Artist:     Jonathan Byrd & The Pickup Cowboys

Album:     Jonathan Byrd & The Pickup Cowboys

Label:     Self-Released

Release Date:     11.16.18

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Lured by the romance of the open road, hoping to connect with like-minded songwriters also afflicted with wanderlust and obsessed with authenticity, Jonathan Byrd has been searching high and low for what is real and true about America. His travels informed the elevated campfire songs that he and his caravan, the Pickup Cowboys, carefully shepherded into their one and only album, a dusty self-titled debut that is by turns funny and reflective, and lighthearted and moving.

A death in the Pickup Cowboys’ family almost scuttled this country-folk diamond in the dirt altogether. Bassist and cellist Paul Ford turned ill on the last day of recording and was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. After Ford died, Byrd and guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Johnny Waken considered shelving the record and the band for good. A year passed before Byrd decided to finish the LP—packaged with a scrapbook of candid photos—and send it out into the universe as a memorial to Ford, as he and Waken went back to work with drummer Joanna Miller and backing vocalists Alexa Dirks and Andrina Turenne.

Jonathan Byrd & the Pickup Cowboys were reborn, baptized in melodic, lushly arranged Americana with layers and layers of varied, rustic instrumentation. While “When the Well Runs Dry” pours out a dark brew of mandolin, harmonica and crumbling piano, the rippling, subtle interplay of acoustic and electric guitars in “Lakota Sioux” – one of two tracks written by construction worker and friend Matt Fockler included here – unfolds in an expansive, moonlit prairie of sound full of Native American history and softly trampled by a herd of percussion. More minimal, “Pickup Cowboys,” a tribute to Fockler’s simple lifestyle, traffics in slowly plucked contemplation, also evident in “Temporary Tattoo.” Accented with singing saw, it’s a stark meditation on commitment and the transience of relationships that finds common ground with the sweeping twilight of “Do You Dream?”

While the honky-tonkin’ swagger of “Tractor Pull” provides much-needed levity, the affecting “We Used to Be Birds” returns to a nest of luxurious strumming and lovely piano, as a yearning Byrd asks poignantly, “Did you ever wonder why you looked to the sky to find me?” It’s a fair question, although the grounded Byrd is more likely to be discovered here on earth, writing evocative lyrics about everyday concerns.

—Peter Lindblad