The Square is the “historic” area of Seattle, which means it has all the old brick buildings which haven’t yet been converted into mixed use/luxury living urban epicenters. Although most of them have already made the switch, there are still a fair number of historic buildings in Pioneer Square hanging on to their dilapidated, original glory. Throw in the cobbled streets and the overall lack of neon and available parking, and Pi Square fits the “historic neighborhood” template fairly well. 

Once the sun goes down, most people probably think of Pioneer Square as the destination for drunken sports fans, and in 2012 that is certainly true. Its location next to all the football/baseball/footballsoccer stadiums makes it the prime spot to find wasted Mariners fans crying over cheap draft beer and puking in filthy alleyways. It’s also the city’s most established host to Amateur Night for clubgoers (although Belltown is gaining fast in this category).

But here’s the thing: Pioneer Square used to be the most vibrant neighborhood in Seattle for live music. When I first got to Seattle proper and was hunting for a scene with other musicians, it was where we went: The Central, The Swan Café, The OK Hotel, and later The Colorbox, The Fenix, and The Velvet Elvis. Even marginal Pioneer Square venues had their own good runs as live music venues: the Old Timer’s, Doc Maynard’s and Dutch Ned’s all hosted a lot of musicians over the years. If you wanted a break from the racket you would go around the corner and grab a drink at the Pioneer Square Hotel Bar, which felt like a big green room for all the bands who just played or were waiting to play at some other joint in the neighborhood. After the show wrapped up you might grab a bite at Trattoria Mitchelli, a decent Italian joint that stayed open all night and served piles of alcohol-absorbing, greasy pasta drenched in tomato sauce and capers.

Every phone pole in town used to be plastered an inch thick with show posters, and most of the shows were happening somewhere in Pi Square. All the grunge bands who eventually got famous and (for better or worse) defined Seattle for the rest of the world played at The Central, while all the later-era bands who came up played at The OK Hotel or The Colorbox. I worked at a music store in the neighborhood for a few years, and many times after work I’d just walk down the block to see a show, play a show, or work at a show doing sound at one of the venues. I worked at and saw so many memorable shows at The Velvet Elvis, it would be difficult to recount them all. And I played the Colorbox so many times, some of the bartenders thought I worked there.

Times change, and neighborhoods change along with them. Seattle built a couple of monstrous new sports arenas, and as Pioneer Square blossomed into a neighborhood of historic sports bars, the music scene moved elsewhere. Belltown went upscale, Capitol Hill grew up and Ballard blew up. But I still have a soft spot in my heart for Pioneer Square, and I must say it feels kind of nice to be heading there for a show one more time. 

This show is the CD Release bash for my old friend Steve Bergstrom’s band Dapper Jones. Steve and I literally grew up on the same street in Renton, and it’s both wonderful and kind of strange that we’ve floated around the Seattle music scene for all these years, playing in bands—and yet this is the first time we’ve ever shared the stage.

The first video for our new EP is completed and ready to release. All we need now is to actually release the EP itself, which is taking some time while we get the artwork to our liking. In the meantime, we’re stockpiling good content to accompany the songs. But for now: Pioneer Square!

Go Mariners/Sounders/Seahawks!

--Patrick

This week I saw a couple of things that really stuck with me and got me thinking about chemistry in collaborative endeavors.  The first was the new Van Halen video, for the first single from the recently-mostly-reformed lineup.  The song “Tattoo” is a pretty generic stomper, with a hatful of David Lee Roth’s usual vocal gimmicks and prancing, preening stagecraft, and a typically supple and dexterous guitar solo from Eddie.  Although the song didn’t suck quite so suckingly as I expected it to, I was still summarily unimpressed.  But the strangest thing about it was Michael Anthony’s absence.  Anthony, who was unceremoniously dumped and replaced by Eddie’s son Wolfgang in 2007, has apparently been enjoying his retirement from VH, palling around with Sammy Hagar and selling hot sauce.  But seeing and hearing Van Halen without Michael Anthony’s chugging, persistent bass lines and stratospherically high backing vocals was disorienting.  And somehow just wrong.

Not this guy.

The second bizarre moment came on Monday afternoon, when the Oklahoma City Thunder visited the TD Garden to take on the Boston Celtics.  As Celtics fans have been crying about for the last year, Danny Ainge shocked the NBA last February when he traded Kendrick Perkins to the Thunder.  At the time, the Celtics were in first place and looked like they were well on their way to one final run at a championship with their aging core of players.  But after the trade the Celtics fell apart, and without Perkins their toughness evaporated quickly along with their whole identity as a team.  They wound up getting lapped by the Miami Heat in the playoffs, in what will likely turn out to be the last gasp of a proud group of future Hall of Fame players whose careers are presently circling the drain.  Meanwhile, Perkins gave a young Oklahoma City team exactly what they needed: a tough guy who didn’t take any shit, played defense and let the other guys have the spotlight.  OKC wound up losing in the conference finals last season, then came out to start this year’s campaign like a house on fire.  Now they look like real championship contenders, while Boston looks old and washed up. 

On Monday night, Perkins returned to Boston for the first time since the trade.  Celtics fans gave him a long standing ovation, and the team showed a video tribute to his years as a Celtic before the game.  It was touching, and also a little awkward.  There is no rock and roll equivalent; Van Halen isn’t about to show a video montage of Michael Anthony’s best on stage moments as a warm up to their 2012 shows.  Then again, Michael Anthony isn’t about to jump on stage at a VH concert and kick the crap out of Eddie and Dave, which is basically what the Thunder did to the Celtics last Monday. 

We want this guy.

Maybe it’s just me (okay, almost certainly it’s just me), but I found myself struck by the similarities between these guys.  Both Michael Anthony and Kendrick Perkins are support players.  No one is giving Kendrick Perkins any points for graceful offensive execution, just like no one is going to put Michael Anthony on a pedestal for his elegant, artful soloing.  Both of these guys can look brutal out of context, whether you’re looking at Perkins’ stats for offensive efficiency or listening to one of Anthony’s remarkably atonal, blaring, seemingly endless stadium bass solos.  (There’s a reason the term “bass solo” is a much-derided cliché, and we have Michael Anthony to thank for it as much as anyone.)

But this is one area where bands and basketball teams are alike: it’s what they do together that counts.  By playing with a solid pocket, adding brilliant backing vocals and giving the more flamboyant Eddie and Dave plenty of room, Michael Anthony made Van Halen a much better band.  Just like Kendrick Perkins made the Celtics a much better team by adding great interior defense, solid rebounding, setting iron-hard screens and putting the occasional opposing player in a headlock. 

Without Perkins, the Celtics look more like an over the hill team that has lots of bark and little bite.  Without Michael Anthony, Van Halen looks more like a Van Halen tribute band with a scab bassist. 

Not this guy.

Now, maybe all this won’t matter to fans who want to hear “Hot For Teacher” bad enough to fork over $150 a ticket.  But it matters to me and I’ll bet it matters to most of us who saw the genuine VH article back in the day.  And after watching the Celtics get outplayed on their home floor, I think a lot of us fans suddenly feel like we’re watching the casino circuit version of this team, and not the arena-rocking real deal. 

In the immortal words of Jack Black: “that’s fuckin’ teamwork.”

--Patrick

When I made Crooks, Josh was the only other musician there with me most of the time, and his contributions to Explone—as a drummer, as a singer, and as a voice of (occasional) reason—have been absolutely vital. Josh left and then rejoined the band during the making of Dreamers/Lovers, and then raised his game to a new level during the recording of our new EP Telescope & Satellite. Now that we’re preparing to put out T&S, I was really looking forward to traveling and playing shows with Josh behind the kit once again.

So it is with considerable sadness that we announce Josh’s departure from Explone. Josh and his fantastic wife Catherine are moving to Colorado to pursue new career opportunities (the kind of careers that actually pay bills), and thus he is relinquishing the throne and leaving us with big shoes to fill. There is no drama and nothing but love between us. Kyle, Scott and I all wish Josh the very best and encourage him to stay out of any mandolin-sporting jam bands down in Boulder. On the bright side, Boulder has a lot going for it—including one of the best record stores in the world: Albums On The Hill.

Lucky for us, we share a rehearsal space and most of a lineup with Kyle’s main project Kirby Krackle. Thus it wasn’t a stretch to picture our buddy (and KK drummer) Nelson Estes behind the throne for Explone jams. Fortunately, when I spoke to Nelson and broached the idea he quickly agreed. So while we may be inching ever closer to a band identity crisis, we are a fully operational rock and roll unit once more. Nelson has been learning the songs and getting comfortable with the additional workload. And we’ve been taking the transition as an opportunity to absorb some new influences and hear our songs in a new way. Every combination of musicians contains subtle differences, and I’m certain Nelson will find ways to put his own stamp on Explone.

All that said: we’re gonna miss you, Josh. You’ve been a great friend, and a great source of inspiration, humor and wisdom over the past several years. Seattle’s loss is Boulder’s gain. Be well buddy.

Patrick

So earlier this year, when Kyle started planning his wedding and he asked all of us to jump in the phone booth and emerge as the World’s Greatest Wedding Band for the occasion, I had to take a deep breath. In a bizarre twist of fate, the playlist for Kyle’s 2011 nuptials didn’t look very different from the playlist for my university bands; in other words, LOTS of the 1980’s. He and his fiancée Kristin had selected a slew of hits: Fine Young Cannibals, Cyndee Lauper, Bon Jovi, Journey, etc. Kyle is a decade younger than I am, so it sort of made me wonder what the enduring cultural milestones of his generation were. But on the upside, at least I knew most of the songs.

I swallowed hard and sat down with my guitar to learn the first few songs. Still unsure about how we were going to pull this off, I dutifully comped the changes to “Rock With You” and “Take On Me” (which had the added degree of difficulty of not having any guitar on the original recording). Then I showed up to our first practice.

Part of the challenge of coordinating this event was figuring out how to assign responsibilities across the diverse personnel involved. Since we were effectively combining Explone and Kirby Krackle for the night, it left us with some easy decisions (guitar, bass, keyboards) and some difficult ones (drums, vocals). After a few minutes of thought, this became crystal clear, however: both Josh and Nelson are great drummers, but only one of them is a karaoke all-star and reigning World Champion of Borderline Inappropriate Stage Banter. Josh was born to be our lead vocalist.

As anyone who has seen Explone probably knows, Josh is six-foot-four, bearded, and no one’s idea of “feminine.” But he has some golden, blue-eyed soul pipes of the highest order, and very few living humans can reach the stratospherically high notes he is capable of sailing to. Confronted with the reality of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” on our setlist, I knew Josh would be our only hope in the vocal department.

Fortunately we had two other aces up our sleeves for this gig: Bryce and Scott. The 80’s, if you recall, were not really about guitar, at least not in the Top 40 radio realm. They were about a lot of synthesizers, a shit-ton of gated reverb on the snare drum samples, and insanely busy bass lines. For example, you might think a song like “Footloose” is a cakewalk—and you would be right, from the perspective of the guitar player, who basically just lamely flails around an A chord for four minutes. But for a bassist, that song is a fucking P90-X, Billy Blanks Tae Bo, Ultimate Cage Match to the Death workout. So many notes, so little time. And something like “Take On Me” can’t even get off the ground without a fire-breathing heathen of a keyboardist who eats 160 BPM arpeggios for breakfast. Fortunately for us, Scott and Bryce are exactly those guys.

The next few weeks of rehearsal were mostly Nelson and I kicking back while we watched Scott, Bryce and Josh work their asses off. As the songs started coming together, I succumbed to the inevitable nostalgic glee of shredding the guitar solo to “Don’t Stop Believin’” and singing “Livin’ On A Prayer” while Josh backed me up with high harmonies and a tambourine. Before I knew it, I was having a great time.

On the day of the wedding, I was stressed out. I was late, my equipment was breaking, and a long week of mishaps had my mind in a whirl. I tried to cool down, and thought about Kyle: one of my dearest friends, about to commit his whole life to another person ‘til death do them part, etc. etc. After a few moments of reflection (and a quick shot of whiskey smuggled into the groomsmen’s area) I regained my balance and got my shit together. The wedding was beautiful, and the reception started off great as well, with happy guests feasting away.

In the back of my mind I had been terrified that we were going to drive all the old people out of the room the second we started playing. I imagined a laborious, arthritic exodus of grandparents fleeing the sound of Bon Jovi like wounded antelope fleeing a hungry pride of lions. But as soon as we dropped the first notes of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” I could tell things were going to be all right. The dance floor packed, kids and old folks mixed it up deliriously, and for the next hour and a half I had the extremely pleasant experience of playing songs that everyone knew and everyone liked.

As Scott noted afterward, the thing about playing covers is that the concept sounds dreadful until you start, then you realize it’s so much fun. Every song immediately connects, and you don’t need to win anyone over because they’re all on your side from the get go. They want to like you and have a great time, and all you need to do is make it easy for them. Which we did, mostly thanks to Scott and Bryce’s proficiency and Josh’s absolute mastery of the vocals. Josh was fantastic, and if I ever want to start a synth-pop band and tour casinos, he’s the only guy I have in mind.

The next week when we got back to practicing Explone songs, it was a pleasure. But it was also a bit wistful, because we were all pretty high on the fun time we’d had with the wedding band. The concept of trying to blow an audience away with a song they’ve never heard before is a neat challenge. But fresh off the experience of playing a whole set of instantly familiar songs it makes you think differently.

Anyhow, we’re about to revert to form and looking forward to it. Explone plays at The Sunset on 10/20, with our friends Goodbye Heart and Half Acre Day. As many times as I’ve played The Sunset (lots and lots), this will actually be the first time with my own band…so look out.

Our new EP Telescope & Satellite is all mastered and ready to go, just as soon as we devise the ultimate artwork and packaging experience for your enjoyment. And map out the ultimate promotional strategy. And pay off the credit card from the recording. Okay, I’ll be honest: it will take a little while. But we’re gonna drop it as soon as we can, and the music is the best stuff we’ve ever done, we promise.

More news as we create it. Be well.

--Patrick

Ten years ago, I turned off the TV and went on a hike in the mountains. The sun was shining brilliantly, the meadows were alive with wildflowers, and my roommate and I had the trail all to ourselves. After a few miles, the silence became a little eerie. Not a plane in the sky, nor any of their cumulus footprints: the contrails I had come to love for their poetic and fragile linearity. The wind was still, the birds all huddled on low branches as if in some kind of solemn acknowledgement of the sadness that day bore, and still bears. Only on this day, ten years later, my sadness is a little deeper and my hopefulness seems a little more remote.

The last decade has given me a wealth of personal benefits: a rich life both professionally and artistically, great memories with friends and family, the chance to fall truly, deeply in love with someone I never knew I’d meet. If I look within my immediate sphere of awareness and influence, I have everything to be thankful for and nothing to complain about. But if I look beyond the comfortable bubble I live in, I see things that break my heart. I see America in 2011.

If you had asked me on September 10^th, 2001 what I thought about America and her place in the world, I would have answered with equal parts ignorance and confidence. You could call this hubris, but to me it’s not the same thing. I think hubris is when you should know better, but you choose to defy reason. As of September 10^th, 2001, I really didn’t know better. Our economy was on top. Our society clearly had, and still has, the greatest surplus of individual liberty anywhere on the planet. In the abstract I knew things were fucked up in other parts of the world, but I hadn’t put any of those issues in context yet, or tried to fit them into my understanding of the world. I had no real grasp of American foreign policy, of the role religion played (and plays) in politics, of how our bottomless need for cheap energy influences everything. And most painfully, I had no clue how adversity sometimes leads not to cogent analysis and improved self-awareness, but to doubling down on xenophobia, nativism, reactionary “patriotism” and magical thinking. By no means am I claiming to be an expert on these topics now, but I’ve certainly received some education on all of them.

As I hiked that trail on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, I felt a lot of things. Anger was certainly one. I was horrified by the things I’d just seen, and I yearned for a blood-for-blood accounting. I wanted restoration through destruction. In a perfect indication of my state of fucked-upedness, I imagined some kind of healing through violence. I went to a dark place, the place that allows people—both individually and as a society—to lose their moral compass. 9/11 poured a lot of poison into my bloodstream. I think it did this to our whole nation. And I think we’re still sick from it.

In the past decade, we’ve had to endure some minor inconveniences to our daily lives: taking off our shoes at airports, trying to memorize the color-coding scheme for terror alerts, knowing implicitly that some government bureaucrat in some dim office somewhere is probably scanning our email and watching our library card. We’ve had to listen to shitty, pseudo-patriotic songs from country artists at sporting events, with lyrics that sounded like rejects from the Hallmark card thinktank. We’ve had to see bald eagles and American flags emblazoned upon every available flat surface, usually with sentimental slogans like “never forget” scrolled across the bumper sticker, or commemorative plate, or t-shirt, or seat cover, or beer cozy, or whatever the fuck it was. We’ve had to listen to a noisy handful of nutjobs who claim over and over that 9/11 was an inside job, who examine the videos frame by frame looking for evidence of holograms or military aircraft or hidden bombs planted in the buildings. What we haven’t seen is any real examination of United States foreign policy, or any real discussion of why we were attacked and what the terrorists hoped to accomplish. Instead we just accepted the bullshit premise that “they hate us for our freedoms” and we screen-printed some bald eagles on our t-shirts and we went on with our lives, as if watching football on Sundays, drinking beer and letting our female population vote was the whole reason for the “War on Terror.” And we were at war, and in fact we were losing it the whole time, and we didn’t even know it.

Ten years later, our military has been overextended and taxed to the breaking point in nation-building efforts that face long odds of ever being even moderately successful. The cost in blood and treasure has been immense, and the end isn’t anywhere in sight. Our brave servicemen and women have given everything they have for little gain and with even less justification. We’ve lost thousands of lives and untold dollars trying to bring Jeffersonian democracy to lands and peoples on the other side of the world, while here at home our hearts have hardened and our rancor intensified to the point that the very same Jeffersonian principles are in danger. Our concept of “American Exceptionalism” has been perverted into a foolhardy pipe dream of divine sanction for our way of life, and the attacks of 2001 have been reframed as a clash of civilizations—or more accurately, of religions—and the preamble to the final confrontation between Christianity and Islam. Many of us have little to no understanding of our actual foreign policy in the Middle East and what its ramifications are; we just want to go about our lives and get by. In the process we’ve pretty easily bought into the fallacy that the War on Terror is a cultural and/or religious conflict and that we’re at war with people who want to kill us because we listen to Kanye West, play video games and eat McRib sandwiches.

In the meantime, with no tangible enemy to lash out against, we’ve turned the poison in our bloodstreams on each other. We can’t defeat an enemy that doesn’t exist, and since we’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge this, we look for the missing enemy in each other. American Exceptionalism based on tolerance and acceptance of differences has given way to a kind of American Exclusionism, fueled by our desire to stake out the “real” America from our fellow citizens. It doesn’t take too long in any argument about politics for charges of “un-Americanism” to get thrown back and forth. Our national conversation is veneered with intolerance, with derision, with religious prejudice and with xenophobia. I feel like I wake up in an uglier, meaner America now than I did ten years ago, and I don’t like it.

Today I’m not sure if I want my country back, or if I never really knew it before the events of the last decade. I am moved to tears by the stories of the victims and their families on that day, and by the courageous men and women who rushed to help with no thought for their own safety. Their hard, realistic heroism makes this anniversary bittersweet, and their example stands in stark relief against the make-believe world we’ve lived in since. 9/11 broke our moral compass, it sent us into senseless wars based on false premises, hardened us against each other and made us afraid of phony dangers like Sharia Law, while blinding us to real hazards like pretending torture is okay because the bad guys do it too. We’re coming off a bad decade, we’re broke, we’re distrustful of each other and we’re scared of everyone else. And it’s hard for us to console ourselves with the notion that we’ve won just because no one has bombed the Super Bowl yet.

Ten years ago I turned off the TV and went hiking. Maybe today I should have done the same thing. But it’s been ten years, and just like the words on this page, I can’t take them back. So instead I wrote this note. I hope in 2021 I’m still around to play music and write notes, and that it finds me, and all of us, in a better place.

I think my friends and family have gotten used to the idea that I'm a reader, cuz I got an enormous stack of books for my birthday: the new Bob Mould biography, Kristin hersh's "Rat Girl," spy books by Olen Steinhauer and Alan Furst, Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain," plus a few others. Oh, and I got the first "Game of Thrones" novel. So get ready for more songs about broadsword-wielding, wench-wooing and dragon-slaying.

Also enjoyed a nice visit from the Devil Whale dudes, which they capped off with a live set on KEXP, followed by a triumphant show at the Tractor. The guys even got some pretty favorable local press, and only one fight broke out at the show. Not bad!

Explone gets back on stage this Wednesday, 8/31 with a show at Chop Suey. We'll be playing with a couple of great local bands: Megasapien and Boom City. Both bands feature a lot of familiar faces: Burke Thomas (Vendetta Red, Pris), Lian Light (Magneto), and Eric Howk (The Lashes). It will be fun, and the unfortunate fact that the original headliner had to cancel just means more time for the rest of us to get our rocks off.

Thinking good thoughts for those folks on the east coast, while I get outside to take advantage of this sunshone...be well.

--Patrick

We’ve been celebrating our independence these past few weeks, in a variety of ways. To wit:

Our new EP Telescope & Satellite will be released this fall, just as soon as we free a couple thousand more dollars from the confines of our wallets in order to mix it. Independence! Our hard-earned cash deserves its freedom!

Our video for “St. Yesterday” from the Dreamers/Lovers album is currently playing on Fuse TV On Demand. You can check it out on cable (if you live in this century), or on the web (also available if you live in this century). It’s nice to be selected from hundreds of bands for this distinction, and thanks to Fuse TV for supporting independent music.

We also have a new (independent) video in the works for a song off the new EP: “Golden Ballroom,” directed by none other than our own bassist Scott Andrew. Scott claims he can make a video entirely on his iPhone, which is indie cred for production if there ever was such a thing.

In other news, we blew a lot of shit up for the 4^th of July, and ate a lot of food. Also, the new Kirby Krackle album is finished—Super Powered Love will be everywhere in a couple of weeks, and KK will be celebrating with a release show at the San Diego Comic Con on July 21^st.

Also, Kyle is making beer and it is awesome.

Stay tuned for shows and further updates as we get the new record launched. And thank as ever for your kind attention.

--Patrick

Last week's recording sessions saw most of the overdubs completed for Telescope & Satellite. This included the string session, which was a rare and fascinating experience for me. I had been thinking for a while about adding some strings to "Golden Ballroom," but I had no idea how to go about this. Fortunately I was recently reunited with my old friend Stephen Cavit, who in the 20 years or so since we first met has (among other things) forged a career for himself as a successful composer. Stephen does everything from full symphonic and choral works to film and television soundtracks. So when I pitched him the idea of scoring some string parts for a 3-1/2 minute pop song, he didn't seem too daunted by the prospect. In fact, he generously dove in and offered not only his time and talent, but also gave me a really thorough view of how this type of work goes down.

I sent Stephen a rough mix of the song so he could put his initial thoughts together. After that we spent a few evenings in my modest home studio, listening to the song and scoring out the ideas for parts on a small USB keyboard connected to Stephen's laptop. The best part about this: once we heard a part come together and sound exciting with the cheesy synth string sounds on the laptop, we were pretty sure it was only going to get better once real instruments produced those same notes. The technology had a cool way of managing our expectations.

Stephen arranged for four contract players: violin, viola, cello and contrabass. Going with one violin and adding the bass was a bit of a departure from the standard string quartet ensemble, and it suited the darker mood of the arrangement we had for the song. Stephen had the score all prepared, and as the players arrived and took their stations he set up to conduct the session.

What followed was both very mechanical and very moving. These folks had never heard the piece of music they were to be performing, and their way into the music was entirely through the written pages on their music stands, and Stephen's able direction. I got fascinated just watching the players as they stepped into the process and started to feel the music. Now, I can read in a pinch, thanks to some much-needed tough love from a couple of great teachers I've had over the years. But as a rule I avoid sheet music like the plague, preferring, as most kids weaned on rock and roll do, to jump from my ears straight to my hands with no ink and paper wasted in between. I mean, there was no sheet music available for "Ain't Talkin' Bout Love" when I was 13, and if there had been I'm pretty sure it would have been for solo piano as opposed to the pawn shop 6-string I was working with.

However as I watched the string section bring the score for "Golden Ballroom" to life, I realized that all paths to musical expression are really the same path. The players put all the same thought and care into their craft that any good musician does, the only difference being that they used their pencils a lot more than I had ever seen. It was all done in about 90 minutes, and the results are extraordinary. More than anything, Stephen totally came through for me on this one, helping me realize the vision for this song, which quite literally came to me in a dream.

I spent much of the next two days singing, taking a brief time out to cut some final guitar overdubs (and to blow up my speaker cabinet--an occupational hazard). Scott and Josh cut their remaining vocal parts, and Kyle whipped through a few additional guitar bits in one afternoon. At the end of the session, we weren't quite done, but it's sitting at 95% and I need to think about things for a while before I make any more moves. A few of the songs have reached the point where I'm not sure if they really demand any more accessorizing, or if piling on will have a subtractive effect. I may be crossing the "more is less" Rubicon if I'm not careful, so I'm listening to rough mixes while I go running and letting them marinate a bit.

I was a little worried about the timing of this last session, but much to my relief the Rapture didn't happen as predicted. This means I need to keep skipping over the Contemporary Christian radio station on my dial a little while longer, but it does make those billboards still up around town look even sillier. (I was sort of looking forward to a world free of douchebags like James Dobson, Tim and Beverly LaHaye, and Kirk Cameron...but I guess we're all stuck with each other for a while longer.)

Anyway, I did try for a minute to put myself in the position of someone who waits impatiently for the end of the world. It creeped me out, but I got a song out of it. So just rest assured that the new Explone EP will be THE Rapture soundtrack of the year. There's something for all us sinners to look forward to.

Since my last update, the Boston Celtics have mercifully been eliminated from the misery that was their 2011 playoff run. I still have a sour taste in my mouth about the season, made worse by the fact that so many hoops writers are now saying things like "it was too late anyway" or "the window had already closed." I think this is a crock of shit, but it's hard to make the case to people who only think about stats that chemistry matters. Then yesterday as I was running through Woodland Park, it occurred to me that if basketball teams are like bands (which I believe they are), and the Boston Celtics are like Van Halen...

...then Kendrick Perkins is like Michael Anthony.

(More on this later.)

--Patrick

Video produced and directed by Thor Radford. All photographs by Kip Beelman.

Is it me?

As anyone who even occasionally visits the Explone Twitter feed probably knows, I’m something of a hoops fan. Specifically my affection runs to the Boston Celtics, “the most storied franchise in NBA history” (and it ain’t no joke). The Celtics have been the happy destination of my sports enthusiasm ever since the Seattle Supersonics had their messy divorce with our community.

I was actually something of a Celtics fan as a kid, from the time I read Bill Russell’s fantastic book Second Wind. Mr. Russell’s book captured my young imagination at the same time the sport he played became the central fixation of my view into the world of athletics. I read Second Wind the same year the Supersonics won the NBA championship, and from then on my notions of teamwork, competition, struggle and triumph were interwoven with memories of Fred Brown’s jump shot, Jack Sikma’s rebounding, Paul Silas’ interior defense, Gus Williams’ fantastic, herky-jerky dribbles into the lane…and Bill Russell’s vivid storytelling. After the Sonics traded my favorite player Ray Allen to Boston (as a prelude to their cowardly flight out of town), it was easy for me to transpose my love of basketball and my wounded Sonic pride onto a new team. And it was logical for Boston to be that team. Adding to the confluence of events, I happened to fall in love with a girl from Boston just in time for the 2008 playoffs. Our relationship blossomed, hearts swooned and the Celtics won the 2008 NBA Championship over the hated Los Angeles Lakers. Clearly stars were aligning, and this was all meant to be.

Only now I’m not so sure.

Last year at this time, Explone was about to start mixing Dreamers/Lovers and gearing up for a busy summer of shows to promote it. At the same time, the Celtics were limping into the playoffs as a #4 seed. It looked like an early exit was in store, either to the surging Cleveland Cavaliers or to the defending Eastern Conference Champion Orlando Magic. But as we put the finishing touches on our album, the Celtics suddenly found themselves and went on an inspired run through the playoffs, culminating in a brutal seven-game Finals rematch with the despicable Lakers. Each game seemed to add to the drama and the sense of destiny; this was surely the year for Allen, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to put their stamp on history and hang banner #18 in the rafters of the Garden. With the series tied at three games apiece, both teams prepared for the final showdown in Los Angeles on Thursday, June 17^th.

I remember the date in crystalline clarity, because this also happened to be the night of our CD Release Party at The Crocodile. We had worked hard for months, and we were so ready for the payoff with a great show at our favorite venue. But something in me was a little freaked out that I wasn’t going to be able to watch the game. Was I letting my team down? Would my absence subtract the last intangible bit of psychic enthusiasm they needed to pry the Larry O’Brien Trophy from the evil clutches of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol? Was I a shitty fan for ducking out on the game to release a record?

In the end, it’s probably better that I didn’t get to watch it live. The Celtics lost after an excruciating fourth quarter, in which the Lakers dominated the glass and out-muscled the depleted Boston front line. Starting center Kendrick Perkins had gone out with a knee injury in the previous game, and this left Boston fans to lament all summer: “if we’d only had Perk, it would’ve been a different story.” I think we said it to ourselves so many times, it became some kind of mantra.

As for Explone, we had a great show and a great night. There were so many good emotions on tap that evening, it even felt good to drink a couple of toasts with my fellow NBA fans in attendance: Shawn (who was taking the Celtics loss hard), Burke and Lian (Lakers fans who were deservedly jovial), and many others. It felt like one of those bittersweet anomalies in life: somewhere in the world someone is joyously celebrating, while elsewhere, someone else is quietly contemplating what might have been. Yin and Yang. War and Peace. Hall and Oates. Insert your own binary analogy here.

Why is this on my mind, you ask? Well lo and behold: here we are making another record just on the cusp of the NBA Playoffs. And here are the Boston Celtics, once again limping into the postseason, this time as a #3 seed. Only this year it’s different. These guys don’t seem like a team that can pull it together. In a shocking (and utterly devastating) February trade, Celtics President Danny Ainge sent Kendrick Perkins to Oklahoma City—where he now plays with the reanimated corpse of the Seattle Supersonics for an organization run by right-wing, oil-moneyed scumbags. Perk has made OKC one of the best defenses in the NBA, and in exchange the Celtics got…well, not much. They got a forward named Jeff Green, who has spent most of his time looking like the guy who showed up to the prom without a date, and now just hangs around other people’s tables, awkwardly waiting to be asked to sit down. (Dude, everyone else has other things on their mind.) In the process, the Celtics appear to have flushed their once-vaunted team chemistry and collective sense of self down the proverbial drain. I’m sure it’s technically possible for a championship-contending team to have a bigger late-season collapse, but I’m not sure how.

In the meantime, we’re galloping down the path toward finishing a really great record, a collection of songs that we’re all thrilled about and which we can’t wait to share with the outside world. If everything goes according to the schedule I have roughly laid out in my head, we ought to be done with Telescope & Satellite just about in time for the NBA Finals. And while I’m totally psyched about our record, I’m feeling an awful sense of symmetry here.

I’m not a superstitious person, and by no means am I inclined to adjust my actions based on the fact that Danny Ainge made the shittiest trade in the history of basketball. But it’s pretty odd to be feeling like I might have to miss another painful postseason for my team due to artistic scheduling conflicts. I don’t really believe that, if I had planned for a late Fall release date, Perkins would still be a Celtic and Boston would still be in the driver’s seat for an 18^th championship. But I must admit that the confluence of events has me a little freaked out. I have friends who wear certain colored socks on the day their favorite pitcher is taking the mound, and I always thought they were nuts. And I still do, but maybe I have a little more sympathy for them now.

In the meantime, as you can see above, we completed a new video for “It’s Complicated” from Dreamers/Lovers. This is another fine piece of work by Mr. Thor Radford, and I would encourage anyone who needs artistic and creative assistance of the visual specification to seek his advice. He is both a gentleman and a scholar.

Also: many, many thanks to our good friend Kip Beelman, who stopped by the studio and took these photographs. Kip happened to catch me wearing my Celtics hat (purchased at the Garden on a night the Celtics defeated the Indiana Pacers), which perhaps speaks only to sheer coincidence…but perhaps alludes to something more. Although I sure hope not.

Go Celtics!

--Patrick

Well, it’s almost down to one century now.

2011, as someone kindly pointed out on Twitter recently, means we only have 101 years left before the totalitarian future envisioned in Rush’s 2112 comes to fruition. How fitting then, that I kicked off the new year by watching the outstanding Great Albums biography on the making of 2112 and Moving Pictures. And then watching the whole Rush biopic "Beyond The Lighted Stage" with my buddy Michael, who used to jam on Rush songs with me day after day when we were both 14. Who says you outgrow this shit?

On New Year’s Eve I caught a great show from Fresh Espresso, giving it up to a packed house at the Crocodile while drunk chicks kept hitting on my girlfriend. I thought it was traditionally supposed to be the drunk dudes who pulled this move, but apparently at Northwest hip-hop shows the code is reversed. Anyway, it didn’t mess up our good time; in fact, it was just a kindred part of the whole crazy atmosphere. And Fresh Espresso kicked ass, even playing a couple of new songs that have been stuck in my head ever since. Also saw the last half of Head Like A Kite, and thought they were very impressive in their own way. They sounded like a freaky cut-&-paste pop experiment, and they had a ton of energy.

A few nights later I saw the uber-talented Jennifer O’Brien perform an evening of Broadway duets, along with another female singer. Girl-girl duets aren’t the most common arrangements in musicals, but they dig up some great pieces and it was a blast for all of us who packed into the Rendezvous.

Other than holiday festivities, I’ve been in the lab mutating some new ideas into songs. I want to start recording the next Explone release soon, and the ideas have been flowing lately. The band has been grinding them into shape, trimming the fat and fattening the parts that need it. We’ll have a couple of new songs ready to debut at The Tractor on Wednesday, January 19^th, so hopefully a lot of our friends can join us for the first Explone show of the year. Explone plays first at 9:00 PM sharp, followed by two outstanding locals bands: Washington Mile and The Charity Stripe. Make it, don't fake it.

In the not-so-happy news department, 2011 also marks my departure from Red Jacket Mine after a great 4-year run. The separation is entirely amicable and we are all great and true friends. And it bums me out, but the truth is that I just don’t have time to do everything I want to do. I have had so much fun over the past years playing with RJM, and I will cherish those experiences in my memory. But mostly I’m a songwriter and I have my own band to keep busy, and I really need to devote myself to that endeavor full-time if I’m going to do it.

I’ll be joining the RJM guys on stage one last time when they play at The Tractor on February 4^th, so please come if you can and witness our last hurrah together. Lincoln and company will continue to make great music and I’m certain that only bigger and better things await those guys. But it will be nice to ride their magic carpet one last time.

Resolutely Yours,

Patrick

Lately I’ve had songs coming to me in my sleep. Not snippets or whispers of songs, mind you: these are fully-formed, complete songs that drop right into my subconscious and urge me awake, scrambling for the nearest guitar. I wish this happened all the time, but it doesn’t. But for some reason, ever since my birthday last August I’ve had nocturnal compositions on a semi-regular basis.

The latest one was a doozy: I dreamed I was climbing a long, elegant staircase where I emerged into a beautiful ballroom. Dark shapes of people were shuffling around the perimeter, and in the middle of the room, sitting in a chair, I met a familiar face. As we acknowledged each other, our attention was drawn by the sound of music in the middle of the room. Two women in elaborate dress were starting a song, one singing and one playing some kind of percussion. The singer was also plucking something that looked like an autoharp but sounded more like a nylon string guitar…or maybe that was the percussionist? I’m not sure, and like I said it was a dream so everything was very surreal. But the song was crystal clear, and when I woke up I had the melody branded in my head.

When I stumbled to a guitar and worked it out, it was very uncharacteristic of all my recent stuff. For one thing, it’s tuned waaaay down—my low string is a B, and the rest of the guitar follows suit, the strings practically flopping against each other in their slackness. But it poured out quickly, including the lyrics which was a relief. (Readers of this site will know that finishing song lyrics has been my Achilles Heel of late.)

The song is called “Golden Ballroom,” and now that I have it, I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s probably not the right kind of material for the usual Explone power-pop treatment, so I’ll probably look for a really left-field interpretation, or just keep it a solo song. When it comes to dream songs, I just take ‘em as they come.

2010 is wrapping up in cozy fashion, with holiday celebrations close to home and a lot to look forward to in the New Year. Before we get there, I’m going to throw down at The Crocodile on New Year’s Eve, to see Fresh Espresso and Head Like A Kite. I’ve been a fan of the Fresh Espresso record for some time now, and I’ve held off on seeing them the last couple of chances I had because I really want to catch them in a club, up close, where they can hopefully play a nice, long set. As for HLAK, I’m just thrilled that Dave Einmo is still hard at work after all these years. It should be quite the evening, and we’re finding time to squeeze in dinner at Restaurant Zoe across the street beforehand as well. I guess if the world ends at midnight, at least I’ll die happy.

Explone hits the stage again on Wednesday, January 19^th at the Tractor Tavern. This will be our first show at the Tractor, and we are delighted to finally get a shot to play on one of our favorite stages. We are joined by Washington Mile and The Charity Stripe, two excellent bands who will pull us toward poles of rootsy, American wistfulness and summery, shiny pop respectively. Explone kicks off the evening at 9:00 PM, so don’t dally around Ballard Ave too long. I saw pals Nathan Wade & The Dark Pioneers blow away the Tractor just a week ago, and it will be delicious to try to reach the bar they set for us.

The always-prolific Andrew Norsworthy has just released a new record, and for once I had nothing to do with it. It’s called Big Picture Blues, and you can get it here on Band Camp for a name-your-own-price deal, which is a bargain whether you pay ten cents or a hundred dollars.

Kyle is busily writing new songs for his own projects (Kirby Krackle and otherwise), and Scott and I are helping him work them out. So the rehearsal space toggles back and forth between my songs and Kyle’s on a fairly regular rotation. It’s nice to call the shots, and then it’s also nice to just be the guitar player in someone else’s band too. It’s like the best of both worlds, every week! I hope Kyle feels the same way…

Happy Holidays to all!

--Patrick