An ironworker by trade, Erik Shicotte’s days are filled with erecting fire training towers across the United States of America and his evenings are regularly spent writing songs in motel rooms. His mini album MISS’RY PACIFIC was recently released on Shooter Jennings’ record label Black Country Rock, quite an endorsement for a relatively unknown artist. With a booming baritone voice and songs about trains, trucks, highways and blue-collar workers, the album made quite an impression at Lonesome Highway when it arrived for review a few weeks back. Life has been like a rollercoaster ride for Erik over the past year as he explained to us via Zoom recently.
Where are you located at the moment?
Madison, Wisconsin, the dairy State, which is mostly home for me. I’m from here and when I’m not on a job I spend most of my time here.
Before we get to the album, tell me about the ‘Mid-Western Guilt’ phenomenon that I read and hear about?
(Laughs) Mid-Western guilt is more or less a concept. Mid Westerner’s tend to be stubborn, hardnosed, complain about the weather but we have a strong sense of community. Even if we hate each other, you never let your neighbour down. I like to play off that a bit, being raised here and seeing how I grew up here. Sunday church-based lunching culture still exists here and there’s still a market for polka bands in Wisconsin. There’s a lot of unique attributes to this place that are very important to who I am as an artist and a person in general. But the Mid-Western guilt is a joke about ourselves because we have to be a bit self-deprecating to put up with the winters here. We have to be a bit masochistic; we get up to thirty degrees centigrade in the summer and negative thirty in the winter as well as the wind chill factor.
I understand that you have a day job as a steelworker as well as your musical career.
Yes, I work with a crew that builds fire training towers for local Fire Departments. Sometimes it’s military work, like air force bases. The towers are built for fire fighters to do live burn training on and can be used again and again. We build them tip to tail, from start to finish. It keeps me moving and it keeps me thinking.
Is that lifestyle helpful in terms of your songwriting?
Oh definitely. Being out on the road and spending your life in hotel rooms is very conducive to the life of a country singer. It gives me both ideas for songs and the environment to write them. Typically, my songs come out a couple of years after the subject matter I’m writing about. I haven’t quite figured out how my timing works yet, but I’ve got a lot of things swimming around in my head for songs about the actual work and the boys on the crew. The song Niners on the EP is about a winter spent working in Wyoming building a tower out there and the misgivings of the crew, the weather and everything that was going on out there. We had boys getting drunk and not showing up for work and we had winter storms whistling down the canyon. It was the first song where I explored what was going on around me at the time. I wrote that in Room 104 at The Day’s Inn in Thermopolis, Wyoming. Some of the shit that went on at that job you never quite forget (laughs).
Does that line of work limit your opportunities to perform live?
Yes, generally speaking. I probably could find some opportunities to play when I’m out on the road working, but the last couple of years with the pandemic and all the other crazy things that have been going on in my life personally, it was not conducive to finding shows. A lot of the places we’ve been, like that little town in Wyoming, didn’t have any venues to play except for the rodeo grounds, but it was the depth of winter and there wasn’t much going on there.
There appears to be something of a revival in what is called Outlaw Country music with acts like Colter Wall, Jaime Wyatt and Vincent Neil Emerson, to name but a few, all making names for themselves. Do you consider yourself part of that community?
Personally, I don’t try to fit into any one corner. I’ve got this Waylon tattoo on my arm and that’s probably where my loyalty lies. Though I do think you’re on to something with that. There is a growing appreciation, invigoration and drive among musicians and fans, gravitating towards whatever you want to call all these niche markets of Americana and Outlaw, and it is growing. A lot of the people making these tunes are also very versatile musicians. I’m looking forward to see what Vincent (Neil Emerson) does next, since you mentioned him. He’s a cool cat, I enjoy his tunes and I think he’s definitely going to be sticking around for a while. I’m looking forward to hearing his songs for the next decade at least. I’m aware of those artists you mentioned and the bigger banner folks like Tyler Childers. Even around here there’s some local artists doing their kind of stuff and trying to find their sound. It does sound a lot like outlaw to me.
Do you take encouragement from the success that an artist like Tyler Childers has achieved without selling out and recording music on his terms?
It’s been breath-taking to observe, witness and listen. He is very much himself, he’s not a label and he is not bought by anyone. It’s very encouraging to see that happening because it gives the likes of myself and so many others hope that we can maybe make enough money to live doing this, to survive and maybe even flourish one day. It makes me realise that here might be a place for me out there.
MISS’RY PACIFIC was released on Shooter Jennings’ Black Country Rock label. How did that come about?
My management team is made up of Brit DiMattia and Ash Seiter and Ash had worked with Shooter’s label before and knows them. We were all thinking we would be self-releasing the album but Ash said: ‘let me send a quick text’ and low and behold BCR were interested. We pretty much had the record ready to go and sent it to them. We had also done most of the artwork and it just happened to be right in line with what BCR were looking for. Now there’s Jennings’ blood on my album, which feels absolutely insane to me
The production for the album was handled by Aaron Goodrich, who also plays with Colter Wall. Tell us about his input?
He is quite a character. He’s been a godsend through all this. Ash (Seiter) had worked previously with Colter and knew all the guys in the band. I was on the road working during this process and we were trying to figure out who we could get to play on the album. Ash got in touch with Aaron, who really took the reins on the recording. I never at any given point got the opportunity to sit in the studio with any of the players. I still have not got the chance to meet any of them. Between the pandemic and my being on the road for work, we had to piecemeal the album together. Aaron was a complete blessing and we got a couple of other guys from Colter to play. We got Jake Groves on harmonica, Pat Lyons on the pedal, Eddie Dunlop also played petal steel. Miss Tess played bass. Aaron put together a bunch of amazing players. Being that this was my first real recording project with session players, I did not have the vocabulary or the words to tell him what I was hearing and how I wanted the songs to come out. Lacking the vernacular to tell them what I wanted, I basically just told Aaron to listen to the demo and play what the guys feel. That could have been a blessing or a curse for a session player, who sometimes just wants a sheet of music to play from. There was a lot of creative licence on the album, simply because I did not know any better. I also put together a little Spotify playlist of songs that reminded me of the sound I was hearing in my head and what I was looking for and sent it to Aaron. He made it all happen. I got these tracks back from him to do my vocals and guitar over, and I am thinking ‘Holy Christ, we’ve made record, this is a real thing and it sounds good.’ What they created was beyond my dreams.
Was there a temptation to include a few cover songs to record a full-length album?
I did think about it and I do have a few covers that I would like to record at some point. I have a bad habit of turning double four songs into three quarter songs and turning stomps into waltzes, which can be a problem. With the time constraints going back and forth with files, it took us a good month or two to get all the these tracks together. It could have been three or four days in a studio but because of the way we were recording it took months to get them back and forth, and eventually mixed. We did have other songs we could have included but we basically ran out of resources and it would not have made sense to try to do more.
The songs on the album visit different places and different themes. There’s a sense of movement and constant mobility within the songs.
Well, the songs were written standing still (laughs). There’s only one of them that was written when I was actually living somewhere, which is always a recurring theme with me. I’ve probably got half a million on these bones already and that’s all domestic travel. I’ve never even had a passport and all that travel is either on rims or rails. I never fly, I don’t trust those sardine cans in the sky. Travel has always had a strong presence in my mind and in my songs. I am not sure how to say it exactly but I guess I kind of wax cinematic in my own head about life in general, whether it be mine are somebody else’s and I try to provide a soundtrack to those thoughts.
The album’s title MISS’RY PACIFIC pays homage to the Missouri Pacific Railroad, one of the first railroads west of the Mississippi River. That title and the artwork on the album suggest a fascination with trains, is that right?
I love big stinky freight trains. They speak to my soul in ways I cannot accurately put into my writing as yet. It’s just a big part of me and what I enjoy. Most of my friends either work for the railroad or are as obsessed with it, as I am. We’re the kind of guys that stand next to the tracks and watch a freight train go by at forty miles an hour. We won’t say anything but just stand there and feel the rhythm, the motion and the rumble. Diesel exhaust is one of my favourite smells (laughs).
I understand an Irishman can take credit for your finger picking guitar skills.
Yes indeed, that was Ian Gould. He gave me lessons when I got my first guitar and laid the foundations for what was to come. He taught me the basics and I kind of made it my own from there. A lot of the way I learned was just messing around until something sounded neat. Eventually, I started messing around too much and Ian told me that I was probably wasting my money because I was not listening to him, but that’s a recurring theme with me.
The album’s out and the reviews have been very supportive. Are you looking forward to bringing those songs on the road in the near future?
I am actually very much looking forward to getting out and playing and supporting this record. I can’t right now because I smashed my hand up. A stack of headers I was nailing together blew over in the wind and I had a floating finger for a little while. There are pins in there now and is it healing up slowly. My physical therapy to get the hand back up to strength is to get back playing guitar. We are looking at playing shows in September so hopefully things will be fine by then. I leave all the booking to my management; it is all kind of Greek to me. We have some opening slots lined up with Mike and the Moonpies and down the road I want to be playing festivals. Things are opening up in the States but a lot of acts are fulfilling their contracts playing shows that had to be cancelled during Covid.
Tell me about your fascination with Kacy Andersen of Kacy & Clayton.
(Laughs) You heard about that? For one, her voice is incredible. My management work very closely with Kacy & Clayton and I have had the privilege of hanging out with them when they played Wisconsin. We were imbibing certain drinks after the show, sitting around playing songs to one another. Just getting to hear Kacy’s voice up against my sounded great, I’m not sure how it sounded to everyone else, but it sounded good to me. I immediately thought that I need to do a duet or something with her. Her voice is so perfect, frail on the warble, delicate, yet also strong. The quality of her voice is just incredible. I felt privileged to have witnessed and heard her voice in that informal venue, drunk in a garage listening to her doing her thing without any stage lights or any of that. It truly does just come naturally to her.
Final question. Has this happened very quick for you or was this part of a career plan?
I have been doing music for a long time, I played in cover bands for years. I have written for quite a while, though much more seriously for the past three to four years. I have one previous recording, a four-track mini album which was done in my buddy’s living room. It was a labour of love. My management wanted me to drive towards what my individual sound is and to record an album with session players. We started recording this album this time last year with the song Silver when I was on a job in Oregon and we finished it by winter. Since then, it has been one thing happening after another. I don’t always understand what is going on all the time but I am not completely overwhelmed. Although it is taking quite a while to actually sink in.
Interview by Declan Culliton