A Friend Named Palo

Ryan Pickard is a Bend native and extremely talented singer/songwriter who explores dream-pop and alternative indie under the moniker Palo Sopraño. A little under two weeks out from his next performance at Silver Moon Brewing on Friday, Feb. 2, Sopraño and I met at Duda's Billiard's Bar to catch up on his latest music and the origins of his bedroom-pop experiment that began over 15 years ago.

"I've always been around music, I'm from a very musical family, he said. "But I got really inspired when I was like 10 or 11; honestly, I think being a rockstar is everyone's dream." Sopraño said.

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Courtesy Ryan Pickard

"I started on bass, moved to guitar a year after, picked up the drums and a little piano," he recalled. "Immediately, it was like holy shit, I'm obsessed with this. I found the thing I like to do. I try to get a little better every day, but it's all about playing for fun, not taking it too seriously."

Taking it too seriously is precisely what Sopraño believes got in his way when he was first starting out as a teenager, uploading original songs to YouTube and Facebook. While the responses were good, including thumbs-up and positive reviews in the comments section, Sopraño could not shake that something was not going the way he envisioned.

"I was looking at my Facebook page and it said Ryan Pickard Music, and it didn't feel right at all, so I'm sitting in a room and I just had a piece of paper and wrote it down, Palo Sopraño," he recalled. "It was crazy because within like two minutes there was a ring at the doorbell and I answered the door to two Mormons and they asked me my name and I just said, 'Palo,' and that kind of cemented it."

Under the alias of Soprano, this bluesy Bend boy has released two full albums, "Flower Girl" from 2017 and the alternative sway-rock "Mood Ring," released in 2018, with a deep-track list of b-sides, features and singles soaked in his signature spacey sound.

On the recording process, he likens parts of his song making to the one-two combination of taking family photos; the idea of treating one song very seriously and then throwing together something fun and explorative with zero expectations can lead to something inspired and meaningful.

"It's like doing a silly one," Soprano jokes.

On songs such as "Igloo," from "Flower Girl," Soprano's soulful howls beg for precious love with a sounds-simple-is-actually-super-complex chord structure that evokes the energy of Buddy Holly if he wrote songs for the Modern Lovers. On the 2023 summer single "WWE," Soprano takes the premise of enjoying wrestling and infuses it with party spirit, creating something wholly laid-back yet bouncing with spectacular guitar licks and grooves.

"Palo Sopraño is a fun, silly name, but it's also a vessel to create freely and explore because it's not attached to my name. Having a moniker kind of gives you freedom to be as weird as you want to be, I can be fearless with what I do," he explained.

The songwriter explained that his creative approach has been something of an evolution; as he has grown, so have his tastes and practices as a musician. "I think I used to try to write songs with the pen and paper with an acoustic guitar, and the songs kinda sucked," Sopraño said with a laugh. "Maybe that was because I was 15 or 17 and I wasn't sure of what I wanted to say. But now, opening up and just throwing in words, I feel like I can create more from the ether rather than try to force some statement, those things come naturally.

"It sounds so cliché, but I do feel like my life revolves around music," Sopraño — who, in full disclosure, is related to my girlfriend — mused. "Even if I wasn't trying to pursue it professionally or put songs out, I'd still be making music. It's just fun, dude."