Alias Patrick Kelly

Based in Atlanta, Americana singer-songwriter Alias Patrick Kelly will release his new EP May 24. Entitled An Unclaimed Inheritance, the EP premieres today on Rawckus.

Thematically, An Unclaimed Inheritance is about family and the emotions inherent in intimate relationships, such as mercy, compassion, marriage, PTSD, and expectation.

Patrick explains the “Alias” component in Alias Patrick Kelly, saying, “As a songwriter, sometimes it feels like I almost don’t have a hand in writing the song, you know? Every now and then I get a song idea that just drops in my lap, kind of effortlessly. It almost feels like it didn’t come from me.“

After years of playing bass for James Hall, The Goodies, The Halls of Jupiter, Open Sky Separators, and The Greater Vavoom, Patrick felt compelled to do his own thing. The result was his first album Corruptibility Index, a collection of 11-tracks defined by creativity and fearless musical adventure. According to Patrick, “I did it because I wanted to know if I could.”

Encompassing six-tracks, An Unclaimed Inheritance opens with “Lamb,” a song about a young man who grew up without a father, and now sits in jail charged with murder. The track opens on radiant a cappella voices flowing into a rock-flavored Americana tune with a driving rhythm and spangled guitars.

“Invisible” opens on a soft So-Cal alt-rock melody laced with tints of Latin savors. An undulating rhythm infuses the tune with tantalizing cadence, as gentle glimmering guitars ride overhead. Patrick’s voice projects timbres of concern, understanding, and urgent causality.

“Old Boy” rides contagious, low-level Americana aromas supported by a rolling rhythm. Patrick’s voice exudes mellow compassion traveling on smooth, delicious tones. This is my favorite track on the EP because of its velvety sonic flow.

“Gasoline” kicks it up a notch, featuring a compact alt-country-rock melody on a potent streaming rhythm reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen or John Mellencamp, but more nuanced with subtle surging dynamism.

“Tallest of Trees” delivers soothing colors atop a supple, rolling rhythm. A tight luminous guitar tone suffuses the tune with a seductive glow, as Patrick’s dulcet tones glide overhead. Cashmere layers of divergent guitar riffs coalesce, imbuing the harmonics with cap-a-pie delicious melodicism.

“West” opens on a tasty acoustic guitar, followed by Patrick’s indulgent voice, buttery and burnished with scrumptious rounded timbres. As the tune proceeds, it ramps up with muscular guitars and expanding resonance. The subtle ache in Patrick’s voice makes this a gorgeously haunting song.

An Unclaimed Inheritance is brilliantly wrought, rife with alluring rhythms, shimmering guitars, and the provocative voice of Alias Patrick Kelly. - Rawckus Magazine

Effects of wartime range from night terrors, avoidance of reality, total detachment and rapid mood swings. Millions of combat veterans must bear the weight of such psychological trauma for the rest of their lives; the unimaginable atrocities they witnessed and endured will forever haunt them like ghosts. Re-acclimation to society tests both their emotional and physical well-being, sometimes for the worse, and while many certainly make a full recovery, on the surface at least, still others will never be able to face truly living ever again. It’s a tragic state of the modern world that’s bred tortured souls trying to pick up the pieces. With his new music video for “Invisible,” Americana singer-songwriter Alias Patrick Kelly taps into the very weary and withered aftermath of one veteran’s life, one embroiled in misery and mental swelling.

“And on the news I hear about / The ones who could not make it out / ‘Cause in their heads and hearts they stayed,” sings Kelly, whose voice snarls around the decay and sheer perilous situation. He confronts the gravity of post-war with raw earnestness, peeling back the layers with delicate precision but keeping his heart close to the vest. “Although I’m welcome here back home / I feel my way through this alone,” he later reveals a grave headspace with which so many veterans are burdened.

“Invisible,” lifted from Kelly’s new EP, An Unclaimed Inheritance, was co-written with Robin Bienemann and Marcus Trana during a songwriting event called Love on Holiday back in 2016. Alongside 40 or so other songwriters and musicians, all participants played a game of “spin the bottle” in groups of three to uncover their songwriting challenge. Kelly’s group spun the bottle and landed on a painting by Stephanie Trenchard depicting “a little boy in his front yard during winter wearing a camouflage jumpsuit of some kind,” says Kelly to B-Sides & Badlands over email. “He’d looked like he’d been playing war. In the foreground of the painting was a little girl who looked like she was telling him that it was time to come indoors. The girl looked like his older sister. They both had red hair.”

“They reminded me of two relatives who were grown now. As a grown up, the male relative spent time in combat over in Iraq. He’s had a hard time readjusting to civilian life since his return. The painting made me think about how when you’re a kid it’s fun to play war,” the Atlanta musician continues to outline the video’s harrowing concept. “But as an adult who actually participated in a war it’s an entirely different experience. Each verse tells a part of the entire experience ⏤ as a child it is play, as a soldier it is survival, as a survivor it is a hard readjustment after such an ‘elevated’ experience.”

Throughout the visual, Kelly fuses haunting shadows of combat through the narrator’s troubled mind. The imprint of catastrophe resurfaces in everyday things like grabbing a cup of coffee, and our protagonist soon discovers he’s far from alone. The truth is: such disaster is far too commonplace to be ignored. “I keep encountering people who have been affected by this. After seeing the painting and my interactions with my relative, there was no way that my co-writers and I could not write this song,” says Kelly.

An Unclaimed Inheritance drops everywhere this Friday (May 24). - B-sides and Badlands

Some people love food and wine, some love cars, some love nature and mountains. Patrick Kelly loves language as expressed in words and music and how they settle on your soul. He is a musical thinker. Like other artists he is happy to receive inspiration for chords, melodies, and choruses. Yet, that is only the creative beginning. Finding just the right words is very important. He is a connoisseur of language, having appreciation for the subtleties of phrasing. He works at it. He comes back to it. He waits for new inspiration until he finds the right expressions that fit a song and live up to his vision. Patrick’s new EP, An Unclaimed Inheritance, brings this zeal to life with new six songs that have enjoyable melodies and vivid imagery throughout, imbued with the mindful care with which Patrick approaches his music.

Getting to this point of experiencing joy from digging out messages and stories set to music did not happen in a straight line. In fact, it is the sum of twists, turns, and investigating rabbit holes that feeds the creative well spring.

An Atlanta-area native, Patrick’s interest in music began early; there are recordings of him belting out songs at three years old. His father was a church minister of music until Patrick was nine and inspired Patrick’s desire to be a musician. By the time he was in high school, the lure of rock and roll was calling, and he decided that he wanted to be a drummer. Patrick’s father offered to buy him a drum kit, but only if Patrick successfully stuck it out for a year in the school’s marching band. Patrick was not keen on that condition and so, he rationalized that rock bands always needed bass players, plus there was no bass in the school marching band, and he convinced his dad to rent him one. His seriousness about playing waxed and waned until he was 19.

An area band he really liked had a bass vacancy and they invited Patrick to come over just to jam. The session included several unfinished song ideas and Patrick had some suggestions to complete them that the band liked. “I guess they liked my outlook. They offered me the spot in the band but plainly told me ‘You actually kind of suck, but we will make you better’.” That band was The Goodies. They toured throughout the region from 1993-1999 and again from 2001-2006 after relocating to Asheville in the late 90s. “We played so many shows that I naturally improved.” Patrick describes the band as a mashup of vaudeville and Van Halen. After The Goodies wound down to just occasional reunion shows, Patrick went back to school and played in a series of bands. Beginning with The Open Sky Separators, he recalls “I loved how the song chords sounded so different. Turns out every song was written in open D tuning – nothing in standard tuning! That is where I first worked with [drummer and producer] Mike Froedge.” Next was The Warm Guns. “I enjoyed listening to them so much I offered to fill in when they needed a replacement bassist and stuck around for a while. They were like a mixture of AC/DC and The Cult with a smirk on their faces.” From there it was The Greater Vavoom. “It took inspiration from Prince’s Dirty Mind. James Hall joined us just to hone his piano skills. I had seen him often as a headliner around town so I was blown away.” Eventually, Patrick dropped playing to focus on school until James called Patrick to join him, Bruce Butkovich, and Kent Aberle in a new band, James Hall & The Steady Wicked.

Each of these bands strengthened his interest in writing songs along with his insatiable curiosity that led him through a discovery of many different types of music. “I was a huge fan of Prince after seeing the ‘When Doves Cry’. I did not know who this stranger in a bathtub holding out his hand to me was, but I liked it and was an absolute fanatic until I fell into an obligatory hair metal phase. But then someone played me Janes’ Addiction and that opened my mind.” He was then spurred to seek out jazz classics. “I borrowed a neighbor’s copy of Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and played it over and over. I had never read poetry not assigned in school, but soon I was buying the works of Arthur Rimbaud and then books by his influences and then Henry Miller books. These were all about the art of language for me, and I connected that my favorite songs all had great, meaningful lyrics – well maybe except Van Halen.” Friends turning him on to Tom Wait’s Bone Machine album was another revelation. “I kept flipping the cassette over and reading along with all the lyrics. I had not heard anything like it. This guy is telling stories and rock music does not always tell good stories.”

Writing his own songs became a greater priority. “The first song I wrote was called ‘Ripple Of Tranquility’ during the Goodies days. It did not come easy but was the first one of which I was proud.”

By 2012, Patrick finished school and spent his new found extra time working on songs, buying good microphones, recording software, and a drum sequencer to play drum parts the way he heard them in his head. During a long trip to Montana, it hit him how many songs he had actually amassed. “I said I would pick two favorites and base an album around them. What is a theme? Is there anything connecting the two?” He focused on the song “Benediction” and built the album around it. “It is about a guy who wakes up and realizes he is not as good a man as he could be. It is not necessarily autobiographical, but I am in that amalgamated mix of several people.” Through a long process, he winnowed 40 songs down to 11. “Every song I selected is about something where there is the potential to make the wrong decision, for the wrong reasons or one is reacting to something that is not working.” He was pleased with the record and the production helmed by Bruce Butkovich and the album Corruptibility Index became a reality.

On a creative roll, Patrick says. “I was writing perhaps some of my better work. However, the next album that was organically forming from my pile of songs was going to take much effort and time to make well.” At the same time, he had started writing songs that were more acoustic. “I was listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska then. I was not a huge country fan, but I was listening to Jason Isbell, and from there was checking out Willie Nelson and other classics.”

This roots enthusiasm brought him to the Holiday Music Motel in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, home to a songwriter’s camp recommended by James Hall. Over the course of one week, participants spin a bottle to be randomly matched with other musicians and a second spin of the wheel gives them a photograph to be their lyrical inspiration. “One time I ended up with a drummer and violin player and we wrote a song about a GI Joe action figure that actually turned out okay.” Patrick recalls another round, “We were given a particularly evocative photograph of two trees of equal size, likely planted at same time. It hit me what a good metaphor it was about couples being together through years until the end. That spurred the song ‘Tallest Of Trees’.” Another song that incubated in much the same manner was “Invisible”.

With these two co-written rough demos – very different from his previous work – Patrick began working through other song ideas for a new record in earnest. The song “Lamb” came from a contemplation of fatherhood. “At the time, I was thinking a lot about my becoming a stepfather and the value of fatherhood. I have known many folks who have not had strong fathers or father figures and that has affected them. I had this melody and a clumsy first line about taking a lamb to slaughter. I tried to see how that tied to fatherhood and these uncharacteristic bright major chords came to me. I had a eureka moment of the image of a young man hauled to jail because he committed senseless acts that could have been avoided and might had been averted if he had fatherly advice.”

The album was coming together and Patrick was prepared to release just four songs to get something out quickly, but he says, “One night I had this dream about an old outlaw having to get out of town. I like a lot of Old West stuff. I think I have read every major Billy The Kid book that has been published and am fascinated by the stories of Butch Cassidy, and movies like No Country For Old Men. In the dream, the outlaw makes it out but soon realizes that his horse, who has been his one main companion all these years, is on his last leg. He must mercifully put him down. The song, ‘Old Boy’ ends up being about mercy and compassion. Don’t know why I had the dream but the imagery was strong and striking.”

He follows, “I had also written the song ‘Gasoline’ about my wife and I desiring to move. I had another song ‘West’ about pulling up and starting over out West. I could see that every song had something to do with family or companionship. ‘Lamb’ about a father relationship. ‘Invisible’ about a relative returning from war struggling with PTSD. ‘Tallest Trees’ is about a married couple staying together to the end. Even ‘Old Boy’ is about how we choose our family, even if that family member is a horse. I did then limit myself to those six songs so not to lose momentum.”

Patrick booked studio time and asked Bruce Butkovich, Mike Froedge, and Matt Hanson [from A Slow Boat To China] to accompany him on bass, drums, and guitar. “In a few spots on my demos, I had a few specific parts I wanted to hear, but otherwise I gave very little direction. I realized I had to trust that Matt is a great guitar player. He made some very different and sometimes unorthodox choices from what I had once thought. But he totally nailed the vibe and the parts came out better than I ever imagined. Sometimes the compressed time we worked in made me move on, and that was probably a good thing so I couldn’t overthink it.”

Like in all things involving words, Patrick was deliberate in his choice of album title. “An Unclaimed Inheritance seemed to fit well given all the songs connected to family. On the back of the CD sleeve we played on that theme referring to musicians as ‘heirs’ and those involved in getting the record made called ‘relatives.’”

Patrick continues to use his love of language to write new music; he already has a stack of new songs. He says, “I like to write. It is very cathartic for me. I could spend three hours sitting staring out a window with a guitar in my hands and something will come to me. Sometimes I don’t get anything but sometimes I do.” That creative channeling spurred his stage name. “I go by Alias Patrick Kelly because often when I am hit with that impulse to create music it is almost as if another person takes over and is doing it.” He continues, “If I don’t get to write regularly, I don’t feel right. It is the best way for me to understand how I am feeling. I have reread lyrics after having completed them and only then did I realize exactly what I had been feeling – and then know what I might need to do next. So, with this, I have been lucky to have many ‘keeper’ songs.”

His varied musical style pursuits and intense immersion into writing means Patrick will continue to write songs across multiple genres. Patrick views this versatility part of making interesting art. “Creative people want to try new things. David Bowie was constantly switching things up,” Patrick says before neatly summing up his regard for his music. “My song ‘West’ is about leaving one place and starting over in another. I thought about what if I did leave and what I left behind was found by somebody and it did something good for her or him? What if the people who bought my house then ended up having an amazing life in that house after I left it? I sometimes think that way about music and how we all build on the music left behind for us.” Reflecting for a moment, he adds “Whatever the style, it is good if sincerity is running through it all. Is something necessarily your thing? Perhaps not. However, whether the listener likes it or not, I want her or him to know that I meant every word.”

An Unclaimed Inheritance is out May 24 and Patrick is planning to tour regionally in support of it. - Atlanta Music Grapevine

In soaring three-part harmonies, tinged with echoing guitars played wide open in weighty down-the-road Americana tailoring, Patrick Kelly bellows: “out in the world without my father – no one here teaching wrong from right.”

The Georgia native is about to celebrate a three-year anniversary with his wife, and with it, the three-year anniversary of becoming a stepfather. Among the many thoughtful ruminations explored on his forthcoming EP, An Unclaimed Inheritance, is one of gauging what it means to be a father.

Accordingly, “Lamb”, the debut single under the self-given stage name Alias Patrick Kelly, tells the story of a boy of seventeen who grew up without a father and the resulting fallout; the inability to regulate his emotional state which leads him to kill a man for reasons even he doesn’t fully understand. Reflecting from prison, Kelly’s main character acknowledges that if he had had a good father figure, his life might’ve turned out differently. Today Glide is excited to offer an exclusive premiere of the song. Indeed, “Lamb” captures Kelly’s creativity as a songwriter and his ability to craft powerful, anthemic Americana songs. The song starts with a chant before exploding into a full-fledged Americana rock song that reflects the intense emotions Kelly is conveying through his lyrics, complete with plenty of guitar shredding.

Kelly shares his own story behind the song:

A few things were going on in my life at the time this one was written. I was about to get married and become a step father to a daughter who had never met her real father. The fact that I was about to become THE father figure to a child was exciting and terrifying. “What if I screw her up?” It’s a huge responsibility. The more that I got to know her the more I realized what her bio Dad was missing out on.

I also bartend at a night club where a lot of our customers seem to have spent way too much time listening to songs about being a “VIP at the club.” I’ve gotten to know some of these guys and a lot of them grew up without a father present and a number of their lives are disasters whether through violence, drugs, or just all round bad decision making.

Also, a close friend of mine had a teenage son at the time who’s a really great and talented kid. Seeing as I was about to become the only father in my step daughter’s life I asked my friend how he raised such a great and talented boy who was never in trouble, made smart decisions, and was completely his own person. He said something along the lines of “as a parent you are the one minding the store. You have to be present. If you don’t have time, then make time.”

All of these “father” themes were rolling around in my head while I was listening to albums like Nebraska, Darkness in the Edge of Town etc. The actual “writing” of the song came from me just absentmindedly humming the melody in my kitchen. I suddenly realized that lyrics were coming with the melody. Got probably 80% in the first 30min. The rest took a little more time to get right. Certain lyrics just came out on their own. Even though it’s in a major key I could tell the song was supposed to be a tragedy/lament type of song.

At it’s heart the song is a tale about a young man who’s never known his father and is raised by a mother who is too busy working to just simply get the bills paid. The young man grows up neglected in an environment that doesn’t nurture him. The song begins right after he commits a murder that probably could’ve been avoided and continues with the main character reflecting on not only his actions but questioning all of the steps that got him to that moment. The story ends with his first day in prison. - Glide Magazine

Atlanta-based Patrick Kelly is a rugged singer-songwriter with a prominent sensitive side (old dudes approve and old ladies swoon, a winning combination doncha know), and a delivery vaguely similar to Springsteen at his heartlandiest. His plainspoken, working class lyrics about everyday lives and loves are showcased nicely on his six-song EP An Unclaimed Inheritance, to be released May 24 under the name Alias Patrick Kelly, about which he claims: “As a songwriter, sometimes it feels like I almost don’t have a hand in writing the songs, you know? Every now and then I get a song idea that just drops in my lap, kind of effortlessly. It almost feels like it didn’t come from me.”

Well, it certainly didn’t come from Lee Ving. But whatever the cosmic inspiration or source for his songs may be, the EP’s release will be celebrated with a performance from Kelly that night downstairs in the Atlanta Room at Smith’s Olde Bar. - Stomp and Stammer

Patrick Kelly was a longtime fixture of the Asheville music scene back in the days when one could argue there really wasn’t much of a scene. As bassist for The Goodies, Kelly helped deliver a cabaret-flavored rock vibe to the Western North Carolina mountains. Today he’s back where he started, in Atlanta, and his original material — created using the name Alias Patrick Kelly — leans in a more Americana direction. But the lessons he learned decades ago inform his current project. In support of his new EP, An Unclaimed Inheritance, Alias Patrick Kelly plays Isis Music Hall on Wednesday, Feb. 27.

Kelly’s previous release, Corruptibility Index, had a strong rock feel and showcased a carefully layered production aesthetic. But the new EP is less adorned and draws from the heartland-twang end of the musical pool, with a sound that, in places, recalls Jason and the Scorchers. “I was trying to be myself as much as I could be, really,” Kelly says. “I had a pile of songs to choose from, and I wanted to do something that I could turn around really quick.”

He admits that he’s been on a bit of Bruce Springsteen kick lately — “Nebraska is a top-five, all-time favorite record for me,” he says — and that no-nonsense approach to record-making influenced the creation of An Unclaimed Inheritance.

“I had this little group of songs that were all kind of acoustic-based, but I didn’t want to just put out a plain acoustic record,” Kelly explains. “I’m more ambitious with my instrumentation and arrangements.” As he began to put together the songs for the EP, he realized that a theme had developed. “They all seemed to live in the same spot, and almost every song had some kind of family-esque or companionship and friendship thing. They all just made sense together,” he says.

While there’s nothing at all pretentious about Kelly or his new EP, the artist does acknowledge an affinity for albums built around a common thematic foundation. “I like to group songs together,” Kelly says. “I like full albums. The last thing I want to be is a guy just doing one single at a time on Spotify with no direction other than a single song.

“I like movies, not 30-minute sitcoms,” he quips.

But Kelly didn’t sit down to write a half-dozen songs that hung together thematically. That happened organically, as the result of where he found himself in life. “I’d gotten married about three years ago, and I became a stepfather all of a sudden,” he says. “All that was new to me. I was definitely feeling the gravity of that because it’s something you have to take seriously.”

One of the EP’s tracks deals with the challenges of writing in a creatively unencouraging environment. “That one’s about wanting to move out of the townhouse we live in outside of Atlanta,” Kelly says with a wry laugh. “As a songwriter, it’s not the most conducive place to work on material. So it’s about ‘Get me the hell out of here,’ which we still haven’t done yet.”

Though he’s settled in Atlanta, Kelly looks back fondly upon his time in the Asheville music community. He started playing with The Goodies when he was 19 and says that the experience taught him a lot about music and songwriting. He says that Goodies frontman Holiday Childress — who is still based in Asheville — was a major influence on his own songwriting.

“We were roommates for, like, five years,” he says. “I was sitting there in the room when he was writing [those songs]. I would ask him questions like, ‘Why’d you scratch that out and put that there instead?’ More than anything, the thing I learned from him was what not to use and why.”

Kelly has plenty of amusing stories from his Asheville days. “I fell down the stairs going to the bathroom at Be Here Now, covered in melted snow,” he recalls with a laugh. “I just slipped! There was a line of girls at the bottom of the stairs, and right when I hit the bottom step, they were all gasping. I looked up and said, ‘I’ve fallen for all of you.’ Half of them thought it was funny and charming, and a couple of them gave me a scowl because they thought I was some drunk a**hole. I wasn’t even drunk yet!”

He’s looking forward to returning to his old stomping grounds for the Isis show. “It’s my first trip up there playing by myself,” Kelly says.”It’s tricky. No one knows who I am. I think the thing that got my foot in the door was when I said, ‘Yeah, I was in The Goodies for 20-plus years.’ That certainly helped.”

But he’s realistic about how far that association gets him. “If I suck, they’ll never book me again,” he says with a laugh. - Mountain Xpress

Alias Patrick Kelly To Debut New Songs 
From His Forthcoming EP 
At Smith’s Olde Bar On Sunday, March 18

Local bassist/sideman Patrick Kelly is known for playing with current local artists James Hall and the Steady Wicked. 
However, having been a sideman for some of Atlanta’s best songwriters for almost 20 years, Patrick’s decision to step out in front seemed inevitable.  His first effort, Corruptibility Index was an 11 track album released in September of 2016.  Being his first, the sound of the album was expansive and experimental.  It was the sound of an artist testing his own potential.  Lyrically, the album asks how it is that the individual can become something less when he initially set out to become something more.  The title, Corruptibility Index literally asks “how much adversity can the individual take before his best efforts and intentions are worn down to something more diminished.” 

Kelly’s new EP is a more sonically focused effort leaning towards the sound of Americana.  More a short story than a novel, each song has a familial aspect to it.  Whether it is the opening track “Lamb” in which the son of a single mother is lamenting the absence of a father as he is being taken away to jail for murder or the track “Invisible” which shows a young man returning from a tour of duty as he and his family try to cope with his PTSD. 

Whereas past shows have been done as solo acoustic efforts, this performance will feature his backing band made up of local artists Mike Froedge on drums (Double Drive), Bruce Butkovich on bass (James Hall and the Steady Wicked), and Matt Hanson on guitar (A Slow Boat to China).  Also on the bill is Geri X who’s previous accolades include being named Tampa Bay’s best songwriter 2 years in a row as well as being hailed by Rolling Stone as Best of Indie in 2011.

Alias Patrick Kelly will be independently releasing a new EP entitled An Unclaimed Inheritance this June. The EP is being co-produced with Bruce Butkovich.  The artwork will be designed with local artist Jeremy Ray.

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