Pickin' Up the Pieces (song)

This article is about the Poco song. For other songs with similar titles, see Picking Up the Pieces (disambiguation).

"Pickin' Up the Pieces" is the first song recorded by pioneer country rock band Poco. Written by founding member Richie Furay, the song was the title track of Poco's first album.

History

After Buffalo Springfield broke up, members Richie Furay and Jim Messina decided to make a band with pedal steel guitar 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."

In popular culture

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