Musician.  Sailor.  Providence.

“Rock Beautiful bottom” coming March 20

Stream “Funny Goodbye” everywhere now

After fifteen clumsy years on the road trying to establish himself as a seventies-style acoustic singer-songwriter, Jerry Pines finally burned out and walked away. Then he did what most Rhode Islanders do — he returned to Rhode Island. He obtained a Captain’s License from the Coast Guard and got a quiet, respectable job driving ferries around Narragansett Bay. But despite his intentions, the music never stopped.

“I was ready to leave all that rock and roll behind,” he says. “I loved showing up to the harbor at 6 am.  I still do. But whenever I was alone, I was still working on songs in my head.”

Those songs would become Rock Beautiful Bottom.

The album was recorded and produced in Los Angeles by Jerry’s former bandmate and composer-producer Jon Monroe (I Am A Killer, Marvel’s 616).

“Jon and I had been exchanging demos for years. He convinced me to visit his studio in LA and have one more go at it. He’s got this incredible sonic palette and a crazy collection of instruments. By myself, I would have just made a Gordon Lightfoot record.  He turned it into something wildly different.”

The album is an unflinching look at growing up, letting go, and moving on. The characters stare at the sea, drink when it’s no longer fun, and question every life decision they’ve ever made.

But it’s not all bleak — some moments are downright euphoric — thanks largely to string arrangements by Grammy-winning composer Steph Economou (Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: Dawn of Ragnarök, Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie).

“We actually had a ton of fun. I got to play my ronroco. We discovered the electronic bagpipe.  One morning I walked in to find Jon recording a coffee mug with a xylophone mallet. We both had this ‘anything goes’ mentality, and it took us to some really interesting places.”

But at its core, Rock Beautiful Bottom is a humble folk record about redemption and transformation. However low its characters may sink, they always find a way to persevere.

“I’d sum it up like this,” Jerry says. "Keep your eyes on the horizon — the sun’ll be up any minute.”