Biography

Rod Picott hits a prolific peak with Out Past the Wires (available March 30), a double album nearly two decades into his songwriting career, that serves as the inspiration for an accompanying book of short stories.

Out Past the Wires arrives less than three years after Fortune, Picott's previous collection of American roots music. During that time, he's become a published poet, written a screenplay, two books of short fiction and the first draft of a novel. He puts all these those skillsets to work with Out Past the Wires, whose 22 songs mix poetry and prose in equal doses. The result is the strongest album of his career, filled with electrified moments that channel Bruce Springsteen's anthemic stomp, lyrics worthy of Leonard Cohen's work, and quietly heartbreaking moments grounded in Picott's acoustic guitar and road-worn voice.

"You write what you know," says Picott, whose background — including more than a dozen years spent in the construction business, where he specialized as a sheetrock hanger — informs his blue-collar songwriting. "My father was a welder. I was banging nails at 18 years old. We bailed out the cellar every spring, because my father couldn't afford a sub-pump for years. When you've actually done that work, there's an honesty in the sense of language that you can access. I listen to a song like 'Take Home Pay,' which I wrote with Slaid Cleaves, and I know there's nothing dishonest there. We really painted the right picture of that character."