Quality Americana

Ron Pope’s latest offering American Man, American Music starts out like a modern version of Will The Circle Be Unbroken with a lively atmosphere inside the recording studio. The high fiddle and mandolin really give it a down home feel, and the drums have a great back-room sound that helps the anthem cruise along.

I’m Not The Devil

“I’m Not the Devil” features Taylor Bickett on vocals. Pope came across Bickett on social media, and she actually covered one of his early songs before they recorded and toured together. It tells the story of a tumultuous relationship Pope watched while growing up.  

“I think that she is one of the most gifted artists that I have encountered since I came to Nashville,” Pope said. “I can’t believe that she’s not already a household name. She is just one of the most compelling artists I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Growing Up

Pope was raised in Georgia and New Jersey before attending college at Rutgers and New York University. He came from a family of music lovers, with his mother playing the hot 100 of the day and step father spinning heavy metal at home. 

“My mom and my dad were only 19 when I was born, so they were still pretty hip,” Pope said. “My dad was into a lot of classic rock bands that he showed me, but he also liked singer songwriters.”

His grandparents often played classic country, and these influences lead to Pope writing poetry and learning to play guitar.

“Before me the last musician in my family, his name was Georgio Papa,” Pope said, “and he came to the United States from Italy. He was a mandolin player, and then for a hundred years we didn’t have a musician.”

It was in college that Pope encountered his first songwriting group.

“We’d meet every week and workshop each other’s new songs,” Pope said. “That was really informative for me to be surrounded by these other songwriters. There was just a lot of people in that group that I thought were really great and they told me ‘you’re a songwriter. This is a real thing you’re doing. You should pursue this in earnest.’ That was really helpful to me to have some older kids who I really looked up to say to me ‘this is a thing you could do.’”

The District

Pope soon joined a college band The District where he paid his dues on the stage.

“Being in New York and being in a band that is popular, it feels like you’re famous,” Pope said. “People see you on the street in New York City and they recognize you, so that makes you feel like you’re a movie star or something. It’s a pretty wild experience. We just happened to be six guys that were at school together in New York City, so that was really my first experience making music that people actually heard.” 

The District went on the road when Pope was finishing his degree and searching for a career path.

“I never really wanted to be a solo artist,” Pope said. “After a while I made a few recordings that didn’t sound like the band in any way. I just put them out myself and then people really started to gravitate to those. That’s how that all began for me. Before that music got popular, I had never played alone in my life, I had always played guitar at the front of a band. It was pretty surprising to me that anybody would want that from me because I didn’t really feel qualified to do it, but people seemed to understand it in some way.” 

The years spent with The District and in his songwriting group laid a foundation for the success Pope has seen in Nashville. Being able to form and lead his group presented on American Man, American Music takes a special formula, and the driving sound heard on the opening track “Nobody’s Gonna Make It Out Alive” shows the collective atmosphere of the art.

Grand Ole Opry

Pope made his solo debut at the Grand Ole Opry in May.

“It was pretty incredible,” Pope said. “The Opry is such an institution. This year is the one hundredth anniversary and so when Elvis Presley was a child there was the Grand Ole Opry. When Robert Johnson was walking around on the Earth, the Grand Ole Opry was on the radio, so it’s pretty crazy to be a little tiny footnote in the history of something like that because it just keeps going. I’ve been making records for twenty years at this point, to do something that feels brand new was really quite an experience.”

Family and friends were in the crowd to watch the moment, where Pope appeared alongside Don Schlitz, who wrote “The Gambler.”

“He’s like written twenty plus number one hits,” Pope said. “He was on that night. It was wild to be there with somebody like that, in addition to great contemporary artists. Maddie and Tae were on that night, so it was a cool mix of people, both people who are fairly early in their careers and people who have had careers for fifty years were on in the same evening. There’s really nothing I’ve ever done that’s quite like it, and it was one of the great honors of my life.”

Pope said that so much in the business side of things is temporary, with digital promotion feeling “disposable” but to be on stage in the lights at a true institution is something that will last forever.

Giving Back

Pope owes his success to the fans and his support system at home that lets him see the world and pursue the song. American Man, American Music pulls from all of the times Pope spent crossing the country on tours and hearing stories from people along the way. 

“Even in the hard times in the beginning I think I recognized that this is a pretty special thing that I get to do with my life,” Pope said, “so it’s my journey from when I was kid through to this moment.”

“The Life in Your Years,” is about the moments Pope missed while being on the road. 

“It’s hard to be out there and have your real life happen at home without you,” Pope said.

The stories in American Man, American Music cover childhood friends and the passing of time, touring with the bare minimum and playing empty rooms, and family memories.

“I am a character in all the songs on this album except for one,” Pope said.

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