Patrick Ames

Wabi Sabi Rock

Finding beauty in imperfection, or the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi, is a serious endeavor for singer-songwriter Patrick Ames. The 72-year old Californian, writes, performs, and produces his Rock/Soul/R&B music from a single laptop, with microphones a plenty and his signature guitar sound. His set up allows for experimentation in the lyrics where there is a seriousness and a meaning. It's new and it's inventive. It's his latest little gem, The Virtualistics II. Now streaming on all channels.

LISTEN HERE <<<

Follow the Folk artist on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/patrickames.bsky.social
For the Best of Patrick Ames on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DZ06evO4zzRLP
For a quick Artist Overview On Google: https://search.app.goo.gl/Sfwmyds

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New Release for 2026: The Virtualistics II

LISTEN HERE <<<

The Virtualistics II, EP, 4 Tracks
Released March 23, 2026, Produced by Patrick Ames
Download lyrics here: /files/1399003/Lyrics: The Virtualistics II

The first "The Virtualistics" LP appeared in 2021 right when the Covid pandemic was everywhere. The new LP never got a real send-off, even though many of the songs were about living with the virus. It was produced by Jon Ireson who also played the bass, and many other instruments, as he has done patiently over the years. And of course, the V-Stics featured Chana and Mikaela Matthews on backup vocals in one of their finest outings. The LP title came from the fact that our small band never met, we never got together as a group. It was all piece-meal, a track here, a snippet here, oftimes more file management than anything else, spending most of our valuable time trying to get the laptops to connect. We often recorded online and then just sent it all to Jon. It was how we got through those times.

Six years later I return to find the same climate of anxiety in the world: it's imploding. I feel compelled to write about what's happening and do my duty and participate. So I produced and released The Virtualistics II as an encore to the previous LP. And just like that wonderful album, you're gonna hear some chop. You're gonna hear my true indie self as a poet pretending to be a musician.

I have lots of songs laying around but chose these four. I like them. I re-tuned my practise guitar to Open D and started writing with that for several months. The holidays came and went and the songs and I sat in the studio, ignoring the riots on the streets and the fools in charge. Get ready. Everything is important. - patrick

Liner Notes for The Virtualistics II

by Frank Lehner

Ames’ new EP doesn't arrive with a thesis; it comes in sideways, mid-stride, while you’re already doing something else--buying what you don’t need, noticing what you shouldn’t, listening to someone who sounds sure. Patrick Ames writes from that exact spot, where life keeps going and meaning has to elbow its way in. The Virtualistics II is a record about certainty—-how it stiffens, comforts, and lies—-and the songs don’t argue with it so much as stay close, long enough for the trouble to show. When Ames sings “I know everything,” the line is delivered straight, without a wink, and that’s where the danger lives, the claim sounding true in the mouth even as the song quietly reveals its cost. Ames’s phrasing sounds plain until it tilts, meaning arriving a beat late, closer to rhythmic feel than lyrical flourish, and you might hear kinship with important and captivating writers like David Berman, Bill Fay, or even Adrianne Lenker in that trust of restraint and attention. The Virtualistics II keeps the music balanced and unshowy, refusing to sweeten the message or rush the moment, and what’s left by the end is a rubbed nerve, a sharper ear, and the quiet sense that listening well—-staying with one another a little longer-—still matters. Yes, another Ames gem.

— Frank Lehner, Author of Mrs. Nussbaum’s Monkey
Pittsburgh, Pa. , February 20, 2025

>>>> LISTEN to the original Virtualistics LP down below on this page. Scroll down…

Eight Sung Poems

The new release that explores poetry and songwriting

Eight Sung Poems Opens New Doors Between Poetry and Songwriting (Sept 2025)

Eight Sung Poems is a collection of poems by Frank Lehner that Patrick interprets as music and sings as stories. The combination is breathtaking and delivered by Ames in a vocal style you don't want to leave.

Lyrics for Eight Sung Poems.txt
Liner Notes for Eight Sung Poems.txt

Excerpt from the Eight Sung Poems Liner Notes:
“Ames’s music doesn’t illustrate the poems—it lives them. These are not background tracks. These are incantations. Testimonies. Each one is steeped in silence, soaked in ordinary miracle, and ringing with a voice that knows love is never tidy and spring always comes wet. Sit down. Lean in. There’s dirt under these nails. There’s wine in the soil. These sung songs were born where reverence meets rhythm.” - Poet, Frank Lehner
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Slow Dip Ahead

Produced by Jon Ireson

Patrick Ames: vocals, guitars
Jon Ireson: Bass, Guitars, Keyboards, Programming
Chana Matthews, Mikaela Matthews, backup vocals

Listen on Bandcamp <see player above>> or : https://patrickames.bandcamp.com/album/slow-dip-ahead
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7IJ9UEkUBWaAMDdu2XlQbQ
Listen on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/patrick-ames/400895393
Listen on Amazon Music: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DC7XT3Y2
Listen on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kpokA5MCecaGAxUFMVbHg-YvAdFP3lxBw

Reviews of Slow Dip Ahead
• "Slow Dip Ahead is a brush. Ames takes our hand and dips it into his bucket of color. And with him, we paint our lives on the cobbled canvas of similar lives." - From the Liner Notes by Frank Lehner
• “The style is timeless, the delivery genuine, and the songs are impressively original. Patrick Ames creates a whole new world of escapism with this – an audio venture that’s thought-provoking but also uplifting to let fill the room.” Rebecca Cullen, Stereo Stickman, Dec. 2024
• “Produced by and featuring Jon Ireson, Slow Dip Ahead is a proposition that has grown in presence, richness and pleasure by the listen and the kind of moment to easily push PATRICK AMES towards much broader recognition. The RingMaster Review
•“Unburdened by existing musical templates or listeners’ expectations, the rules of any particular genre, or the flow of fad or fashion, his music balances accessibility with a wonderful, unconformist vibe. His latest album, Slow Dip Ahead, is the perfect example of this adventurousness, this sonic restlessness, this mercurial and marvelous experimentation with sound and style. The result is classic sounds in a forward-thinking setting.” - Dave Franklin, The Big Take Over. - complete review here.
• “That, essentially is what makes Patrick Ames’ EP, Slow Dip Ahead, so special. If nothing else, it is a reminder of two things- the days when the aforementioned musicians stole our ears and demanded our attention and the hope that their legacy isn’t gone and can still influence a world desperately in need of inspiration.” Patrick Hickey, ReviewFix.com
• "More Than I Can Take" is a masterclass in restraint. The instrumentation is intentionally stripped back, leaving room for Ames’ vocals to take center stage. The result is an intimate listening experience, as if he’s singing directly to you from the other side of a campfire. There’s a warmth to his voice, a rough-edged sincerity that captures the spirit. - WeWriteAboutMusic.com

The Liner Notes for Slow Dip Ahead, by Frank Lehner

Patrick Ames’ new offering is a joyous lament, a torch song to hope, a refusal of the voices, people, and circumstances that attempt to curtain and mute the harsh wonder of the heart’s desire and hope’s relentless delighted claw for love, connection, and communion.

Slow Dip Ahead is just that, eight songs of descent into the confusion of path-making and the “What now” we each experience and then the splendid ascent revival love-dance of eyes and smiles and just-now hugs behind the door of the home we build to keep us grounded, singing our determination to flame—the flame that flames in our bones.

And if you hear in the introspection of “More Than I Can Take” voices and themes of Paul Simon and James Taylor, or within the cheeky spiritual embrace in “Bop Bop Buddha,” Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan, or in the activism of “I Was Thinking and “I See the Window,” Joni Mitchell and Neil Young, or the complexity of American life in “The Lonely Lie,” Bruce Springsteen or Lucinda Williams, or in nostalgist joyous escapism of “Young and Amorous,” Tom Petty, or the down-home exuberant, bouncy car-ride storytelling in “Somehow I’ll Find a Way,” John Prine, you’d be spot on—but only partially. Ames’ voice and writing are fully his. He grinds glass. He laughs. He pokes fun. He calls attention to. His songs run the gamut of styles—folk to Brazilian to discoesque (in a good way) to shear bluesy shuffle exuberance. Ames’ work here, as in previous releases, complements and adds to the best of the American songwriter’s book.

Slow Dip Ahead is a brush. Ames takes our hand and dips it into his bucket of color. And with him, we paint our lives on the cobbled canvas of similar lives. Ames’s genius is catching us catching ourselves in our certainties, our doubts, and our sparks and desires. Slow Dip paints a canvas not of Ames’ but of the listener—both disheveled and straightened in and by the recognition of another like me, like you.

In Slow Dip Ahead, my life and your life percolate through the unknown and into the light Ames brings to us, to our worlds and dreams. How wide is Ohio? Now, I know!

Frank Lehner, Principal, Naridus.com, University Educator, Identity Coach, Writer;
Pittsburgh, Pa., August 2024