Ron Pope Releases New Album 'American Man, American Music'

Nashville-based platinum recording artist Ron Pope has released his latest LP, American Man, American Music, via Brooklyn Basement Records. For Pope, the road was his ticket to a different life. From the time he was a teenager, the New Jersey-born, Georgia-raised songwriter was on tour, playing some form of rock, country, or soul with his buddies. Pope has been doing that for more than half of his life, visiting every corner of this country (along with many others) in the process. That experience defines how he views the world: the man he’s become, the musical community he’s built, the unforgiving passage of time, and the complicated truths at the heart of American life. 

“I never really felt at home anywhere growing up,” Pope recalls. “For a long time, living on the road felt tailor-made for someone like me. And then I found love, grew up, and developed a sense of home centered around that love. But America is a character in my personal story in a way that it might not be for other people.” It’s a long road to that state of contentment, though. American Man, American Music reaches back to a time of humiliating gigs in Georgia bars and long stretches of making trouble with friends before the complexities of adult life started to kick in. Then Pope falls in love, gets dealt some crushing losses, and begins to take a closer look at the struggles of his community, like swaths of blue-collar areas decimated by opioid addictions. 

Pope gives a clear-eyed examination of that story in American Man, American Music. It’s an ambitious project that uses the touchstones of his sometimes-wayward journey to ask big questions. Don't be misled by the title. He’s an American and his guitar-driven roots rock is decidedly American, but this isn't some exercise in macho bluster meant to exclude anyone. Instead, it’s a grand statement on survival, love, and resilience, along with a dawning understanding of how far a dream can take you. In Pope’s case, that’s pretty damn far.

His parents were just teenagers when he came along, and the family struggled mightily to make ends meet. That hardscrabble, hand-to-mouth upbringing shaped him in countless ways, imbuing him with a blue-collar sensibility and empathy that would stick with him well past the time when he had to wake up before school to unload semi-trucks. It would hit him like whiplash after he became a platinum-selling artist with “A Drop in the Ocean” a few years later. 

At the start of Pope’s musical journey, he was just a child—scraping by and finding his way into trouble seemingly everywhere he went. He remembers that period of his life, with a mixture of nostalgia and relief, in the album-opening track “Nobody’s Gonna Make It Out Alive.” A groove-heavy, fiddle-laced rocker, the song roams from Florida’s sandy beaches to empty bars in nowhere Georgia, a blur of late nights and humiliating gigs. Pope admits it wasn’t all pretty, but concludes that you have to  try to live without regrets, even if things get hairy.  

As part of his passage into adulthood, Pope really began to wrestle with the definition of being an adult. “What’s the measure of a man,” he asks in “I’m Not the Devil,” but doesn’t try to answer it. That’s an individual interrogation, and everyone has to find out for themselves. “When I was learning to write songs, the biggest question was, ‘Who am I?’” he says. “Now I know who I am. But the question now is ‘What does that mean?’”  

Through it all, Pope’s empathy comes through in the album’s open-hearted messages: we all deserve to have a place to call home, we all deserve to have a shot at building a life, and we all have a family, whether blood or chosen. “This is an ode to the life I'm living now,” Pope says, “the journey it took me to get here and all the people I've known and loved along the way.” 

American Man, American Music is available on vinyl, CD, and digital downloads HERE. Pope will kick off the North American leg of his “Neon and Glass World Tour” with an appearance on NPR’s Mountain Stage in West Virginia on February 16th, with stops planned in Chicago, Toronto, NYC, Nashville, and more. Andrea von Kampen, Thunderstorm Artis, and Denitia will provide opening support. 

NEON AND GLASS WORLD TOUR DATES 

2/16/25 - Mountain Stage - Morgantown, WV

2/20/2025 - Old Rock House - St. Louis, MO^ 

2/21/2025 - Lincoln Hall - Chicago, IL^ 

2/22/2025 - Turf Club - St. Paul, MN^ 

2/24/2025 - Vivarium - Milwaukee, WI^ 

2/25/2025 - Hi-Fi - Indianapolis, IN^ 

2/26/2025 - Beachland Ballroom & Tavern - Cleveland, OH^ 

2/28/2025 - Ludlow Garage - Cincinnati, OH^ 

3/1/2025 - Mr. Smalls Theatre - Pittsburgh, PA^ 

3/2/2025 - Horseshoe Tavern - Toronto, ON^ 

3/4/2025 - The Iron Horse - Northampton, MA^ 

3/5/2025 - The Foundry - Philadelphia, PA** 

3/7/2025 - The Sinclair - Cambridge, MA** 

3/8/2025 - Racket NYC - New York, NY** 

3/9/2025 - The Atlantis - Washington DC** 

3/11/2025 - The Southern Cafe & Music Hall - Charlottesville, VA^^ 

3/12/2025 - Motorco Music Hall - Durham, NC^^ 

3/14/2025 - Terminal West - Atlanta, GA^^ 

3/15/2025 - The Basement East - Nashville, TN^^ 

^w/ Andrea von Kampen 

**w/ Thunderstorm Artis 

^^w/ Denitia 

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