"Pickin' Up the Pieces" is the first song recorded by pioneer

country rock Country rock is a genre of music which fuses rock and country. It was developed by rock musicians who began to record country-flavored records in the late 1960s and early 1970s. These musicians recorded rock records using country themes, vocal s ...

band

Poco Poco was an American country rock band originally formed in 1968 after the demise of Buffalo Springfield. Guitarists Richie Furay and Jim Messina, former members of Buffalo Springfield, were joined by multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young, bassi ...

. Written by founding member

Richie Furay Paul Richard Furay (born May 9, 1944) is an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, and Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member (with Buffalo Springfield). He is best known for forming the bands Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Bruc ...

, the song was the title track of Poco's first album.

History

After

Buffalo Springfield Buffalo Springfield was a rock band formed in Los Angeles by Canadian musicians Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin and American musicians Stephen Stills and Richie Furay. The group, widely known for the song "For What It's Worth", relea ...

broke up, members Richie Furay and Jim Messina decided to make a band with

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

player Rusty Young, with whom they had recorded the Furay-penned Springfield song "Kind Woman". This was Furay's first Poco-intended song. According to Young, "Richie played 'Pickin' Up The Pieces' for us back in 1967. ... It was obviously a comment on leaving one thing behind and carrying on," referring to the breakup of Buffalo Springfield and the new beginnings with Poco.

Attitude and Impact

The single, though not commercially successful, was nonetheless undoubtedly instrumental in the creation of the then-new genre country rock. Richie Furay said of "Pickin' Up the Pieces": "To me it summarized the attitude we wanted to convey in our music: good, wholesome & positive. There was so much negativity going on in the world in the early 70s and it needed a refreshing sound. The country rock sound we were creating, would be it. We were innovators, pioneering the way for a whole new 'Southern California sound' that many groups who followed would capitalize on."
Richie Furay on Poco songs

In popular culture

The song appears in the Mod Squad episode "Death of Wild Bill Hannachek"

References

{{Poco 1969 songs Poco songs