A Biography
by Lee Zimmerman
It’s hardly unusual for an artist to write songs from a personal perspective while reflecting on life as viewed from a perennial rearview mirror. On the other hand, it’s less common to find a songwriter who not only shares past experiences, but, at the same time, creates a connection others can relate to as well.
Jim Patton has never been shy about bringing past to present in ways that resonate both emotionally and intellectually, and, in so doing, transcend the stories he shares. He has a gift for taking the lessons he’s learned and filtering them through songs and stories that resonate with the wider world.
As Big Takeover put it so eloquently when speaking of Jim and his wife and musical partner, Sherry Brokus, “They write songs that cut to the heart of the simpler life. Not for them grand statements and evocative rhetoric, self-aggrandisement, or egoic outbursts…they are honest, heartwarming, and relatable.”
The pair’s new album, the aptly titled Pattonville, proves that point yet again. Although it wasn’t originally intended to take shape as a concept collection, it quickly became obvious that the songs were connected by a common thread — that is, as tales from the past that have helped shape the present from a very personal perspective.
“I’m always hesitant about concept albums,” Jim admits. “It’s so easy for them to become an exercise in pretentiousness. I initiate them all the time, but end up saving the best songs for the next album. However in this case, while I don’t necessarily think of it as a concept album, I did, in fact, spend a lot of time thinking about my past and how it led me to where I am now. I think that’s common theme that shows up in a lot of the songs.”
The melodies help seal that bond, given their consistent clarity and emotional impact. The tender tones of “Wouldn’t Change a Thing,” “Ghosts In This Room Tonight” and “My Friends Seemed Like Strangers To Me,” along with the heartfelt reflection that informs the beautiful ballads “We’re Not So Different” and “Goodbye Joe Williams,” make that clear. So does the eloquent expression of “Deep In My Heart,” the darkness and despair found in “Hard Times,” the passionate putdown of “Mean Old Man” and “Everyone Needs Someone (To Look Down On),” the reality and revelation expressed in “On A Hilltop By Old Country Road,” and the percolating, pulsating “Happy Family,”
That affecting feeling makes each of these songs a singular standout, brimming with feeling, finesse and an unmistakable emotional bond that connects the artist to the listener and allows each song to linger in the consciousness long after the final notes fade away. With Sherry Brokus on harmonies and percussion, Alice Hassen on violin, Scrappy Jud Newcomb on guitars and mandolin, and Ron Flynt on bass piano, harmonium, acoustic guitar, and backing vocals, the sounds are stirred in ways that are as evocative as they are engaging.
“We pulled out what we liked, and then brought Scrappy in and Alice in as contributors,” Jim explains. “That’s why we did all the basic tracks live, because they had that live band feel. Plus, Alice is just so good. We have great people in Austin, but she gets me, which is why you bring somebody in — when they really get your music without you having to explain every song.”
In that regard, it’s a selection of songs that’s not soon forgotten.
The sentiment is summed up succinctly by “Wouldn’t Change A Thing,” the album’s initial offering:
If I could have another time around the wheel
If I could live my life again
If I could be anyone who I wanted to be
I’d probably end up just the same
My life’s been good to me
Kind of strange
I always wanted it that way…
“The working title was Autobiography,” Jim continues. “In my mind. I was writing a lot about my younger self. It was almost an accident and something of a surprise to us, but we began to see how these songs fit together. We were just gonna put out the demos and call it Demos from Pattonville, but when we got Scrappy to play on it, we thought what Scrappy was playing was great, and then when Alice came in, it turned into album. Her sound changed it from just being a bunch of demos into this is really nice set of songs.”
In fact, the past often surfaces in Jim’s songs. It’s hardly surprising that while a member of his early band, Edge City, he recorded an acoustic album called Plans Gang Aft Agley, a reference to that fact that his plans often went astray.
So too, there’s a consistency that commands each of the couple’s ongoing efforts. Despite a series of personnel changes, Edge City managed to maintain its momentum with Jim and Sherry as the continuing constants. The band performed at any number of the iconic venues of that earlier era — CBGB’s, 8X10, the Bayou, Max’s on Broadway, the Marble Bar, and the Brickhouse in Pasadena Maryland.
The pair originally met at a bar in Arnold, Maryland after Sherry approached Jim during a break in his set and asked if she could sing a song with his band. Jim subsequently suggested that she do Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and the two have sung together ever since. Aside from their early musical influences — Richard and Linda Thompson, the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Everly Brothers, and Emmylou Harris’ singing with Bob Dylan — Jim cites various 20th century American literary greats, from Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Faulkner to Kerouac, Salinger and Raymond Chandler. He also points to the friends he grew with — doctors, lawyers, waitresses, teachers, “water rats,” gravediggers and “the guy who drove the truck that emptied the port-o-pots all over the state” — as the sources of his lyrical inspiration.
The two now reside in South Austin, and they play a prominent part in a musical community that boasts any number of exceptional songwriters, many of whom are friends and collaborators. So too, since the pandemic, the pair have managed to release at least one album a year.
In the process, they’ve earned the praises of the pundits. Americana Highways once wrote, “Influenced by 20th century novels and real life tales from the world around us, Patton and Brokus have melded whimsical amusement with authentic observations.” Blogcritics concurred, while noting their combination of “literate, well-told vignettes with engaging and melodic folk-rock.”
Then there was this critique from V13 Music regarding the pair’s last album: “Marinated in luscious retro textures from the ’60s and ’70s, with touches of modern flair, Two True Loves captures the spirit of folk music.”
“Sometimes I can’t see or hear my own albums because I’m so close to them,” Jim confesses. “I have a ‘junk’ file for songs that I’ve abandoned, but when two of my best songs were ‘rescued’ from that pile by friends who said, ‘Play me this one,’ I realized while playing them how good they were. As a result, I make it a point to never throw anything away.”
Happily then, both the music and the memories linger. Which makes a visit to Pattonville an enduring experience.
Pattonville — Song By Song — by Jim Patton:
“Wouldn’t Change a Thing”
“Like all of my songs, the narrator is only me in part. However like him, I was never encouraged to play music. So now I like to go around and tell all those people who were obstacles in my life how wrong they were. It cost me ten years, but in that period of time, I worked blue collar jobs that gave me a different perspective on life.”
“We’re Not So Different”
“This song is as much about the divide we face every day in our world as it is about the divide between my father and me. We were so different, and he always thought that I wasn’t trying hard enough to learn when he would try to teach me something different and the fact that I looked at him blankly. When he finally realized that we just learned things in different ways, everything changed. Bert Keith, my co-writer, also had a father in the military, and some of those details became a part of the song, further blurring the separation between me and the narrator.”
“Hard Times”
“My Baltimore friend and bandmate Lew Morris and I started this song in 1988, and when we pulled it out to fix its flaws, not many of the lyrics needed changing. I found that sad. I did change ‘gas station attendant’ to ‘night clerk,’ because I was afraid too many people wouldn’t know what a gas station attendant was anymore. These are still hard times for too many people because the gap between the rich and everyone else continues to grow.”
“Goodbye Joe Williams”
“Joe Williams was a major figure in the Baltimore music scene in the 1980s. He committed suicide on New Year’s Eve, 1999. Like many of my songs, this is full of truth as well as it is flush with some exaggeration. I didn’t get to mention his other endeavors — he was an artist whose portrait of Sherry used to hang in a museum in Tel Aviv. At the end of his life, he was teaching high risk inner city youths carpentry skills.”
“My Friends Seemed Like Strangers To Me”
“I was about 23 when I went to a party and suddenly I didn’t recognize my friends.”
“Mean Old Man”
“This has to be the meanest song I’ve ever written. It’s not aimed at anyone in particular, however I do have a few people in mind. My characters are almost always composites of two or three people I know and that happens to be the case here.”
“I Didn’t Stay Down”
“An incident something like this happened to me when I lived in a small town in Tennessee for three years in the 1950s. As for the details, well, suffice it to say it happened a long time ago.” (Co-written with Jerry Mayer and Frank Mirenzi.)
“Everyone Needs Someone (to Look Down On)”
“As the title indicates, everybody does seem to be looking for someone to look down on. People no longer just disagree, but actually seem to hate one another. To feel empowered, they need to have someone to feel superior to. Skin color, religion, education, economic level all play a part.” (Co-write with Frank Mirenzi)
“On a Hilltop by Old County Road”
“Sometimes there are moments that make such a strong impression, they change your life forever. In this case, it affected two lives. The individual in the song falls apart and never dreams that his object of interest was doing the same until many years later when she makes amends and tells him she’s sorry. And then they both remember the same moment at the top of the hill as a clear turning point.”
“Happy Family”
“Kate Patton (no relation) and I found we had many things in common, especially the way our seemingly nice, stable families had fallen apart later in life. The song and the story are a combination of our experiences, plus what we added courtesy of imagination. The person at the foundation of the family dies and chaos reigns. As an inheritance comes to light, so does greed and resentment. Sadly, as a result, the sibling relationships are destroyed forever.”
“Deep in My Heart”
“This is about a short-term relationship that may have helped heal both parties. It feels like it’s love, at least until it doesn’t. Is she scared? Is the narrator too stubborn? Either way, he still thinks about her and would certainly welcome her back.”
“Ghosts in this Room Tonight”
“The reason I can play as well to six people as I can to a full house is because the room is always full to me — full of the friends who supported and who had died, and yet, they want a good show, since they’ve come a long way to be there.”
Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus
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it, that’s why that’s in the one with my dad, in particular, because you know people spend a lot of their lives without their father’s approval, yeah, it’s one of those things you keep searching for, whether you mean to or not, and that day my dad gave me his approval. I’ll never forget it, because what he actually said is, How come I can’t write a goddamn song?
have to be as straight and honest and as real as you can, and I know those are all kind of corny words, but real and stuff, but, but you do, you just have to be as real to the other person as you can, and then that’s how most things work out,
They see you as a real person.
Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus 