It’s not unusual for a musician to have some other job. After all, everyone has bills to pay. Still, while it’s not unusual for a musician to have another job, you don’t see many of them listed as singer-songwriter-iron worker. Erik Shicotte might be the only one in that particular category. His “regular” job entails traveling around the country and building fire-training towers.
That being said, country music fans are lucky that he also pursues songwriting and has for quite some time. With a baritone voice similar to Colter Wall, Shicotte sings songs about trains and laborers on his new EP Miss’ry Pacific. The melodies of the songs seem to come from another time and are sure to appeal to fans of outlaw country.
Shicotte recently discussed his inspiration, traveling on freight trains, and the challenges of recording his new EP during the pandemic.
Glide Magazine: You’ve been writing songs for quite a while.
Erik Shicotte: I probably wrote my first song about a decade ago. I’ve only been buckling into it and exploring what it means to me for about five.
GM: What brought about pursuing it more intensely?
ES: I played in cover bands for a lot of years when I was younger. We tried to write sometimes, but we all had very different styles. As that was happening, I was in my early to mid-20s, and I was going through the typical things you do in that stage of your life. Getting hurt, hurting others, messing around a bunch, and starting to feel. I started to try to bring those emotions into what I was trying to write. Eventually, them boys figured out they had better things to do with their life. My lead guitar player, I think he’s just about to be a doctor, and that’s terrifying to me. Then I had the space and time to sit with it all by myself, just me and a guitar, and not worry about figuring out the covers and all that. I started putting my feelings into it. The rest came from there. It turned into a way for me to get in touch with my emotions. For a while, I didn’t have any outlet or venue to figure out how exactly I was feeling. At that point in my life, with the band quieting down, me getting my heart broke, or hurting someone else, messing up, stuff like that. I figured out it was an easy path for me to figure out how I feel. I could learn it for myself and understand myself a little better.
GM: What most inspires you to write?
ES: There’s a myriad of things that does it for me. Generally it’s something that has to come out of me. It’s an emotion more so than anything else. There are story songs I want to write and tell. I have a few of them. Except for “Niners”, they didn’t end up on the EP. Those are mostly introspective story songs about me feeling some kind of way. I draw a lot of inspiration from tales I’ve heard at bars, stories that the guys on the crew swap, all that kind of stuff. I am going to be writing more of those kind of songs as time goes on. I’ve already got a good handful of them, waiting around to do something with them. That kind of stuff never really stops flowing. The inspiration keeps coming. What inspires me is something that feels great or feels like shit. A good sunset or sunrise will get me to start feeling something flesh itself out. Hotel rooms in the middle of the night inspire me. Freight trains inspire me.
GM: Did you ever do any hoboing?
ES: Not really. I’ve rode freight before, but usually I’m the head end with the engine crew. I’ve hopped a couple freights, but not long distance. We’ll ride cars a couple of miles. Most of my mileage on the rails has been spent in the cab.
GM: It’s harder to be a hobo now with security crackdowns.
ES: Even me. I just take pictures of them because I have a keen interest in them. I like the art side of the photography. They’ll come yell at us when we’re standing on public property. We’re the dudes that provide the images for their company calendars, for God’s sake! I’ve had people try to tell me it’s illegal. I’m like, “You’ve gotta read up on that law there, pal.” It is harder. Not only is it something of a security thing for them, it’s also a revenue thing for them now. People will steal stuff out of a container. They got railroad police still around all over the place. Most major companies have that still. They’ll come kick you off or write you a big-ass ticket.
GM: How challenging was it to record the EP during the pandemic?
ES: It turned out pretty well. It was pretty challenging because the speed at which files are sent is a lot slower than the speed with which words can be sent if you’re in the same room with everyone else. We got it done, and I’m very pleased with the outcome. There are a lot of open doors in that because you can work with anyone, anywhere, pretty much anytime if you all operate with the understanding that it will take a little longer to communicate together as musicians. You can’t be there with them getting that live sound. I’m very grateful. Aaron Goodrich, who did the percussion on the record, also produced the band. They did almost all of their stuff live. They added little bits and pieces later on. The way we did it, I’d record to a click track on a phone – just me and a guitar so I’d be in time. It’s basically a glorified demo. We’d send that over to Aaron, and he’d arrange it for the players and chart it all out so they could figure out what needed to go where. I can hear the cohesion of the band as they did their live tracking. They gave me plenty of room for me to do what I needed to do after that, which is acoustic and my vocals. They played off the melodies and riffs that I was playing and singing. They heard what needed to be heard and created this coherent sound., which is really impressive to me. They’re all fantastic players to begin with, but good God! We started doing this when I was on a job in Oregon. I started getting the files back and I was like, “Holy crap! This is real!” It sounds like something I would listen to. This is my song, and it sounds real. It’s more than just me and a guitar. It was a very interesting experience. I gotta give Aaron and all the players a lot of credit for being able to maintain that communication within the songs themselves. Mixing it down took a while because you have to send a file and wait until they’ve had a chance to listen and I’ve had a chance to listen. If I was sitting down next to him mixing it in the studio, we’d have it done in three or four days probably. Other than the time and not being able to have a beer with all the players and talk about it, it’s surprisingly effective.
GM: Listening to it, you would never guess that all of you were not in the same room together.
ES: I’m glad we were able to come up with something that sounded like we were. I’m very impressed by all them players, and especially Aaron. He used to drum, and maybe he still does, but he used to drum for Colter Wall. He’s been around for a minute, and he’s a wealth of knowledge and power. I’m grateful for that.
GM: Is it true that NASCAR 99 led you to explore the blues?
ES: Yeah.
GM: Do you find you like to incorporate blues into your sound?
ES: Sometimes. It’s a genre I’ve gotten very familiar with in the past and it stayed there for me. Often it’s so simple, it’s able to cut through all the other bullshit. Blues is just people feeling some kind of way and talking about it over a guitar riff. I like to keep it on the forefront of everything I do. When I’m writing songs, I don’t intend for them to be one thing or the other. I’m not looking for a certain kind of sound when I’m doing it. Whatever comes out of it comes out of it. Some of them are bluesy, some are way more traditional, a waltz or what have you. The blues is always a big part of whatever I’m doing. I have been exploring with my vocal register at the top end where I can get a little more gravelly, a little raspier. It sounds a little meaner sometimes. That’s the kind of stuff I like to incorporate when I play blues. I’ve covered a lot of blues tunes. It’s always there. I am looking to do some more of it. This record came out real country, which I’m not mad at either. Those are my two big ones: blues and country. When you get down to the roots of it, it was just poor, hurtin’ folk of all different colors and ethnicities telling about how they felt. That’s what I was able to get in touch with.
GM: There’s a quote that says something like “Country music is just white folks singing the blues.”
ES: Pretty much. We’re very fortunate that the two of them got together and now we have rock n roll.
GM: What would you be doing if you weren’t making music?
ES: Oh God! I actually don’t know if I have an answer for that. If I’d never done music, I probably would have gone to college to be off doing something else. I was going to go to school for industrial design, but instead I’ve done all sorts of odd jobs just trying to make enough money to keep playing guitar over the years. I may never have gotten into this iron work stuff. I might never have built a house or done any construction at all. That’s the way it all kind of turned out. If it weren’t for music, I would probably be college-educated and a lot better off than I am right now.
Miss’ry Pacific was released on July 16 on Shooter Jennings’ Black Country Rock Media. It is available everywhere now.
