Ron Pope – An American Journey

“The title of the album is a nod to Ron’s hardscrabble upbringing,” says Holler in their announcement and track premiere. “Born to struggling teenage parents, Ron was often left in the care of relatives and regularly dealt with food insecurity. He never felt at home anywhere – until he discovered the road and the concept of ‘America’ became a frequent character in his personal story, as he formed the idea of what ‘home’ is…Pope gives a clear-eyed examination of that story in his new album American Man, American Music,” Holler continues, adding, “it’s an ambitious project that uses the touchstones of his sometimes-wayward journey to ask big questions.”

Holler calls new single ‘Mama Drove A Mustang’ a “life affirming, steering wheel slapping heartland rock anthem.” “Evoking a very particular American landscape, the driving guitars count down the white lines of the highway as Pope reflects on the distance between adolescent dreams and adult realities,” they continue. “Earnest without slipping over into sentimentality and authentic without ever sounding contrived, ‘Mama Drove a Mustang’ feels like a raucous descendent of the kind of punk spirited alt-country of The Replacements or Copperhead Road era Steve Earle.”

In ‘Mama Drove A Mustang’, Pope recalls his mother, “a newly minted divorcee at 25,” buying the one car she could imagine herself driving – a Ford Mustang. However, she had two small children, and a tiny sports car was wildly impractical. “That car was something of a metaphor for my upbringing; there was lots of shit we probably shouldn’t have done, but my parents were kids too, figuring it all out as they careened through their 20s occasionally bumping into the proverbial guardrails, so we often just went ahead and made the mistake, took our lumps, and kept on rolling,” Pope says. 

“I carried that ‘fuck it, let it ride’ attitude with me as I went out to seek fortune and fame in the bright lights. I ran long and hard with very little to show for it except an endless hangover and then, when my dreams inexplicably started coming true, I was gut-punched with the reality that none of it changed the way I felt about myself. Figuring out how to put down my bullshit and become a grown-up for my own family has been a big part of my trip as a human being. The journey from scared little kid, flying down the highway in a white blur with a sometimes dangerous (if well-meaning) lunatic behind the wheel to a fairly stable grownup/father/husband/song-and-dance-man has been jarring, to say the very least,” he adds. “I love my mom, and she loved that ill-advised quarter-life crisis car. She’s a chill grandma now and thank God she finally quit driving like she’s trying to qualify for Daytona.”

‘Mama Drove A Mustang’ follows album tracks ‘I Pray I’ll Be Seeing You Soon’, the playful ‘Nobody’s Gonna Make It Out Alive’, ‘I Gotta Change (Or I’m Gonna Die)’, a gut-punching commentary on the opioid epidemic, and ‘I’m Not The Devil (ft. Taylor Bickett).’