Music by Brian Patrick

I've fallen behind posting here, but a lot of fun things have been happening. Working backward, this last wednesday I got to play at Freewheel Brewing in Redwood City. It was a great turn out, thanks to everyone who came. And thanks to all the musicians who made it happen: David, Ray, David, Alisa, Chris. Total treat for me to hear all the different sounds we could create. Thanks to Larry, the owner for letting us play there.  It's a fun family-friendly scene. The weekend before, Eliza had a really nice block party where a few of us got to make noise for a few hours(!). Thanks to Herb (on flute!), Eliza, Alisa, Megana, Louis, (and Louis' Son!), Ray, and Craig for making such a fun musical space. That evening ended with world famous musicians who happen to live on her street leading us through a few songs. Thankfully Craig had a video camera, and he recorded a really nice video  that I'll be re-watching years from now. A few weekends before that, Jay John and I playe

I just recorded an acoustic version of the Ani Difranco song ' overlap '. I love the song, and especially the line 'there is strength in the differences between us, and I know there is comfort where we overlap'. But this was also an excuse to play with new software for mixing multiple video streams.

I saw two good shows recently in Redwood City. The blues slide guitarist Roy Rogers was playing at Club Fox. Great band backing him up, and great sound at the club. Here's a solo version of Rather be the Devil , and an older band of his playing Walking Blues . Roy travels a lot and he'll be back at Yoshi's in October . He calls it slide guitar, but when he plays it, it sounds like nothing I've ever heard before. The second was Will Russ with an all-star band at Angelica's. Will's a gifted singer who held the room. A couple years ago someone recorded him playing A Song for You with a different band. He's there most Thursdays. Listening to Will made me want to play more when I got home. Inspiring stuff.

Time to get some gigs. And to get gigs apparently it's common to have a demo recording. I just made a new one pulling out 6 minutes of our last two practices. Click on that link and then on the red demo button and listen 9 short samples of different songs.

John, Jay and I practiced this last Sunday and made a live recording . Most recordings are done one track at a time. People spend hours or days to get minutes for a final recording. Here we just pressed record and got whatever happened together during practice. Later I cut out an hour from the two hour practice.

Sunday night is open mic jam night at Bobby D's in Redwood City . This last Sunday, I brought my bass and ended up playing a set or so of songs I hadn't played before. Good fun. Later it became more of a rehearsal for what felt like the house band. Almost everything you'd expect from a California dive bar, including lots of really friendly folks on the stage and in the audience. Some raw moments, but easy to feel the love.

This last Saturday night, I saw Megan Keely and John Elliott at a house party. Maybe 150 people. Intimate, pure sound. Everyone was focused. Megan has a buttery tone that reminds me of Norah Jones. The interactions with her supporting (family!) musicians were genuine and sweet. John's lyrics are inspirational and funny and deeply sad and cutting and refreshing and new and old and tired and frantic and peaceful. Hear him in a setting where you can hear all the words. His songs are treasures. I got on the mailing list for both. If you're interested, see their web pages above.