Many country artists draw from their life experience to influence their music – and Erik Shicotte is no exception.
Alongside his music, he’s got a full-time job as an ironworker, travelling across the US erecting fire training towers. That experience has formed the bedrock of his new six-track EP, ‘Miss’ry Pacific’, out now on Shooter Jennings’ label Black Country Rock and already winning critical acclaim.
I recently caught up with Erik to discuss the EP, how his day job influences his songwriting, the challenges of making music during a pandemic, and his hopes of getting back out on the road – including a possible trip over to the UK…
How would you describe your music?
Oh, hell. Well I’m not the type that likes to put much labels on anything, especially myself. I find it very restrictive and you’re pigeonholing yourself. So I wouldn’t call myself outlaw or traditional or contemporary. I’m definitely in the vein of country through, I’d wager. But you know, I leave that perception up to the listener. Whatever they wanna call me, that’s up to them. But I definitely like to pay homage to my honky tonk heroes, so to speak. I’ve always loved outlaw and traditional. I grew up really on traditional and folk, like Patsy Cline and The Weavers and that kind of stuff. I’d describe it as a mess of thoughts that come out of my head. That’s what I’d describe my music as, I’d think.
You just released your latest EP ‘Miss’ry Pacific’ – can you tell us more about that?
Well, that whole project was a bunch of songs I’d written before we decided to make a record. So I had those altogether and leagues more of them as well, but those were the ones we’d decided on. What happened was I had done a previous effort where me and my buddy were doing our best with his equipment in his living room and we put a little EP out there a couple of years ago. We ended up taking that down. But two of the songs that were on that one, my manager really wanted to re-record and see what we could do with the full band sound, with session players etcetera etcetera.
So we started thinking about that. We took those two and then we added four more of my other ones after some going through ‘em and picking and choosing which ones would be good. We ended up with a six-song list and then we started recording.
Did you find it challenging to decide on which songs to include on the EP?
It wasn’t too terribly challenging. I have plenty of material to pick from, so I kinda just let my management team figure out which ones they thought would be best. I had a few that I thought would be good, including ‘Miss’ry [Pacific]’ because it was a fresh song at the time, I’d written it recently. Tongue-twister there, Jesus. So that was a given, we were just gonna do that one, and then the rest all just kind of fell in with songs that were a little more recent. I do have some older material that at some point in the future I’d like to go back and revisit and maybe record at some point, but the songs that ended up on this record were just fresh enough that they felt good and had movement and momentum to ‘em.
How did you find the process of re-recording the two songs from the previous project with a full band, as well as the challenges of producing an EP during the pandemic?
Well the whole process was all sorts of goofy and a little crazy. We started with the fifth track actually which is called ‘Silver’, and I was in Oregon on the west coast at the time and my management was in Wisconsin and the band was recording in Nashville. So getting all that together was just messages and files coming back and forth and emails, but it was relatively smooth. There were little hiccups with trying to change small things that are hard to pick out and pinpoint, but you find your timestamp, you say what you wanna hear instead and you fix it and you send it back. It just takes a little longer than sitting in a studio where you can be listening off the board and be like, “Right there!” But it got done.
It wasn’t so bad. It’s a unique process and it’s changing all the time. And it’s definitely something, even if we get all the way out of this and don’t have to worry about any restrictions or anything, it’s going to be something that continues. I mean we’ve had it for years, the ability to work with anyone anywhere at any given time, but it’s gonna become a lot more prevalent, I feel. Especially given the more traditional processes that happen in this kind of music.
I definitely would have liked to have been in the studio, I wanna meet these guys that were playing on this session. Really they did a wonderful job, they came up with this beautiful sound. Because this is my first real go at going solo and I don’t have the vocabulary to tell them exactly what I was trying to hear. So I told them to basically sort of play what you feel from the song and they did, and they left me plenty of room. Nobody really walked on each other. They just did a, pardon my language, a f***ing fantastic job with this. I’m so impressed. I cannot wait to actually go feel the energy of those people, and talk to them in person and play with them in person.
I also wanted to ask you about your songwriting for this project. Were there any songs that were particularly easy or particularly difficult in terms of the writing process?
Um… depends on exactly how you mean. Some of them were a little hard on the heart to write at given points in time, but the songwriting itself is generally… I don’t usually force that, so when they spill out they spill out as they have to. So writing them, the process of finding the melody and finding the right words and coming up with a coherent tune, was not the difficult part. But a couple of ‘em were definitely much more emotionally taxing. Like the two songs that we re-recorded from the first set, those are the oldest ones that are on this one and those were written in a [laughs] time of hurting and wanting for me. But you know, that’s only natural. That’s how country music gets made.
Is that approach of letting things flow fairly typical of how you write?
Pretty much. That’s kind of how I write, because when it’s happening, when it’s there and it’s present it just happens. And sometimes I run out of steam, and I’ll put a song down for months, sometimes a year, and then come back and it’ll still be right there and I’m able to just finish. But I have not yet had to really force myself to do it in a manner that isn’t quite as gratifying. It’s not like a deadline I’m trying to hit, it’s just something that comes from my pure emotional side, or my own damn humour for some of these ones.
Like ‘Niners’, the Western sounding one, I wrote that while I was in Wyoming working on a job out there. That one just fell in my lap, because I was staying in hotels every night and the guys on the crew were acting all crazy. The winter was harsh and hard out there and it was just, “whoop, hey there’s a song right there” and I was like, “OK, that’s perfect. This is great!” [laughs]
I was going to ask you about how your day job as an ironworker has influenced your music…
It has definitely been both a bane and a blessing. Because it really does provide me with the room to work on songs. Like working days like that, and a lot of days we’ll work four 10 hour days and then have a three day weekend. So that would always leave me somewhere way away from most of the things I know, with time to myself to process and to think and to fantastise and daydream, whatever. But sometimes it was difficult. It’s emotionally and physically a very taxing line of work. It can be. And some days I’d just be too goddamn tired to sit down and pick up my guitar at the end of the day. I woke up a couple of times with the guitar in bed. Like I sat down to try and do something and fell asleep pretty quick there.
But it really has provided the space for me to be with my music and be with myself and be with nature in a lot of the places I’ve been. In Wyoming I’d often go out and drive around, go through the mountains, go see what I could see and a lot of the other places, you’re close to things that are beautiful. We were in Oregon for a while. I’d drive up near the Columbia River gorge ‘most every day off I had, look at the freight trains going by, take photos, drive through the bluffs. And yeah, that travelling life with time on the road to myself, it lends itself very well to be able to get in touch with whatever my creative process happens to be.
You also recently put out a video for ‘Flint’ from the EP. Can you tell us more about the song and the video?
That song… that’s probably the oldest one. I wrote that about three, four years ago. It’s a song about the heartbreak and doing away with myself, continuing on but having that sense of yearning and want and not being able to figure out how to fill the void. I drew my inspiration for that from many a Waylon song I’d heard and fallen back to to soothe myself during that period of time.
But the video was a blast. I did that out in California with my management team. That was… we had drones and fake booze and fake cigarettes [laughs]. It was my first exposure to what actually goes into that as well. And I had a great time. Except for the 4am calls, you know. It was a very eye-opening experience and I’m glad I had a good time with it, because it gave me a glimpse into what I can do with it going forward if we ever make another video. I can inspire myself or bring my visions into it. Yeah, we had a lot of performances. I had to get used to half-volume singing through a Bluetooth speaker. That’s an interesting experience because I can never sing a song the same way twice. So I’d always flub one little word, one little goofy little thing [laughs]. We’d have to get it again in the next take. It was a very interesting learning experience for me. I’m very pleased with the result. Chris Phelps and Sid and Rob did an amazing job and took good care of us. It was just a blast. Especially coming from Wisconsin in the spring when my allergies would have been crazy, going out to California and doing all that.
Do you feel the way you approach your music has changed at all when you look back at those earlier songs? Or has it stayed relatively consistent?
Hmmm. Well I find most of my writing to be very introspective. I write about things I’ve felt or seen or believe in. Recently I’m a little out of the game right now, but the writing that’s been coming to me a little more recently has been a little more extroverted. I’m writing a little more about external factors, more so than I am about internal factors. But I haven’t noticed a marked change. It hasn’t been huge. I do pay a little more attention to the melodies on my more recent stuff. I’ve always admired guitar players like Mark Knopfler and Jerry Reid where they’re almost playing lead within their rhythm lines so I’m trying to incorporate a little more lickin’ on the guitar while I’m in the middle of a verse or something. Just a little something more to carry the tune. But other than that I haven’t really noticed too much. I suppose when I get back to playing I will be visiting that concept a little harder. But I am looking forward to being able to play and do stuff about all the things that’s swimming around in my head.
I read you’re hoping to go back out on tour in September. How are you feeling about playing live again?
Oof, I am… running the gambit. I’m running the gambit here. I’m a little nervous but I’m mostly excited. I just have not had the chance to go out and play for a sizable audience in a long time. I’m used to playing for friends or sitting round a fire with whomstever, just picking and passing a guitar back and forth. It’s been a hot minute since I actually got to be back on stage in front of people. I did a little thing while I was in California for the ‘Flint’ video and just played a local live stream there, which was good. It felt nice to get back to playing for people. But… [sighs] I am just a little bit nervous, especially with this [holds up his arm in a sling] because I’m gonna have to retrain my hand to play, because it’s my left hand. And that’s the only trepidation I’m really feeling right now. I just wanna make sure I’m still able to play the guitar! [laughs] I’ll figure out this thing and I’ll figure everything else out, I’ll remember what it’s like to be under a spotlight. That ain’t that hard, that’s kind of like riding a bicycle.
What does the next six months or so look like for you? Is touring and the EP the main focus?
Pretty much for now. It’s gonna be looking at trying to sell the record and once my hand’s better get back to playing. Hopefully by September we should be out there supporting this one, going around, doing dumb s***. But after that I’m not entirely sure. Because I am gonna have to go back to work, I’m off until this has healed. I’m not sure what that’s gonna look like or where that’s gonna look like quite yet. But we do have a number of jobs coming up that I will have to get back on.
I’m hoping at some point to maybe try and figure out doing another record. It’s in the back of my mind, I’m letting it stew, trying to come up with a good concept and whatever. But we’ll see how that all works out. We gotta get through this one first, gotta get through this release. I mean this is my first real release, so I’m figuring that out as I go. It’s gonna be a lot of learning about how I support that and actually trying to sell a record.
Once it’s safe to do so and travel restrictions are lifted, do you have any plans to come over to the UK at all?
Yes, definitely. I’ve probably got half a million miles on my bones but they’re all in the contiguous United States here, and I want to get over there. I’d love to see and feel and smell and taste and all that. My management team has done work in Europe and the UK, Scandinavia before, and they’ve ranted and raved about how cool and fun and exciting it is. And the fanbase over there – I was ignorant to the fact that honky-tonk actually gets a response over there, and I’m excited to do that, to feel that, to be in that. When we can we’re definitely gonna try to go international. That’d be great.
Erik Shicotte’s new EP, ‘Miss’ry Pacific’, is out now via Black Country Rock Media.
