WISCONSIN MUSIC PODCAST
WMP Linktree: https://linktr.ee/WI_Music_Podcast
AMPLFYING WISCONSIN MUSIC
Elysian Stew
Instagram: http://www.Instagram.com/elysian_stew
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrick.zyduck
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5lao8yeqTuBXMgRTEjO86i
YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCxKM0AR1hwfqkfj-kv7t-6g
EPISODE 139
Welcome back to another riveting episode of the Wisconsin Music Podcast, where we unveil Wisconsin's vibrant musical landscape by showcasing its numerous talents. Today, we host the captivating instrumental guitar virtuoso, Pat Zyduck, also known as Elysian Stew. Renowned for his unique blend of diverse musical elements, Pat melds the old and new, crafting a captivating auditory tapestry.
Join us on a fascinating journey, charting the course of Pat's musical saga—from his first encounter with the guitar, the eccentric teaching methods of his father, his hiatus in military service, to his enthralling return to the music scene. He further shares his intriguing experiences of transforming life's adversities into potent musical inspiration and the compelling backstory behind his album's title.
Along with dipping into Pat's musical voyage, get set to delve into the compelling narrative behind his favorite song, 'Low-Flying Owls,' and the unconventional circumstances that bestowed it with its peculiar name. Candid discussions about maintaining work-life harmony as a musician, arranging gigs that complement his instrumental style, and dealing with harsh criticism provide a comprehensive picture of a musician's life.
Pat shares valuable insights into his influences, musical explorations, and recording studio experiences, and talks about the crucial role played by his wife, his ongoing projects, and his plans for future performances. Tune in to unravel the artistry of Elysian Stew, understand his musical style better, and discover the vibrancy of Wisconsin's music scene.
"I've always been drawn to the raw honesty of music. It's a way to express emotions that words alone can't capture," reflects Elysian Stew, offering listeners a glimpse into the soul of his artistry.
"There's something magical about tapping into the essence of a moment and translating it into music. It's like capturing lightning in a bottle," he muses, his words resonating with the universal language of music.
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Wisconsin Music Podcast,
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your go-to destination for discovering the incredible musical tapestry woven
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by the talented artists of the Badger State.
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Today we have a special treat for your ears as we sit down with the master of
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the instrumental guitar, none other than the enigmatic Pat Zydek,
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better known on stage as the sonic storyteller Elysian Stew.
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Did I say all that correctly so far? You did, yeah. Excellent. in
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this episode we'll delve into the artistry of
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pat zidek a musician who skillfully combines fragments
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of musical influences to craft his sonic stew that is
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both nostalgic and contemporary with a mission to invoke emotions each composition
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is a journey through the forest of feelings a testament to the profound impact
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music can have on our souls but wait there's more pat zidek has just released
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a brand new album and it's titled driving the desert to burn a million dollars.
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© transcript Emily Beynon.
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You can find this captivating musical experience on
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all major streaming platforms youtube itunes and more so
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get ready to immerse yourself in the enchanting melodies and
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tales of elysian stew do stay tuned to the wisconsin music
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podcast where we celebrate the sounds that make our steak
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unique one artist at a time so pat welcome
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to the wisconsin music podcast thank you
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thank you thank you very much for having me this is quite an honor i
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appreciate it well thank you so much for being on so let's
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get listeners introduced to you kind of give them a summary of
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your music origin story yeah so
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basically i've been playing guitar most of
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my life my father was was a professional musician so he
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started me when I was four okay pretty much
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had hopes and dreams of you know making it big and everything
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and those were dashed at the age of
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17 thanks to my father which is an interesting story I
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wasn't wasn't done maliciously it was done to let me realize that I wasn't good
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enough okay and at that point it was okay now I have to come up with a plan
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b because I didn't have a plan b before I was just it was going to be music
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or nothing and and realized that music wasn't going to work.
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So I came up with a plan B, joined the military.
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I got to travel the world for a number of years.
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Met a girl, got married, settled down, had a family. Music kind of fell by the wayside.
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Fast forward 20 years, that marriage ended, and my sister, who is probably one
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of my biggest fans, told me that I needed to start playing again, basically.
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A year later, I released my first album, and it was all songs written while
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I was going through a divorce, so they were very angry songs.
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A few years after that, well, about a year and a half after that,
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actually, I released a second EP entitled Tuwache Vida, which was songs I had
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written about genocide in Africa.
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Something that was pretty near and dear to my heart.
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And then I joined a band. I was hired gun guitar player,
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played with them for about six years and I was having a blast and everything,
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but it got to be a little much, you know, everybody in the band was working
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full-time day jobs and the band was starting to have a little bit of success,
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but not enough that any of us could quit our jobs.
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Okay. So, so I said, I was getting a little burned out. So I said basically
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that I needed a brief hiatus.
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And that hiatus actually, which was going to originally be a month or two,
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turned into 12 years. Oh, wow.
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Yeah, yeah. Pretty, pretty surprising.
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But then the pandemic happened and my full-time day job, I was out and about.
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I worked through a whole pandemic, which was pretty stressful.
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And when things started coming out of that, I realized I was in kind of a bad place mentally.
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So I decided I was going to start playing music again, just for my own personal
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therapy. You know, just it was something I enjoyed, something I loved,
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and it was something that took my mind off of everything else that was going on.
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And so I had absolutely no intention of getting back into the scene.
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But as I started playing, you know, and I was playing when we're kids,
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we play for the pure enjoyment and for the innocence of it, you know.
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So that was kind of the mindset I was going to bring into it this time.
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And I was I was playing for just for the pure enjoyment. And but before long, my muse showed up.
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And kind of smacked me in the back of the head and said oh
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welcome back i got a whole bunch of songs for you to write now and
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realized well what good are these songs if
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nobody's ever going to hear them i was really proud of them and decided all
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right well i guess i'm going to release an album and here we are back in the
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scene a lot a lot deeper than i had planned on going but yeah of it you know
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excellent so what what was what is your muse that made you really get back into this.
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Well, it's funny, but she just
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kind of showed up one day and I don't know who she is. I call her a she.
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I've never seen her or anything, but it's just.
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It's kind of a cliche when we talk to certain musicians about,
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they say, oh, well, the song was just floating in the universe and it just found
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me and filtered itself out through me.
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But a lot of the songs on this record, that's kind of the way they came.
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Just started noodling in the studio, playing around and all of a sudden the
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melody came and I'd build off of that and build off of that.
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And next thing I knew, I had a song.
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There are a couple on the album that were written for a specific purpose, like Russian warship.
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That one was, I don't know if you're familiar with the story of the Ukrainian
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soldiers on Snake Island, Ukraine.
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After Russians invaded Ukraine, a Russian warship basically told them they needed
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to surrender or they would be attacked.
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And the Ukrainians, in no uncertain terms, told the Russians where to go.
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So I wrote that song with trying to envision some of the emotions that the ukrainian
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soldiers were feeling while they were waiting for the russians to attack,
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gotcha that's that's where that song came from okay but
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like unquiet ghost i was just rehearsing to
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do a show and this melody just popped
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into my head and i started playing it and inside of 10
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minutes i had the song and there's there's a
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line in a josh ritter song called the bone
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of song where the song is basically about finding
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a bone in the woods and there are lyrics engraved on
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the bone and if you find the bone and put it back it will give you a
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song but there's a line in there it says lucky are you who finds me in the wilderness
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for i am the only unquiet ghost that does not seek rest and i wrote this song
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and it was like where did that come from it's like i have no idea where it came
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from but i figured the unquiet ghost brought it to me so that's what i titled it was unquiet ghost.
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Cool. Very cool. So do you think some of this has to do with your military experience?
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This particular record? Probably not. No. A lot of these were just songs that
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just kind of came to me as I was playing around.
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And it's like, ooh, what was that? I'd build off of it and things like that.
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Nothing on the album is specifically related to my military experience,
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because that was a long time ago so kind
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of diving back into a recap of everything that you've
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said so far you said back when you were 17 your dad
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basically kind of showed you that in his own way that he felt that you weren't
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able to become a professional musician as this was going to become your profession
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as listeners are out there what do you think your dad was right about that made
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sure that that was the actual path
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for you to take was not to become a professional musician at that time?
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Well, it's not that he didn't want me to be a professional musician.
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He knew I wasn't good enough at that point. And the way he drilled that into
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my head was I came home from school one day and he said to me,
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he said, so what's your plan? You're not doing great in school.
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You're probably not going to go on to college. So what is your plan?
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And I said, well, I'm going to go to Nashville. My dad was big in the country
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music world. And he said, do you think you're good enough?
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And I said, yeah. My dad was the guy on the side of the stage,
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the hired gun and guitar guitar player.
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He played with some of the biggest names in country music in the 70s.
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And that's who I wanted to be.
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And he said, okay, cool. And he got up and walked out of the kitchen.
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And the next day I came home from school and there was an envelope on the table.
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I opened it up and there was $500 cash, Greyhound bus ticket,
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and a list of names and phone numbers.
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And he said, you're going to Nashville this weekend. And he said,
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all I want you to do is just spend the weekend walking up and down 16th Avenue,
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which at the time was the street all the major recording studios were on.
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And so I did that, you know, that was back in the days when you could send your
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17 year old boy off to a different state and not really have to worry about it too much.
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It didn't take me long to realize that these guys playing for change on the
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street corners weren't good enough to get jobs and they were a lot better than me.
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So it was kind of my dad's way of making me figure it out myself.
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So that's when I came home and said, well, I got to come up with a plan B.
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And and my i fully intended on pursuing music but you know life gets in the
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way a lot of times and things like that right okay no that that's a really interesting story it's like,
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Like you said, you know, if he would have just said, no, you're not good enough,
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you probably would have not listened to one word he said and,
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you know, fought against it.
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But your own experience, you went, okay, well, am I going to be dedicated enough
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to become better than these people?
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Yes or no. And obviously you made that decision.
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Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Well, and he didn't, he didn't want to see me go down to
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Nashville and then, you know, be living on the street starving.
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Right. Exactly. When no parent wants to see that happen. They want to see their kids successful.
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Now, obviously, you were in the military.
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Did you do anything musical in the military, or was it something in a different
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branch of the military that you were a part of? Well, no, I was in the Coast Guard. Okay.
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And my first duty station was Kodiak Island, Alaska.
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And while I was there, I met a fellow banjo player. So we formed a little group
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and we did a cassette tape.
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We didn't know anything about vinyl pressing or anything at that time.
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So we went into the studio and
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recorded, I think, seven or eight songs and put them on a cassette tape.
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And it was just bluegrass covers, that kind of a thing.
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It was just guitar and banjo. and during that experience
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in the studio it was like okay i want to do more of this
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this was fun yeah you know we played played
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some shows on the base and there wasn't a whole lot to
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do in the city of kodiak it's a city of 5 000 people and probably 4 000 of them
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are commercial fishermen and so you know the the bars get kind of rowdy when
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the guys are in right yeah so there wasn't a whole lot of opportunities to play
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but we played some shows on the base at the officers club the enlisted men's
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club and things like that.
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And then from there, I got transferred to Two Rivers, Wisconsin,
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where I had joined a country band. I grew up country.
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I didn't even realize anything but country existed until I was 12 when my cousin
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played Here Comes the Sun for me by the Beatles and blew my mind. Yeah.
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But came back from Alaska, formed a country cover band, and did that for a little while.
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And then met a woman, got married, had a family, and wife kind of got in the way.
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So that was my first hiatus from music, which lasted almost 20 years.
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Yeah. And then around, if I'm figuring this out correctly, going backwards from
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what you talked about before,
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about mid-2000s, between 2000 and 2010 is when you started your back to music
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with a band. Was that around that time?
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Yeah. Yeah. Let's see. What would that have been? Yeah, right around mids. Yeah. Yeah.
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And I started, you know, I started, I wrote my, my album, which is titled,
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I never want to meet another you. That's the one I wrote after I got divorced. Right.
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Gotcha. And the guy that owned the studio that I recorded that in,
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we ended up becoming really good friends and he invited me to join his band
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kind of as a hired gun guitar player.
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And I did that. It was a band out of Sheboygan called Icarus Drifting,
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which is the band is still around. They're called the Bellwether now. Oh, okay.
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Sure. Yeah. Yeah, Eric Cox and Thea, Marissa, and Corey.
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But yeah, so after Icarus kind of fell apart, Eric reformed Icarus into the bellwether.
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But I played with Eric and Icarus Drifting for about six years.
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And that's during that time I released my second album. And then we released an album as Icarus.
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Okay. So let's talk a little bit about this newest album that you recently released.
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Based um kind of give the listeners kind of like a the summary of from beginning
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to end how it started where you recorded it things you kind of learned from
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that process and the release story behind it yeah so i wrote these songs that
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you know over the course of about 16 or 18 months.
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And a friend of mine i live in fond du lac and a friend of mine owns a studio
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it's not a pro that's not his business but he you know he has a studio on the
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side he's a music teacher and things like that and he offered to record it for
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me so I took him up on it and just kind of,
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laid out the songs that I did and then you know picked the sequence that I wanted
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to put him in and one of the reviews that I got on the record said it's it's
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it's a journey going through the desert and seeing almost every single different
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terrain a desert would have to offer which is It's pretty interesting.
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The songs were not written to be grouped together.
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They weren't written specifically for this album.
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I would just write a song and log it. And then pretty soon I realized these
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songs all kind of go together with a little bit of variation.
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So they don't all sound the same. Right.
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And the title came from something a woman said to me after a live show one time.
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She said, your music just makes me feel so carefree, like I want to drive through
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the desert to burn a million dollars.
00:17:03,917 --> 00:17:07,017
And I went, oh, I got to write that down. Yeah, definitely, definitely.
00:17:07,497 --> 00:17:10,597
Very catchy, very thought-provoking title.
00:17:11,277 --> 00:17:15,577
Now, the tunes that you had mentioned earlier, Russian and Ghost,
00:17:15,697 --> 00:17:16,657
are those part of that album?
00:17:17,137 --> 00:17:20,717
Yes, they're both on this album. Okay. It's Russian Worship,
00:17:20,837 --> 00:17:27,017
and there is another part to the name of that song, but it's got a bad word in it. Okay, gotcha.
00:17:28,377 --> 00:17:32,017
And then the other one is called Unquiet Ghost. Unquiet Ghost.
00:17:32,637 --> 00:17:37,857
My favorite song on the album is Low-Flying Owls, which was one of those songs.
00:17:37,857 --> 00:17:39,297
That just kind of came to me.
00:17:39,377 --> 00:17:45,897
I just wrote it one day, and I played it for my wife, and we're trying to come up with a title for it.
00:17:46,717 --> 00:17:49,537
Because a lot of times, you know, it's instrumental, there's no
00:17:49,537 --> 00:17:52,457
story right sometimes there's a story behind it but
00:17:52,457 --> 00:17:55,857
it may not be obvious to the listener because there's no words right
00:17:55,857 --> 00:17:59,937
00:17:59,937 --> 00:18:04,177
the song after a feeling that the song may evoke or i go the complete opposite
00:18:04,177 --> 00:18:09,297
direction and just name it something really offbeat and off the wall and this
00:18:09,297 --> 00:18:12,777
one yeah i'd written the song and she said well let's just marinate on it for
00:18:12,777 --> 00:18:17,977
a few days and see if something doesn't come to us and we actually saw a road sign sign.
00:18:18,337 --> 00:18:22,357
And you know, those yellow diamond shaped signs like a deer crossing sign.
00:18:22,677 --> 00:18:26,097
And it said, caution, low flying owls.
00:18:26,757 --> 00:18:32,017
And my wife turned to me and looked at me and I had the song recorded and she's like, play that song.
00:18:32,357 --> 00:18:35,257
So I played it and she went, Oh my God, that's it. It's low.
00:18:35,397 --> 00:18:38,977
And she says, I just envisioned an owl just kind of soaring through the woods
00:18:38,977 --> 00:18:42,577
with its wings stretched out. And so that's what I titled it.
00:18:43,920 --> 00:21:37,840
00:21:37,688 --> 00:21:41,428
Obviously multiple different states and
00:21:41,428 --> 00:21:44,288
venues what can you kind of tell the listeners
00:21:44,288 --> 00:21:47,988
about your experience of the local attitude that
00:21:47,988 --> 00:21:50,768
you have experienced over the years that you have played out live
00:21:50,768 --> 00:21:53,668
good and bad well the the
00:21:53,668 --> 00:21:56,668
bad is the typical and i'm sure almost every musician out there
00:21:56,668 --> 00:21:59,388
will will agree with me when you know
00:21:59,388 --> 00:22:02,448
you show up to a gig and there's five people there and
00:22:02,448 --> 00:22:06,648
four of those five people are talking right
00:22:06,648 --> 00:22:09,368
you know and that's just part of it
00:22:09,368 --> 00:22:12,588
right but you know that it's there's that one person
00:22:12,588 --> 00:22:16,108
standing there paying attention and that's
00:22:16,108 --> 00:22:19,488
you know you got to bring your stadium show your a-game even if it's just one
00:22:19,488 --> 00:22:26,828
person you know well the good stuff is is far outweighs the bad of course but
00:22:26,828 --> 00:22:31,928
it's it's like one of the best experiences that ever happened to me after a
00:22:31,928 --> 00:22:34,688
live show and during a live show actually is i have a song,
00:22:35,428 --> 00:22:41,408
i wrote called river of souls and it's about genocide in africa it's a pretty dark heavy song.
00:22:42,228 --> 00:22:48,668
But i was playing a small coffee shop in cheboygan and i saw a woman in the
00:22:48,668 --> 00:22:53,588
audience just happened to notice she was crying i mean i'm like you know bawling
00:22:53,588 --> 00:22:56,888
ugly crying and we made eye eye contact.
00:22:57,168 --> 00:23:00,428
And she got up and ran into the bathroom while I'm on stage playing the song,
00:23:00,608 --> 00:23:03,128
looking at her husband who was sitting next to her thinking,
00:23:03,308 --> 00:23:04,648
well, you jerk, what'd you say to her?
00:23:04,768 --> 00:23:09,328
You know, and finished out the show.
00:23:09,408 --> 00:23:13,888
And she came up to me after the show and she says, I've never been moved so
00:23:13,888 --> 00:23:16,228
much in my life as I have from that song.
00:23:16,748 --> 00:23:19,948
And I said, you were crying because of my song. She goes, yes.
00:23:20,328 --> 00:23:22,528
And I was like, okay, I can retire now.
00:23:23,568 --> 00:23:26,388
It's like I touched somebody that deeply that
00:23:26,388 --> 00:23:29,248
i made her ugly cry right right i mean
00:23:29,248 --> 00:23:32,428
that's that it's a highlight for
00:23:32,428 --> 00:23:36,208
sure right it's it's something that an artist wants some
00:23:36,208 --> 00:23:39,028
kind of emotion evoked from something
00:23:39,028 --> 00:23:42,868
that they're doing either from a painting or a picture or a musical composition
00:23:42,868 --> 00:23:48,268
just know that they can you know touch somebody with a human emotion with what
00:23:48,268 --> 00:23:51,348
they're doing then that lets them know that they're on the right track of what
00:23:51,348 --> 00:23:56,348
they're trying to accomplish well even the negative stuff, you know, is okay a lot of times.
00:23:56,428 --> 00:24:00,188
I had a song on my first record called why, and it was rather political and,
00:24:01,112 --> 00:24:04,372
And I was playing it one day, and apparently this gentleman in the audience
00:24:04,372 --> 00:24:06,732
had an opposite political opinion of mine.
00:24:07,152 --> 00:24:10,472
And he got up, and he gave me the finger, and he walked out.
00:24:10,572 --> 00:24:11,912
And it's like, okay, that's fine.
00:24:12,252 --> 00:24:16,052
And then a woman came up to me afterwards, and she said, I'm sorry that you
00:24:16,052 --> 00:24:18,772
had to deal with that. I said, I'm not. She goes, well, why not?
00:24:18,852 --> 00:24:19,912
I said, it's perfectly fine.
00:24:20,132 --> 00:24:22,052
My song elicited a reaction.
00:24:22,352 --> 00:24:26,012
I would rather get a negative reaction than no reaction. Right.
00:24:27,272 --> 00:24:29,972
At least he was listening. Yeah, exactly.
00:24:31,432 --> 00:24:34,772
Told me a lot right exactly so we've
00:24:34,772 --> 00:24:38,732
talked about the local scene we've talked about your current project now
00:24:38,732 --> 00:24:42,492
obviously you talked about being divorced but it also sounds like you're remarried
00:24:42,492 --> 00:24:47,032
is your wife now is she a musician as well or is she just a really good music
00:24:47,032 --> 00:24:53,352
lover she's a music lover she is an artist but she's a graphic designer so which
00:24:53,352 --> 00:24:57,952
is great because she does does all the artwork for my albums, everything like that.
00:24:59,392 --> 00:25:04,132
So yeah, kind of a built-in art director. But no, she's a music lover for sure.
00:25:04,352 --> 00:25:10,932
And we go see a lot of shows together and pretty diverse as far as our tastes.
00:25:11,352 --> 00:25:15,632
You know, like two weeks ago, we were in Milwaukee at Pfizer to see Tool.
00:25:15,932 --> 00:25:21,912
And then the very next night, we were in Madison to see a Ukrainian folk band called Daka Bruka.
00:25:22,872 --> 00:25:28,192
Fantastic, fantastic. Yeah, it's good to explore all the different types of
00:25:28,192 --> 00:25:30,692
music out there, especially when, like you.
00:25:31,873 --> 00:25:34,213
Where you just started out, you didn't think there was anything besides country
00:25:34,213 --> 00:25:35,073
out there till you were 12.
00:25:35,553 --> 00:25:38,593
Now you're exploring all this different kinds of music. And I think it just
00:25:38,593 --> 00:25:41,853
makes you a better, not just a better musician, but just makes you a better
00:25:41,853 --> 00:25:45,333
person overall, just to experience all these different kinds of music out there.
00:25:45,553 --> 00:25:49,673
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, and I draw a little influence from certain things.
00:25:50,093 --> 00:25:53,613
I was just playing the other day in the studio and I have a loop pedal that I play with.
00:25:53,713 --> 00:25:57,173
I don't do a lot with it live, but just started this little riff and it was
00:25:57,173 --> 00:26:00,193
like, that sounds kind of tool-like. So I just built off of it.
00:26:00,413 --> 00:26:03,473
Nice. you know and it's just had i
00:26:03,473 --> 00:26:06,333
not been exposed to that music i probably never would have done that right
00:26:06,333 --> 00:26:09,473
yeah i like to expose myself to a lot of different styles and
00:26:09,473 --> 00:26:12,653
00:26:12,653 --> 00:26:16,113
the questions i ask is about like work life balance you haven't really said
00:26:16,113 --> 00:26:20,973
you're retired or not but do you have like a work life balance difficulty or
00:26:20,973 --> 00:26:25,413
is it kind of pretty much you're you got a good balance going there i think
00:26:25,413 --> 00:26:31,573
it's it's probably it's pretty decent i mean it's work Work definitely is the predominant.
00:26:31,573 --> 00:26:35,613
I do have a day job predominant factor in my life right now.
00:26:35,933 --> 00:26:41,553
I work 10 hour days and I have a almost hour drive to and from work.
00:26:41,673 --> 00:26:44,853
So I've got, yeah, I live in Fidelac. I work in Appleton.
00:26:45,313 --> 00:26:48,553
So it's 47 miles from my house to my job.
00:26:48,973 --> 00:26:55,433
So I do spend a lot of time in work mode. You know, I come home and try,
00:26:55,573 --> 00:26:59,633
you know, like Mondays and Tuesdays, I'm done earlier than I am on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
00:26:59,633 --> 00:27:04,373
So I have time to play after work and things like that on Wednesdays and Thursdays,
00:27:04,373 --> 00:27:08,793
I get a little bit of time in the morning to play, but my wife does work Fridays.
00:27:08,893 --> 00:27:10,853
So Friday is kind of my day.
00:27:12,293 --> 00:27:16,533
It's my day to just do what I need to do and what I want to do and things like that.
00:27:16,613 --> 00:27:19,113
And then come the weekend, if we don't have anything going on,
00:27:19,133 --> 00:27:23,493
then I go into studio and, you know, play some more or it's,
00:27:23,533 --> 00:27:27,853
it's pretty rare that we don't have something going on. at least one of the days on the weekend.
00:27:28,795 --> 00:27:34,015
Are you going out and still performing with the new album? Are you getting good
00:27:34,015 --> 00:27:36,315
feedback? What's the deal on that?
00:27:36,595 --> 00:27:42,495
Yeah, I'm in booking mode right now. I've got a show booked at Oak Brewing in West Allis in April.
00:27:42,635 --> 00:27:46,115
It's one of the Amplified Artist Sessions that they do there.
00:27:46,835 --> 00:27:51,335
And right now, I'm... So being an instrumental artist, you know,
00:27:51,375 --> 00:27:57,895
I'm definitely not a bar scene kind of a guy. So my stuff just is not made for
00:27:57,895 --> 00:27:59,815
that particular type of venue.
00:28:00,175 --> 00:28:06,035
So I'm trying to find, you know, wine bars or maybe smaller places to play there.
00:28:06,415 --> 00:28:10,275
My wife and I happen to love the Door County areas and there's a lot of places
00:28:10,275 --> 00:28:12,275
up there. So I'm doing some bookings up there.
00:28:12,615 --> 00:28:15,435
There are some places in Sheboygan, you know, I'm trying to,
00:28:15,435 --> 00:28:19,755
trying to stick within an hour or two of my house, maybe two and a half if it's,
00:28:19,755 --> 00:28:20,955
if it's a really cool place.
00:28:20,955 --> 00:28:23,775
Uh but that's not to say i wouldn't take
00:28:23,775 --> 00:28:26,915
a you know if somebody booked me a great show in minneapolis or
00:28:26,915 --> 00:28:29,855
chicago i'd definitely jump all over it right right
00:28:29,855 --> 00:28:32,735
but yeah i'm i'm in i'm in hardcore booking mode right
00:28:32,735 --> 00:28:35,395
00:28:35,395 --> 00:28:39,535
any gigs i mean you talked about some gigs where you know you had some great
00:28:39,535 --> 00:28:44,695
emotional reaction from the audience was there one where you went and saw someone
00:28:44,695 --> 00:28:50,635
perform and had a great impression on you yeah so one of my wives and my both
00:28:50,635 --> 00:28:53,675
favorite artist is a guy out of Ireland named Damien Rice.
00:28:54,776 --> 00:29:00,416
He's a singer-songwriter, you know. I'm kind of reluctant to always say he's
00:29:00,416 --> 00:29:03,156
from Ireland because that immediately conjures up the image of,
00:29:03,236 --> 00:29:06,816
oh, he does Irish music, but he does not. He isn't a singer-songwriter. Right.
00:29:07,376 --> 00:29:09,036
But we've seen him a couple times,
00:29:09,216 --> 00:29:12,156
and we're actually going to see him in Chicago on the 1st of December.
00:29:12,956 --> 00:29:17,976
But he played the Auditorium Theater a few years ago, walked out on that stage,
00:29:18,016 --> 00:29:21,716
and I don't know what the capacity of the theater is. It's probably 6,000 or 8,000.
00:29:22,136 --> 00:29:24,936
But he walked out on that stage solo, solo just an
00:29:24,936 --> 00:29:28,096
acoustic guitar and that place fell silent
00:29:28,096 --> 00:29:31,336
for two hours i mean it was amazing
00:29:31,336 --> 00:29:34,616
i don't know how you do that one guy in acoustic guitar i'm
00:29:34,616 --> 00:29:41,016
working on figuring it out just yeah it's just like you're just mesmerized by
00:29:41,016 --> 00:29:46,256
someone that can go up there just them and an instrument and just control your
00:29:46,256 --> 00:29:48,076
attention for that amount of
00:29:48,076 --> 00:29:53,836
time it's just exactly yeah it's awe-inspiring and and And he's just so,
00:29:54,036 --> 00:29:57,416
I don't know if you're familiar with his music at all, but it's pretty deep, too.
00:29:58,036 --> 00:30:02,916
It's the type of music that you really should listen to. And most of his fans
00:30:02,916 --> 00:30:04,896
realize this, so most of them do.
00:30:05,696 --> 00:30:07,956
00:30:09,416 --> 00:30:13,016
And that's definitely one of our favorites. And I would love to be able to figure
00:30:13,016 --> 00:30:15,556
out how to do what he did with that size audience.
00:30:16,916 --> 00:30:19,556
Yeah, you would think it's like a lot of
00:30:19,556 --> 00:30:22,556
those songs you would think that that artist does it means
00:30:22,556 --> 00:30:26,716
something to a lot of different people each one of those songs and it just everybody's
00:30:26,716 --> 00:30:32,456
there to experience that in a live setting right right well it's like dave growl
00:30:32,456 --> 00:30:36,996
the fool fighter said one time he said you can sing a song to 85 000 people
00:30:36,996 --> 00:30:42,436
and they will sing it back to you for 85 000 different reasons yep exactly exactly.
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:47,440
I'm pretty much out of questions. I mean, you've given us a lot of stuff to
00:30:47,440 --> 00:30:50,320
ponder and think about and reflect on.
00:30:50,420 --> 00:30:54,000
Is there anything that you would like the listeners to know about before I let you go?
00:30:54,440 --> 00:30:57,680
Just check out the album. You know, it's available on most of the streaming
00:30:57,680 --> 00:31:02,560
platforms, Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music. It is on YouTube as well.
00:31:02,820 --> 00:31:07,560
If you don't have any, I'm finding a lot of my fans are of my age and a lot
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,120
of them don't have Spotify and things like that.
00:31:10,660 --> 00:31:13,540
So it's up on YouTube as well. but yeah just
00:31:13,540 --> 00:31:16,380
go check it out if you like it hop on over to
00:31:16,380 --> 00:31:19,420
itunes and you know click that old buy button that
00:31:19,420 --> 00:31:22,600
would be great there you go are you on um bandcamp as
00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:25,580
well yep okay so i will put all
00:31:25,580 --> 00:31:28,860
your links into the description of this episode
00:31:28,860 --> 00:31:31,740
so people can just click on that and then go right to that
00:31:31,740 --> 00:31:34,440
and you know hopefully you know support you by
00:31:34,440 --> 00:31:37,580
buying you know your music like you said on itunes or
00:31:37,580 --> 00:31:40,620
over at bandcamp so yeah yeah it
00:31:40,620 --> 00:31:43,760
is all of the socials and it's all under the elysian
00:31:43,760 --> 00:31:46,560
stew okay that's yeah that's one
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:49,340
more thing i was going to ask you but i forgot it's like where did that name come
00:31:49,340 --> 00:31:55,700
from so elysian means blissful or delightful which hopefully people will find
00:31:55,700 --> 00:32:02,200
my music and stew comes from a lot of my influences growing up i've taken little
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:05,260
little bits and pieces and kind of all throwing them in the pot to come up with
00:32:05,260 --> 00:32:06,900
my own little stew of a style.
00:32:07,360 --> 00:32:11,060
And I figured by doing that also, if I ever work with any other musicians,
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:14,060
they will just be added ingredients in the stew.
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,640
Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Pat, thank you so much for being on the Wisconsin Music Podcast.
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:22,580
Like I said, it's been a pleasure talking with you, learning about your journey
00:32:22,580 --> 00:32:25,860
through music, and I hope the listeners enjoyed hearing this as well.
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:29,660
Yeah, I do too. Thank you so much for having me. I greatly appreciate it.
00:32:29,680 --> 00:32:33,220
It's awesome what you do to help support Wisconsin musicians. That's great.
00:32:33,999 --> 00:32:38,739
And then that's it. So I'll do this stuff post editing and everything.
00:32:38,919 --> 00:32:42,019
And then I will let you know when this will go live. It'd probably be like,
00:32:42,519 --> 00:32:44,559
I'm thinking not till the early
00:32:44,559 --> 00:32:47,859
new year, like January, February is when this will probably come out.
00:32:47,939 --> 00:32:51,739
So, and like you said, you mentioned a gig in April. So people will catch that
00:32:51,739 --> 00:32:53,519
00:32:53,699 --> 00:32:55,699
And then they can, you have a website.
00:32:56,259 --> 00:33:02,639
I don't have a website. No, I've just got, I've got the Instagram and my Facebook is under my name.
00:33:02,859 --> 00:33:08,999
Okay. I tried changing the name to Elysian stew and all these people kept sending
00:33:08,999 --> 00:33:10,779
me messages. Who are you? How do I know?
00:33:12,419 --> 00:33:15,519
Cause I have a lot of followers on Facebook and I thought it would be easier
00:33:15,519 --> 00:33:17,639
just to change my name and it will be to start over.
00:33:17,859 --> 00:33:23,339
Right. By that I realized that didn't work. So I just changed it back to my name. Gotcha. Okay.
00:33:23,799 --> 00:33:27,419
Well, Pat, once again, thank you so much for being on and looking forward to
00:33:27,419 --> 00:33:30,159
putting this all together for you and letting you know when it's ready to go.
00:33:30,479 --> 00:33:33,479
Sounds good. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yep. Have a great evening.
00:33:33,679 --> 00:33:37,219
Thank you. You too. Well, thanks again for tuning in to another episode of the
00:33:37,219 --> 00:33:38,179
00:33:38,539 --> 00:33:42,339
Once again, I'm Zach Foe, your host and creator of the Wisconsin music podcast,
00:33:42,379 --> 00:33:47,019
where I love to amplify the great sounds coming out of the Wisconsin state.
00:33:47,059 --> 00:33:50,519
We have great talent here, great support, great listeners.
00:33:50,959 --> 00:33:56,399
Thanks to Fox cities, indie radio for syndicating this on Thursdays and Sundays,
00:33:56,479 --> 00:33:58,019
along with their other great programmers.
00:33:58,059 --> 00:34:02,239
So make sure you check out the Fox cities, indie radio. Thanks to our great
00:34:02,239 --> 00:34:06,439
guest this week, Elysian Stew, also known as Pat Zydek.
00:34:06,779 --> 00:34:11,519
Make sure you check out his newest recording, Driving Through the Desert to
00:34:11,519 --> 00:34:16,259
Burn a Million Dollars, available on most streaming sites and Bandcamp.
00:34:16,599 --> 00:34:21,439
If you'd like to be on the show, just go to wisconsinmusicpodcast.com,
00:34:21,539 --> 00:34:26,379
fill out the guest request form up at the top, ask for your email and your name,
00:34:26,479 --> 00:34:30,219
and then I'll send you an auto email asking you for more information.
00:34:30,839 --> 00:34:34,799
If you are enjoying these episodes, please consider donating to the Wisconsin Music Podcast.
00:34:35,319 --> 00:34:39,539
Donations help pay for the website and putting the podcast up on streaming services
00:34:39,539 --> 00:34:44,119
and also getting our name out there to all Wisconsinites and others that are
00:34:44,119 --> 00:34:46,539
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00:34:47,059 --> 00:34:50,959
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00:34:50,959 --> 00:34:53,839
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00:34:54,559 --> 00:34:58,659
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00:34:58,879 --> 00:35:04,459
Leave some comments. Also go to the podcast review section of your podcast player
00:35:04,459 --> 00:35:06,539
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00:35:07,219 --> 00:35:10,979
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00:35:10,979 --> 00:35:14,119
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