On the Rise
Tarragon

"I must admit, you just have to bear with me because I'm not particularly a good talker," he tells BEST FIT over video call from his home in Coventry. “I struggle with this side of things.”

It's a disarming opening from someone whose second album Home at Cofa's features some of the most articulate musical collaborators around: Shara Nova from My Brightest Diamond, Dave Hartley and Robbie Bennett from The War on Drugs, and members of the orchestral ensemble yMusic. The disconnect between Pickard's self-perception and what he's achieved musically speaks to something deeper: a lifetime of feeling misunderstood while creating intricate sonic landscapes that connect effortlessly.

"It wasn't just autism," he explains. "I struggled to string two sentences together when I was younger. It was hard for me to grasp what it was to connect with people. People would look at me and think I was a bit of a weird guy, but every time I would play music in front of the whole school, I remember teachers around on the corners of the room looking at each other, thinking, ‘Damn, where's this come from? Who is this guy?’ And that was the thing that really propelled me to really go for this."

Music arrived unexpectedly in the Pickard family home. There were no instruments, just teenage car journeys soundtracked by Supertramp, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Nick Drake. “Dad used to play those records on the way to games,” he recalls, explaining how he was raised in “a very football-oriented household” and was at one point scouted as a potential striker for clubs across the Midlands. “I was very regimented and routine when I was younger, particularly going to football games, and the music would really drive me to play well, to mentally prepare me. None of my teammates were listening to those artists, though, so it was weird parking up where the football pitch was, getting out and people would look at you like, what are you listening to, man?”

The shift from football to music happened organically, almost accidentally. At nine or ten, Pickard was in the back garden doing keepie-uppies and shooting against the fence when something changed. "I remember, instead of the plant pots being the goal, I just created this makeshift drum kit with them. Mum and dad came out and were like, ‘What are you doing?’” 

His parents recognised something important – their son, who struggled in social environments, had found another language – and sent him to drum lessons. Dave Grohl from Nirvana became a focal point for Pickard, but drums lasted just two months before he moved to guitar, where he could write his own songs. “I was never really drawn to playing other people's music,” he says. “I loved listening to other people's music, but playing it was different. I think it was because of the way I was, the routine of things.”

At 18, Pickard ruptured a ligament in one knee and his promising football career ended. Music, which had always run parallel, became the primary path. He still holds a season ticket for Coventry City ("I love the game, I miss it") but acknowledges that music became “this ultimate feeling, this thing where I could really sell myself in words, in stories, putting them into words to play them.”

The transition is documented in Home at Cofa's closing track "It's Time We Go Now (Trading Hearts)", co-written with his father – though Pickard Sr. didn't want credit. “It's basically about the transition from football into music and how he thought football was always the thing for me. Then the transition into music, and how music was always the thing that made sense in the end.”

It's a fitting conclusion to an album deeply rooted in Coventry, titled after Cofa's tree, the tree from which the city was believed to have been named. "The album is very much about where I'm from," he explains. “I was born and raised here, still live here with mum and dad. It just felt fitting to call it Home at Cofa's.”

What makes Tarragon remarkable isn't just Pickard's personal journey but his ability to attract collaborators who elevate his vision. Since childhood, he’s felt particularly drawn to session players and sidemen rather than frontpeople, which he suggests could be related to his autism. "I've always been drawn to not necessarily the main person from bands, the main leader,” he explains. 

His connection to The War on Drugs' Robbie Bennett and Dave Hartley – both of whom also featured on the first Tarragon album, 2022’s I’ve Just Seen a Scene – began through social media. "I just sent them a message,” he says. “It never felt like I was trying hard to get them to be part of it. It was just representing myself to them organically, sending them songs. It just happened really naturally and we struck up a friendship online." Though he admires The War on Drugs frontman Adam Granduciel, he's more drawn to the nuances of the band’s instrumental architects. “I've always been drawn to textures and colours," he explains.

For the song "Kiss Me on the Line", Pickard knew he wanted Shara Nova's soprano as the call-and-response counterpoint. “Shara happens to be one of my favourite singers in the whole world,” he says, explaining how he first discovered her through her work with Sufjan Stevens. “She has this characteristic that not many other singers have. Shara was definitely the one.”

Members of yMusic, the orchestral ensemble who perform with Paul Simon (and who Nova has previously written for), appear courtesy of a live experience etched in Pickard’s mind at Eaux Claires Festival in Wisconsin, founded by Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner. “I went to see John Prine and Paul Simon there in 2017 and I remember it pouring down rain and just being like, ‘Damn, this is amazing.’ Paul Simon played 'Sound of Silence' as the encore with yMusic, and that's how I came across C.J. Camerieri [trumpet, French horn] and Mark Dover [clarinet].”

Another Vernon-related formative experience came at 16, when Pickard and his dad went to see Bon Iver at Hammersmith Apollo. "That was the first time I really admired hearing orchestral elements incorporated with traditional instrumentation,” he recalls. “There were, like, 10 people on stage and it was insane. I was probably one of the youngest people in that room."

These days, when Pickard isn't rehearsing with his band – school friends discovered through Day of Pop, a programme bringing kids from different schools across the Midlands together to play music – he's a postman for Royal Mail. "One of the main reasons why I do Royal Mail is because of the finishing time,” he says. “Obviously, I'd rather be touring the world with my music but let's be realistic, right?" The postman job keeps him grounded in Coventry's reality, he says. "You come to terms with always seeing things, good and bad. That's inspiration as well." 

He's philosophical about his hometown's reputation. "Many people think of Coventry as this ugly industrial estate, just a concrete jungle. It's a shame. The problem is we were bombed in the Second World War and didn't really make an effort to bring it back. But there's so many beautiful historic buildings here. There's a very diverse music scene: Two Tone, The Specials came from here. It's just one of these places where you have to live here for a considerable amount of time to understand what makes it. There's a lot to give."

Album highlight "Hail Hollow" emerged from mowing his grandmother's lawn at 18 or 19. "She had a beautiful house right next to a farm, very scenic. I remember stopping what I was doing and standing in the middle of the lawn, looking around being like, ‘God, this feeling… I just don't want this feeling to end. I almost wanted to write a lullaby." His grandmother has since passed away. The song preserves what couldn't be saved, abstract and elusive lyrically, “about not wanting to lose a specific feeling.”

Pickard describes his music as “a bit of a whirlwind in the sense of it not being one specific thing.” “There's a lot going on,” he says. “These orchestral arrangements blended with electronics and traditional instrumentation like guitar and piano. It's expansive, but simple as well.”

For final mastering, he recruited Greg Calbi and Steve Fallone, who've worked with Bruce Springsteen, John Lennon, The Strokes, and Pet Shop Boys, among many others. “They mastered some of my favourite records of all time, including some iconic David Bowie records and a couple of Supertramp albums,” he says. “I wanted to use them because I knew they would understand what needed to happen to the songs. A lot of people perceive mastering as just a levels thing. It's not. Greg and Steve know how to keep things dynamic without exploding things.”

As for the stage name he’s chosen, Tarragon carries meaning beyond the kitchen herb. “It’s a polymorphic herb, which means it exists not in one form but multiple forms,” he explains. “The symbol means devotion, lasting interest, and involvement. I wanted the name to reflect all those things I was maybe going through and had to digest when I was younger.”

It's a name that encompasses transformation, from makeshift drum kits to professional studios, from footballer to songwriter, from outsiderhood to building a community of collaborators across continents. For someone who struggles with talking, Callum Pickard has found the most articulate possible voice, not in words but in the polymorphic, devotion-driven music that makes Tarragon far more than the sum of its unusual name.