Rodney Rice
Now based in Colorado, Rice was born in Morgantown, West Virginia in the coal-mining-heavy Appalachian Region. With the album’s lead track, “Ain’t Got a Dollar,” Rice holds a working-class mirror up to society. Rice also channels his early inspiration in “Company Town,” a stinging indictment of Massey Energy, the coal extracting company at the center of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine disaster, in which 29 miners lost their lives. “I didn’t call him out by name; I refer to him as ‘Mr. Massey,’” Rice says of the former Massey CEO, “But I guess that’s kind of my take on ‘Mr. Peabody,” the unnamed head of the Peabody Coal Company memorably referenced in the lyrics of the 1971 John Prine classic, “Paradise.”
Rodney Rice now examines the human condition through a songwriter’s lens, and his SAME SHIrT, DIFFERENT DAY offers a dozen solidly formed tunes, inspired by the musical explorers who came before him, but ultimately shaped by his uniquely fresh perspective.