Rockbites: The Strugglers’ Southern lo-fi tugs at the heartstrings

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April 2003 • Rockbites Alternative Daily

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The Strugglers’ Southern lo-fi tugs at the heartstrings
21 April 2003

Twenty-four year old, Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based Randy Bickford has now released a CD version of his quietly powerful 2002 album The New Room, previously available only on cassette. Unapologetically lo-fi, produced without a budget to speak of, both releases (the two offer rather different sets of song versions) are available directly from Bickford’s label, Richmond, Indiana-based Tract Records.
    Bickford was born Brice Randall Bickford II in the small “hick burg” (his words) of Danville, Virginia, where he returned last summer, after college in North Carolina followed by a couple of years in New York city, to record the new album. His friend Neil Allen of The Virginia Reel engineered most of the set at his digital 8-track home studio, with other friends contributing trumpet, piano, and pedal steel to what is otherwise a solo project.
    Bickford’s voice may remind you a bit of Willie Nelson, Tim Hardin, or Eddie Vedder, and his music—especially on LP track The Light And I—evokes the feel of Zuma-era Neil Young. The album is highly emotional, if understated. I asked him what moods he was trying to express on The New Room. “It would be easier to say what it does not express,” Bickford told Rockbites. “It does not express anger or resentment.”
    Bickford continues, “Many images in these songs were inspired by real things that happened, maybe by one person in particular, although I believe this was only because that person was so important to me at the time. But I always... [try] to do something with what I have experienced and not merely confess it.”
    Overall, with musical heart more than making up for production minimalism, the set comes across to me as something of a down tempo, alt-country answer to the more rock-centric but equally gloomy East River Pipe.
    A heavy sadness and nostalgia may permeate The New Room, but it is quiet beauty and stillness that linger in the air as the music fades. Asked if he sees himself as a sad person, Bickford says, “No more so than anyone else.” | The Strugglers | | Tract Records | | The Strugglers on MP3.com | | CD from Insound | | top of page |

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