Patterson Barrett
Patterson Barrett moved to Austin shortly after appearing on Jerry Jeff Walker’s first release on MCA records, playing pedal steel, dobro, and guitar (including the song “L.A. Freeway”). Not long after arriving in Austin, he formed the band Partners In Crime, which included Buddy and Julie Miller, releasing one album on their own label, Criminal Records. In the years since, Patterson produced some of Hal Ketchum’s earliest demos, served in Al Kooper’s back-up band, and performed before 10,000 festival-goers as Chuck Berry’s pianist. He accompanied Nancy Griffith on Austin City Limits, legendary Austin singer Lou Ann Barton in music clubs around the country, and Buddy Miller on his Your Love And Other Lies CD.
After years of collaboration with other talented artists in every format imaginable, Barrett has found his own unique voice both as songwriter and performer in his 2007 release, I Must Be Dreaming. On it, he explores some of the aspects of dreams and other alternate realities of life and death that touch us all.
He cites Neil Young and country-rock pioneers Poco and the Flying Burrito Brothers as his early influences, as well as soul stalwarts such as Sam and Dave, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. The music on I Must Be Dreaming has been compared to John Hiatt, The Band (whose song “Sleeping” he lovingly covers), and Ryan Adams.
The Early Years or How I Came To Be In Tx
Raised mostly in a Washington, D.C. suburb, I finished high school in NYC. After graduating from high school, I perused the musicians wanted section of the Village Voice, and soon found myself living communally with a band on a farm in upstate New York. The band was called "Dufine," named for it’s inexplicably charismatic leader, Jeff Dufine. He somehow managed to get the band an audition of sorts with a fella named Jerry Jeff Walker, who was in the area to do some recording after recently relocating to Austin, Texas. The band ended up playing on about half the songs on Jerry Jeff’s self-titled MCA release, which included the somewhat-of-a-hit-single "LA Freeway."
Wow—here I was, 18 or so, and things were going more or less according to plan. If I was lucky enough to be listening at the right time on the right equipment, I could actually hear myself playing pedal steel guitar (primitively) on the radio! We were even able to see the song included for sale on late night television as part of a K-tel hits collection. Dufine-The Band- rode this wave of enthusiasm to California, settling first in the LA area, and then in the Russian River area north of San Francisco.
After a couple of years of not becoming a huge recording star as part of Dufine, I became a little restless with the situation, and I couldn’t help remembering how Jerry Jeff and the other Austinites on the recording sessions had talked so lovingly of their cosmic-cowboy oasis down in Texas. So, my good friend and band-mate Jonathan Simons and I gave the group our notice and acquired a "drive-away" car to take us to Texas.
We spent the first night cooking on a fire at the Mansfield Dam camping area, and the next few days sleeping on the ground at Jerry Jeff’s spread (only a mile or two from where I live now!). We soon had a duplex with no furniture other than a mattress and a stereo, and a few days later my good friend Jon succumbed to years of genetic and parental programming, leaving Texas to go back to school. (Dr. Simons now has his own psychology practice in South Carolina and plays a mean blues harp and guitar on the weekends.) As for me, I felt somewhat at home here in Austin, amid the amazing energy of the burgeoning music scene. And I still do.