Rusty Pickups are a four-piece band from Queensland’s Darling Downs, with members Michael Cook, Lee Fielding, Ayden Roberts, and Waylon Katz, who have been creating bluegrassy/old-timey country music with a distinct bent in the direction of ear-catching stories, such as ‘Mr Mary Read’, as well as honest slices of life, such as ‘Goddamn Sunday’. They released the EP Rattle in My Heart in 2023; now they’re heading for a debut album.
I’ve interviewed Cook a couple of times and each time it’s been clear that the band have a lot of fun while taking their music seriously, which is why the songs work so well. They’re also active members of the live music scene in and around Toowoomba, and have appeared on various festival stages including Tamworth and the Gympie Muster.
The latest single from Rusty Pickups is ‘California Widow’, taken from their forthcoming album. Written by Fielding, it blossomed in the heat of a Tamworth Country Music Festival afternoon. ‘Between sets,’ says Cook, ‘enduring the sweat and searching for the best way to use time in the shade of a beat-up purple caravan, we stumbled across a fiddle / banjo combo that reeked of a Californian sunset, with smatterings of hope and despair all rolled into one great big long stereotype.’
‘California Widow’ is a gold-rush story in the storytelling vein (pun intended) that features guest fiddle playing from the inimitable Pete Denahy. It provides further proof that Rusty Pickups are determined to provide entertaining, musically rich songs, and it is having its premiere here today.
Listen to the song: https://rustypickups.bandcamp.com/track/california-widow
