Growing up in Eastern Washington, Mark Pickerel heard plenty of country, whether he liked it or not. "When I was in fourth grade, my dad and I moved to Radio Road, in Ellensburg, Washington," he recalls. Their new abode neighbored "one of the biggest AM radio towers you can imagine," and Eddie Rabbit and Alabama seeped into every nook and cranny of his home.
"I'd be trying to listen to 'Walk This Way,' and suddenly 'Take This Job and Shove It' would break in and interfere with my Aerosmith." But even shutting off his stereo couldn't halt this invasion. "You'd pick up the phone to make a call, and hear 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' instead."
His new album for Bloodshot Records—credited to Mark Pickerel and his Praying Hands—may be titled Snake in the Radio, and open with signal interference and static, but the singer-songwriter is more comfortable with roots music now. He saw the light after he discovered vintage artists like Hank Williams, Ray Price, and Patsy Cline, while struggling to make his way in the big world beyond Radio Road.
"When I began hearing classic country music, in an urban environment, I started responding to the emotional content of the songs, the lonely, desperate pleas," he explains. "It made me feel nostalgic for my very young days in Eastern Washington."
Featuring titles such as "Ask the Wind, Ask the Dust," Snake in the Radio sounds like a record made by one who has lived life fully. No surprise there. Pickerel—who plays the Comet Tavern on Saturday, April 29—was a founding member of Screaming Trees; the adept drummer's resumé includes stints with Nirvana, Mark Lanegan, Truly, Brandi Carlisle, Neko Case, and his previous ensemble, the Dark Fantastic.
Contrasted with the big, atmospheric arrangements that characterized that last project, Snake in the Radio is startlingly minimal. "The most difficult thing for me to resist is to overproduce things, and add way too many arrangements." Instead, on cuts like the jaunty "A Town Too Fast for the Blues," he relies on insidiously catchy melodies, evocative yet unobtrusive production from Steve Fisk, and, most notably, his own bone-dry vocals.
"I've always tried to convey as little emotion as possible in my singing," he says of his pipes. "The trick is not to deliberately shape a note to suggest emotion, but hope that if you push your most natural voice to its furthest extreme, eventually it will crack or bend."
So why, with years of experience under his belt, have fans had to wait this long to enjoy him in this revealing light? Because the time wasn't right... until now. "In my 20s, I had melodies in my head, and a lot of ideas about what kind of music I wanted to play, but I didn't think I had a creative voice yet," he admits. "It's only in the last two or three years that I've felt I have anything unique to say as an artist."
