ROD PICOTT: this coming Friday, June 20, 2025 at Sandwich Life House Concerts!

Time keeps moving faster and faster, I wish I could slow it down. As much as I’ve been anxiously awaiting the Rod Picott show I’m shocked that it is THIS coming Friday! I’m SO excited. Rod is brilliant and wicked funny as a Mainer might say, he’s also incredibly kind, has a great sideways smirk, and we absolutely adore him. He has decided to stop touring, thus the Great Retirement Tour. We are honored that Sandwich Life House Concerts is one of his last stops here in the US. Our guy, sniff, sniff.

ROD PICOTT
Friday, June 20, 2025
6 pm potluck, music to follow
BYOB $20+ at the door
Email if you need address

Although, as Rod’s song says, “Twenty years now the money still ain’t changed” so feel free to round UP!

Rod was one of the earliest artists we had come play at our house. 2011! He and Amanda Shires did a duo show and it was amazing and we fell in love with Rod. Oh, wait, we were already in love with him! In an odd twist of fate he was playing just down the road when we visited Lubec, Maine earlier that summer. We’d already booked him for the show at our house. I remember I just happened to see his listing of other tour dates and when it said Lubec, on the very date we we would arrive, I had to keep blinking to make sure it was real. So Debbie, Ernie and I went to a gorgeous old building that was an art gallery and saw Rod play. It was utterly glorious—we’d never seen him live before and it was heavenly. After the show I introduced myself, saying, “I’m Cynthia,” and he gave me that grin and said, “Of course you are.” The boys declined to attend and stayed in the old house down the road and Owen ate most of the frozen pizza we’d gotten at a gas station as everything was closed down when we got to town. We’d gotten the time wrong so jumped to leave and left our pizza uneaten. That wasn’t the case when we got back but I was so happy I couldn’t get irritated. I just went to bed sated by the music.

So yeah, we already loved him by the time he made it to Champaign. And only more after that.

He played several times here over the years, I saw him up at Van DeLisle’s once—oh, Van’s first house concert I believe, and we saw him now and then in Nashville. He also played at Black-Volk Fest, the benefit that friends put on for us during a hard time back in 2022. He is very dear to us.

I couldn’t love this picture more, with Eric Jacobsson sitting there smiling in his Bernie shirt. Miss him so very much.

The first album I ever had of Rod’s was Welding Burns, and if I’m not mistaken, it was a gift from the inimitable Van. I fell hard for that album. I think if you counted up all the time I’ve listened to music in the last something or other years it would be up near the top. It came out in 2011 and Owen was only 9. I’ve always gone upstairs early to read at night (well, when I could climb the stairs) and Owen would often come in and crawl into bed with me. We would both read while Welding Burns played and then eventually we’d turn out the light and lay there in the dark listening to it. Those moments are firmly etched in my memory. Something very special. Sheetrock Hanger was one of our favorites. Owen was also very fond of it because it’s where he learned the word ‘prick,’ which he immediately put to good use. One time when Rod came he told Owen he’d play it for him. Owen got sleepy and went up to bed but he told me later that he could hear Rod singing it as he lay in bed upstairs in the dark.

Maybe if we’re all feeling festive, we’ll have him play his Christmas song.

Onward to Rod!

Love,
Cynthia