Ones2Watch Home

Photo by Ashley Crichton

Every album is personal, but some are so intertwined with an artist’s life they feel like an extension of their soul. For PawPaw Rod, a debut album 15 years in the making had no choice but to ooze with personality, connect to his deepest roots, and beam with hopeful inner light. Picture Day never shies away from its many “Shades of Blue”, instead utilizing their hues to paint a brighter representation of every moment. We chat with the prolific star about sorting through endless voice memos, how to find the right collaborators, and his incredible record Picture Day being the ultimate guide to Oklahoma-raised Paw Paw Rod: 

I'm so excited to chat about your debut album. First of all, how does that feel?

It feels great. I’ve been fortunate enough to have an artistic life from making EPs, but I don't know any other way to go about music than to put out an album. I'm glad I have been doing this long enough to where I can do that. I've been making music for about 15 years, and it took 15 years to make an album.

It all led up to this. Do you feel like the timing made sense? 

It’s about being your own testimony, doing it long enough to where you can collect moments to look back on and be like, “Wow, it led to this.”

I wonder what it would have been like if you put out an album 10 years ago.

I’ve been in LA for about 8 years. Coming out here, I didn't have the privilege of being able to solely work on music. So I also look at it as, it took 8 years to move to LA and get something going. It's a combination of all those experiences.

What do you think is the biggest difference for you putting out an EP vs. an album? 

Being able to flesh out an actual idea. I have hundreds of songs. It’s madness to look at them all and pick out 4 [for an EP]. 12 is not that much better…[laughs] Some of these songs I've been waiting to put out. “The Get Back” was recorded a while ago and it always felt like something that I would put on an album. An album was always coming, it just had to be the right time. 

Despite all of the negative aspects of “viral songs”, it does show that songs can become new again. There's no reason that a song, just because it was made a while ago, shouldn't come out now. 

Absolutely. It’s such a cool way to piece it together, almost like a puzzle. The intro on this album, “Shades of Blue”, was the last song on the project. I knew I needed an intro and was going into those sessions with the intent. Nothing sounded cool until I went through the songs that I had stacked up. In “Shades of Blue”, there’s a line where I say, “We gon’ make it through different shades of blue.” The last song on the project, “White Chocolate Chips,” I say in the chorus, “The blues went bliss.” I wrote that way after and didn't even know those went together. 

It’s so cool to have a catalog of ideas and then get to make the connections. It must tell you a lot about yourself, too.

Absolutely. That's why Picture Day is a great title. I'm obsessed with being able to look back at a moment in time. Pictures are nice, but I want to be able to capture a memory with sounds. Every song on this album is truly how I feel. If I were to put headphones up to my body, this album is how it would sound. That's what's beautiful about it. For example, “Bettin On Me” sounds like a soundtrack to my life. It speaks to the producers too, because it's one thing to be like, “Yo, I'm making cool stuff,” but to articulate an idea and a producer to be able to capture it, that blows my mind.

The production on the album is insane. Knowing now that some of these songs are from different times of your life, it’s impressive how cohesive it is.

The reason why I was able to have that cohesiveness is from working with Nick Sylvester. Even when the songs were skeletons, he'd ask me questions like “What were you really trying to convey in this song? What is the overall message that you want people to take away from this?” From there, it allowed us to build around that and make sure there wasn't anything missing. For example, on “Bettin On Me”, there's a part on the bridge where it kind of sounds like it's underwater. I wanted that to reflect a flow state. When I'm in a flow state, my head gets really hot and I can't hear anything else besides my heart beating, which is how that bridge feels. I was so happy to be able to articulate that. 

How do you even explain that? Being able to communicate with a producer who understands what you're trying to say is such a gift. 

It’s hit or miss because I don't really produce like that. I can only contemplate the guitar. There's times in a session where I pray to God they understand what I’m talking about. It’s like a marriage with some of these producers. Moving to LA and having a bunch of meetings and sessions with producers, it's almost like speed dating. It’s not always going to be a match. Those sessions get really intimate and vulnerable. When you find the producer that speaks a language you can't even speak with words, it's like, “Okay, I'm gonna keep you.”

What’s your songwriting process? 

I'll show you. [Pulls out his phone to show me an infinite amount of voice notes] I just do this all day, every day since as long as I can remember. The beautiful thing about doing that is I could forget about something and I have a day where I go back and be like, “Oh shit, this was actually really crazy.” It’s all about how I title them too: Trust me, you might not hear that first, but keep listening.

I don't like having a session unless we talk for at least an hour or two. If I'm not going to be super hands-on with producing, the least I can do is try to bare my soul to give you stuff to work with. I try to stay open. I've worked with some great people that are able to hear something that I didn't and motivate me to do another take. There's always new things to learn. There are certain sessions where I’m with another artist and they create in a totally different way than me, but it might give me insight into how I can try something different. I recently read Possibilities, an autobiography from Herbie Hancock. One of his big songs came later in his career and what he was trying to get across was how he just stayed open. He had a session where he was the oldest guy in the room, but he stayed open. He didn't know if it was going to be a great session, but it's the curiosity that kept him in it. Not losing that spark to just create. 

The album reflects that, the way it sounds and the topics, it feels like a very open project to me. I would love to talk about “I Wish”, which is one of my favorites. You have so many options on this album, why did you choose this one as a single?  

I recorded that with Jeff Hazin and Nick Ferraro in Toronto. It was January of 2025 and our session was the same day that the LA fires started. It was such weird timing. Here I am in Toronto, sitting with them, looking at my phone, and watching LA burn just feeling hopeless. All I could think about was how I wished I could help, but I couldn’t. That's what sparked the song. That baseline is so fat which, coming off “Shades of Blue”, it’s like “Okay, this is different. You rolling with it?” 

“Hot Streak” is another hit. How was the Tommy Newport feature born? 

We have a bunch of mutuals. Shoutout two fresh, they’ve both produced for us a lot. Tommy is another Midwest guy, so it just kind of made sense from that standpoint. I love his voice. I think he's phenomenal. It just had to happen. 

And what about Sherwyn on “Lights Down Low”?

He's an incredible artist, incredible producer, your favorite artist’s favorite artist. He does a lot of stuff for Duckwrth, him and his brother do a lot of stuff for Teddy Swims. They're some of my favorite people to have sessions with. I feel the most comfortable with them. We had just finished tour, so I was dropping off some stuff at his house. He was playing me some songs when he played that one. The chorus was already on it. He did it in such a flyaway. He was like, “Yo, you can have that one.” And I was just like, “What? This is a crazy song.” To me, that was him thanking me for taking him on tour. I just ran with it. We had a session where we were piecing it together and there was so much energy in the room. I'm always thinking about the live shows. There's a sick guitar solo in there. I performed it for the first time opening for BigXthaPlug in Denver about a week or two ago. I was excited to see how the crowd would react to it and I had people coming up asking, “What is this song?” 

How did you decide on “The Get Back” being the lead single, to introduce the whole album journey? 

A little bit of my ego, in a healthy way. Nobody really knows I rap unless you’ve come to a show. “The Get Back” is a song that's always been in my live set. It would always make people tilt their head because they didn't see it coming. So, I couldn't wait to get that one out. It speaks to certain homies I came up with back in Oklahoma who watched me switch up my style. It’s an ode to how I started. I have a line in there while I say, “Shoot the shit with Uncle Ron.” When I was living in Dallas, I stayed with my Uncle Ronnie and I would tell him and everybody at my job, “I'm not going to work here long because I do music.” My uncle would be like, “Stop saying that to these people, this is a good job!” It makes me think about that time in my life and we laugh about it now. 

This album's so personal, as a debut album should be, but I love hearing all of the anecdotes. It really feels like a map to your soul.

Absolutely. That's what's trippy about music in general. It's funny you even worded it that way because when I first started putting out music here in LA, Sylvester was like, “Yo, send me maybe 200 of just your favorite songs.” 

200 is a crazy amount.

Right? He was like, “This is a portal to your life.” I think that whole concept is crazy. When I listen back to this album, it does something to me. I can hear my own soul. 

“Tornado Alley” stood out to me as one of the most personal tracks. What does having that song on your debut album mean to you? 

“Granny on the porch, like nothing wrong.” Sometimes I thought that she predicted the weather. If you can live in Oklahoma and get through tornado season, you can make it anywhere. It’s to the point where people go out and watch the ‘naders. I think that's a beautiful way to accept death. My meemaw, and my mom does it now too, they just sit on the porch and sometimes they'll even just stand there and look out [at the tornadoes]. And as a kid, that used to scare me. When I thought, “How can I make a song that speaks to what Oklahoma means to me?” It's tornadoes. A song about what you would do in that situation. There’s something very Americana about that. 

Talk to me about “White Chocolate Chips” being the final track. 

The whole album is me going through the different “Shades of Blue.” In life, it's not necessarily about what happens to you, it’s about how you handle it. That's what I was trying to get across on this album. There's a “shade of blue” to each song on this album. “I Wish” is inherently sad, but I'm dancing through the sadness. “Give It To Me Straight” is an argument with someone. “White Chocolate Chips” is when you get out of your head, go back to the party and realize that everybody was waiting on you. Your family's there, everybody's good. “The blues went bliss.” 

It sounds like the final song you'd play at a show.

I would like it to be, yeah. I have a line in there where I say, “I get a warm feeling from this.” I belong here. Writing that lyric for somebody to repeat is very important. Growing up, I always envied what we’d call “civilian kids” as someone moving from army base to army base. I've always wanted to say that.

If someone were to listen to this album for the first time, what’s the ideal setting?

Maybe on a walk or in your car, driving around. Wherever there's life. Wherever there's water. I like a walk. When I tell people I get 10,000 steps in a day, it sounds like a lot. But that's pretty much 3 albums. That's how I view it. A lot of my music is light driven, so wherever there's light – internally or out in the world. 

Who are your OnesToWatch? 

Sherwyn is incredible, I love him. Casper Sage is incredible. Steph Simon from Oklahoma, he's incredible. I love this guy named Leon Knight. He's funny, but he’s a real rock star. He's goddamn Rick James reincarnated. 

Listen to Picture Day below: