Featured Artists:
Rod Picott and Amber Cross
The Staycation Cyber Festival takes place Easter Weekend, April 10-12, 2020 on Facebook Live and will feature the artists on the Evangeline Presents Roster plus a couple who are not. Please see below the profile for full schedule and links for the festival. Two more artist profile blogs to come!
More information on Evangeline Presents, our artists and the festival is at www.evangelinepresents.com
Rod Picott
"Picott draws us into his stories with the hypnotic cadence of a storyteller who knows that we’re compelled to listen to his tales of woe or joy because he’s seen inside our hearts." – No Depression
“mesmerizing” - Rolling Stone.com
Seventeen years ago, Rod Picott dropped his tool belt, picked up an acoustic guitar and released his first album Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues. That debut put a nail in the coffin of his construction career and ignited his career as a singer-songwriter.
Picott’s songs range from whispery ballads to guitar driven rockers and hit every musical spot between. Much of Picott’s catalog is centered around the lives of working people and the losses, defeats and small victories that can come hard won in a calloused world. It is here in the ordinary where Picott finds the gold he mines so beautifully on songs such as “Take Home Pay” – one of many songs written with longtime friend and co-writer Slaid Cleaves.
“I'm on my way down to the pawnshop
A couple hundred is all I need
If I have to I’ll hit the blood bank
I’m bone dry but I can always bleed”
But there is also an air of defiance that runs through many of the songs. On “Fire Inside” Picott growls.
“ I got fire down inside
A heart darlin’ beating hard and wild
In the pouring rain
I will stand and testify
Cause I got a fire down inside.”
Picott’s eye for the revealing detail and sense of empathy has brought praise from music critics since his debut and those qualities, as well as a potent defiance is on full display at a Rod Picott live show. Now fifty-five years old and eleven albums into his second work-life, he is more prolific than ever. Picott has also become a published poet (God in His Slippers and Murmuration – Mezcalita Press) written a screenplay and has released a collection of short stories, titled Out Past The Wires (Working Title Farm). Many of the characters from songs find their stories expanded and even more finely detailed in the book.
Rod Picott tours tirelessly throughout the U.S. and Europe. He’s been a featured guest on BBC Radio, played the prestigious Shrewsbury Folk Festival and has songs recorded by Slaid Cleaves, Ray Wylie Hubbard and Fred Eaglesmith. Picott was the winner of the Austin Music Awards Song Of The Year for his co-write with Slaid Cleaves – “Broke Down”. He’s toured as the opening act for Alison Krauss and Union Station and has had numerous songs placements in television and film.
Amber Cross
“Powerful and unflinching set from major new talent.” - Maverick Magazine
“Amber Cross has got her Savage on the Downhill. She knows how to use it, and she's not afraid. Do not take this lightly.” - Gurf Morlix
Authenticity is A difficult thing to measure in American roots music. It’s not in the hat you wear, or the twang in your voice. It’s in how well you understand that the music comes from the land, and that its roots run deep. Americana songwriter Amber cross understands this, and on her new album, Savage on the Downhill, she makes music as beholden to the landscapes of Northern and Pacific California, where she lives and travels, as to the visually-rich songwriting she crafts around it. Her songs hang heavy with the yellow dust of dirt roads, plunge deep into the soft loam of the forest. As a hunter, a fisherman, and a woman of the backcountry, she knows the countryside well, and has a deep respect for the honest work that makes you a steward of the land.
When you hear Amber Cross you might think you are listening to an archival Smithsonian recording. Her old-time voice is clear and captivating, like a strong muscle, fringed in lace. As a hunter, a fisherman, and a woman of the backcountry, she has a deep respect for the honest work that makes her a steward of the land. She makes music as beholden to the landscapes of Northern and Pacific California, where she lives and travels, as to the visually-rich songwriting she crafts around it.