Rodney Rice - Rodney Rice

Rice was surrounded by music growing up, whether on radio, kitchen tape deck, or television. When he was about 12, he started playing the guitar. “I knew a couple chords and started writing soon after learning them, actually I think I still only know a couple chords” he laughs. Rice worked for a while on oil and gas rigs in Texas. One night he talked to Jason McKenzie, (longtime drummer for Billy Joe Shaver), and McKenzie pointed him to the Congress house studio in Austin, where Rice made his first two albums, Empty Pockets and a Troubled Mind and Same Shirt, Different Day. His first album found success on the Freeform Americana Radio chart, while his second album reached number 30 on the Americana Music Association albums chart, after debuting at number 9 on the European Americana Chart. For his eponymous third album, Rodney Rice, Rice found a studio, through album notes, the Bomb Shelter, in Nashville, and finally reached out to them amid the pandemic. For this album, he says, “The process was more analog, and combined with changing all the variables it’s no surprise there is a distinct difference between this one and my first two albums.” Rice’s warm, gritty vocals, his ingenious and canny lyricism, and his ability to lay down a melody move listeners emotionally and physically, encouraging them to get up and dance even as they let the lyrics settle into their hearts.