ABOUT
Rodney Rice knows just how to capture the fleeting glimmers of an emotional moment in life and turn them into songs that evoke our own feelings of despair and hope, loss and love. Rice delivers his lyrics with a knowing nod and wink and a twinkle of the eye to the difficulties we encounter in our daily lives, and creates memorable characters in his songs whose foibles remind us of folks we know. As he says, “Music is a common language that reaches all and brings people from worlds apart together.” Rice cannily matches music with lyrics, pairing a glimpse of a world turned upside down with a jaunty New Orleans jazz swing melody or an ode to young love with a lively country shuffle.
On his self-titled third album, Rodney Rice, Rice travels over a wide terrain of emotion, from the death of beloved grandparents and the loss of a cherished pet to the grueling monotony of the road and the joyful celebration of marriage. The album kicks off with the rollicking track, a merry second-line dance number that combines cascading piano rolls with rockabilly guitar licks and gritty vocals. The song resembles sonically a meeting of the late Dr. John with the Band and Louis Armstrong. The carefree musical style belies the gravity of the lyrics, which remind us how short life can be and how often we’re sometimes stopped short by others who don’t support us in our endeavors.
Rodney Rice is a troubadour, and he turns his experiences and his feelings into songs. The native West Virginian observes that “music comes from life experiences, fears, anger, sympathy, love, confusion, depression. It’s why it brings people together. When it came to Rodney Rice, Rice says he combined “autobiographical lyrics and creative imagination.” Reflecting on his songwriting, he points out that he often starts with feeling which transforms into a lyrical line and then pulls together a melody around it.
Rice was surrounded by music growing up, whether on radio, kitchen tape deck, or television. When he was about 12, he started playing the guitar. “I knew a couple chords and started writing soon after learning them, actually I think I still only know a couple chords” he laughs. Rice worked for a while on oil and gas rigs in Texas. One night he talked to Jason McKenzie, (longtime drummer for Billy Joe Shaver), and McKenzie pointed him to the Congress house studio in Austin, where Rice made his first two albums, Empty Pockets and a Troubled Mind and Same Shirt, Different Day. For his third album, Rodney Rice, Rice found through album notes, the Bomb Shelter, in Nashville, and finally reached out to them amid the pandemic. For this album, he says, “The process was more analog, and combined with changing all the variables it’s no surprise there is a distinct difference between this one and my first two albums.” Rice’s warm, gritty vocals, his ingenious and canny lyricism, and his ability to lay down a melody move listeners emotionally and physically, encouraging them to get up and dance even as they let the lyrics settle into their hearts.