played with some different chord changes, tempos or maybe just lyric inflections than the versions found on Picott’s original versions, not to mention that some are almost (i.e., “Broke Down”) unrecognizable compared to the Cleaves version. That’s the beauty of masterful songwriting and few are better than these two.
