Songwriter, Patrick Ames' music is available on SoundCloud, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and your favorite music outlets. The newest studio recording is Harmonium (June 2022); The Virtualistics (June 2021); with Liveness (April 2020), All I Do Is Bleed April 2019; Affettuosos, April 2018; Like Family released Sept 2017. Four Faces was released in Feb 2017, and Standard Candles in 2016. Patrick transcends generations as a songwriter and performs with a percussive style of guitar work. He plays in the San Francisco Bay Area. To contact send an email to: patrick at the domainname of this place. Bloggers, Writers, Editors: See The EPK on this Site. Follow Patrick on Post. = https://post.news/patrickames.
Harmonium - June 1, 2022
Produced by Jon Ireson
Recorded Dec 2021 - April 2022
Harmonium is the title of Wallace Stevens’ first book of poetry (1923) and I happened to be reading it while in my music studio about a century later, during the 2021-2022 Omicron virus wave. The poems were inspiring so I borrowed the title for a new music project and then buried myself alive for about three months trying to emulate the inspiration. I was also trying to ignore the news, the virus wave and then the war in Ukraine, trying to be positive, inspired, busy. As such, there are no grand overarching themes in this new LP. Only a purposeful exploration of what I want to matter again. That’s why there’s Grace, the LP’s finale.
Producer Jon Ireson propelled Harmonium within this minimalistic songwriting space. He kept it intact. He kept it curious. His bass lines throughout the whole LP are gorgeous and deserve their own listen. But he also played or programmed almost all the instruments, continuing our long-distance collaboration left over from the Virtualistics LP. What a wonderful joy to work with such a talented musician and producer! His guitar soloing on DontChaWanna is classic and his arrangement and mix on No People Are Supreme is mesmerizing. Every song has something special and you’ll notice right away that Jon changed my voice microphone setup.
credits
Produced by Jon Ireson
Patrick Ames: Guitars and vocals
Jon Ireson: Bass, Guitars, Keyboards, Programming, Producer
Chana Matthews: Backup vocals
The Virtualistics - June 16, 2021
Produced by Jon Ireson.
Recorded May 2020 - May 2021.
The Virtualistics. The band never met. We never met during a difficult pandemic year. The four of us never practiced together. We didn't sing together nor did we pre-plan the final sound. We were virtual entities, duly recording our tracks on various home devices and sending them in for assembly. Those famous photographs of The Virtualistics, studious musicians playing on stage, hard working in the studio, those tired looks of a fifth take, none of that happened. We never sang or played together.
It's been a year of virtual studio sessions that require large leaps of faith when you're contributing to a song that isn't finished yet and sounded like a sketch. It's like that group game where everyone adds one line to the preexisting story going around in a circle and by the time everyone speaks the story is unbelieveably creative and interesting. Start with a few lyrics, add a riff or two, start weaving in counter melodies, add some phat beats – each song went around the Virtualistics circle a few times.
Eight tracks recorded during the pandemic by The Virtualistics.
Liveness - 04/04/2020
On Liveness, Ames uses DIY recording techniques and live mics to move as close as you can to the process of songwriting." He builds musical spaces and inhabits them with compound lyrics. These are stories of life with lots of social commentary. It's all fresh, alive, and vibrant, with enough soul to want to listen to again. 6 Tracks..
“Liveness’ opens with ‘Bang Bang Bang,’ driven by hints of gospel, it advocates for the ending of gun violence through blazing vocal harmonies. Ames preaches for peace." - Karen Benardello, Shock'Ya
"It's apparent his influence is the great jazz and great grandfather of rap, Gil Scott-Heron." Musik Beat Magazine
"Liveness" delivers cool soundscapes with infectious rhythms, as well as sleek visceral colors, and the inimitable deluxe voice of Patrick Ames." Tattoo.com
“The thing is, dude has some beats that slump along almost by themselves, such as on “Want to Believe” — that bass pounds on the fattest track of the year so far, regardless of the genre.” Deuce
Sound Engineer's Notes (Jon Ireson) "Patrick's ethos for the Liveness album was to convey the energy of live performance so, from a mixing standpoint, we sought to leave in all the quirks and personality, particularly of the acoustic guitar. Strings twang and squeak, voices strain and break but it all works together to make for a more soulful record. Patrick is weaving together several different styles on this album, from bossa nova to slow jam to Gil-Scott Heron-inspired funk. The trick was to find that through-line to tie it all together and in the end, it was that “liveness”, that raw authenticity, that makes it feel like a cohesive record."
BREAKING: Follow Patrick on Post. = https://post.news/patrickames
Composer and writer Patrick Ames continues to evolve his lyrically potent signature cocktail of junkyard blues on the new LP, "Harmonium.” Releases June 1, 2022.
Patrick in the studio.