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![]() Ron Pope (from the album Bone Structure available on Brooklyn Basement Records) The birth of a daughter caused Ron Pope’s personal roots to dig a little deeper into the new Nashville home of Ron and his manager/wife Blair. His recent release, Bone Structure, was a surprise for Ron Pope as the lessons of fatherhood collided with a tour mishap that created a what-if moment for the newly-minted family man. An album worth of material was jettisoned. Rather than writing songs to describe his feelings for her birth, Ron Pope wrote songs for the world his daughter was living in. Carving promises into reality with the hard R&B edge of “Practice What I Preach”, Ron Pope quietly speaks of the welcome changes to his life on a tender Folk ramble with “My Wildest Dreams” and makes nostalgic smiles out of “Habits” as he ponders the takeaway from his journey in “Wait and See”. An opening letter to his young daughter begins the song cycle of Bone Structure, Ron Pope edging the track listing with the sharp focus of first cut “Flesh of My Flesh”, the words a dedication from a father to his child. The hard skin of a traveling troubadour was the show fans came to know from Ron Pope and while Bone Structure makes good use of his songwriting, the man behind the pen appears less self-assured. His confidence takes to the passenger seat while the searcher in Ron Pope takes the wheel, the songman sharing ‘when I became a father, I spent a lot of time fixating on the things I don’t know and what I wasn’t taught. What can I do better than the people who raised me and what should I borrow from them? How do I remember to let in the light and not obsess over how to box out the darkness?’. Ron Pope sees more than a refugee approaching the United States border in “San Miguel”, his new status as a dad feeling comradery for another family, intuitively knowing that no father would submit his child to these conditions…‘carrying a crying three year old without a good reason to leave home’. A mighty groove forms in the Country Soul soundtrack for a family vacation on the Jersey ‘pike in “Dodge Aries Wagon” while Bone Structure unravels the title track on a bed of piano accented with a thunderous orchestral arrangement. Bone Structure glues a Rock’n’Roll beat to “Stuck on the Moon” and plucks an island rhythm from “Ducky Groove” while Ron Pope exits the album on the fragile whisper chronicling a people’s “Legacy of Sadness”, a somber history lesson trudging over the songs regimented rhythm. Listen and buy the music of Ron Pope from AMAZON Visit the Ron Pope website for more information
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