Patrice Pike

According to Rolling Stone, Patrice Pike is "Tina Turner, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, and Robert Plant all rolled up into a tiny but explosive package."

Suddenly Patrice came bounding out from backstage and plopped down cross-legged on the floor a few feet in front of the startled performer, and instantly others in the crowd joined her at the front.

I’ve learned I have to strive to put the art-making into every moment of every task I do. I want to wake up every morning and create a life of beauty guided by the purest intent.

8/23/06

Swansong.

Last night Patrice performed an original song from her new album for millions of viewers. Tonight she bowed out with much grace, at ease with the outcome and enjoying a warm sendoff from the "band", the studio audience, and her mansion mates. Judging by the message boards, the television audience seemed to warm to her over the last couple of weeks as well. All in all, perhaps a more trying experience for her than she anticipated, but hopefully it raises her profile in a way that will be beneficial to her career. Keep your eyes peeled for her new record, which is apparently being released in October. Congratulations, Patrice!

Scroll down for more video clips, including Guilty Sin and a full band version of Kiss Me Baby.

8/17/06

Anybody get a load of that deeply disturbing debut performance by Scrapmetal last night? Can we all stop pretending that fronting this forgettable band of retreads would be something other than a horribly ironic booby prize for our girl Patrice?

It has been nothing short of excruciating to watch this beautiful woman get turned into cannon fodder for NASCAR Nation's midweek dose of the electronic opiate. So after looking completely demoralized for three weeks, it was great to see her get in the faces of the retreads last night as if to say, "Is that all you've got?" She has clearly made her peace with this bizarre set of circumstances and concluded in true warrior fashion that it is indeed "a beautiful day to die."

If there is a television god, she'll get to sing an original song before she departs. In the meantime, here's a clip of Patrice performing Joan with John Thomasson on the bass. Nectar!

8/16/06

Survive and advance.

Another nail biter for Patrice tonight, but she's hangin' tough. Here's a clip of Patrice performing Guilty Sin at the Bart. Thanks to Josh and Tasha from Four Inch Fish for their help in assembling this, as well as to our merry band of volunteer camera peeps.

To get the full flavor of Patrice's Brushwood shows, here's a clip of our good friend Trathen Heckman, founder of the organization Daily Acts. Trathen is a top shelf activist as well as a former professional snowboarder. He's contributed his unique and impassioned brand of spoken word to Brushwood shows from Tulsa to Berkeley.....

8/12/06

Kiss Me, Baby.

Patrice and band performing Kiss Me Baby last year at the Black Bart Theatre in Murphys, California. Thanks to our volunteer camera crew, and to Kelly Ellifritz for his help in putting this together....

8/3/06

Brushwood concert footage...

Here's Patrice performing Angels at the Bart (Murphys, California) back in June of 2004. This was the first tour (and second gig) with Brad Hauser on bass (from Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians) and guitarist Steve Wedemeyer. Steve rips up the solo on this tune, and Patrice is clearly pleased with her new guitar player! That's long time Patrice collaborator Eldridge Goins on drums.

Here are three short clips (Kiss Me Baby, Mystery Girl, and Lost Criminals) from the recording of "Live at the Brushwood Lounge", with Wayne Sutton on guitar. Video is suspect, but the audio is sweet. Check out Wayne's solo on Mystery Girl.

7/25/06

This week in Brushwood

While Patrice was "crushing" Helter Skelter last Tuesday in LA, our dear friend Megan Slankard and her band were doing a little (acoustic) crushing of their own while recording live in front of a full house at the Black Bart Theatre in Murphys, California. As mentioned in the story below, it was Megan who introduced us to Patrice a few years back, and she's played at least twenty Brushwood shows with Patrice over the past four years. Now 23, she's armed with more than 150 original songs, an array of alternative tunings that would astound even Joni Mitchell, and soulful, supple vocal dynamics far beyond her years. She's beautiful, down to earth, and a budding environmental activist. She is nothing if not the real thing, having racked up sales of better than 20,000 copies of her two full indie releases. So don't miss this sweet video from last Tuesday's show at the Bart. As you'll see, Patrice was not far from our thoughts....

In the interest of shameless self promotion, noticed on this week's download of the "rock star mansion thing" Patrice was wearing a Patagonia organic cotton halter top from our store (Two Rivers), the same top she wore for the filming of the Sister Seven reunion back in November. On the Brushwood fashion front, Megan is also sporting an organic cotton Patagonia top from Two Rivers.....

7/17/06

Vocal Coach to the Stars

Word has it it's "vocal coach week" at the Rock Star mansion. Here's how the Brushwood community access version of that looks, as captured on a snowy afternoon this past March. She's attempting to teach me her new R&B song "Not Just for You", which will be on her upcoming release. I obviously can't play or sing a lick, but it's all in good fun. Concert clips are from the "house cam" at the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley, with Wayne Sutton on guitar. (Headphones are helpful.) This is a shade of Patrice Pike you're not likely to get from Tommy and company. She's an incredible performer, but an even better person and friend. That's the stuff that matters here in Brushwood. Were she not a musician she would be a teacher, and a remarkable one at that.

Check back for these video shorts! We've got a million of 'em.....

7/12/06

Cool and confident in rounds one and two.

Is it just me, or is our girl Patrice getting the short end of the face-time stick? Must be the absence of false bravado and/or whiny bouts of artistic angst. She's lookin' relaxed, cool and confident, probably not the preferred feedstock of reality TV. Cheese factor to this point has been surprisingly tolerable. We may be biased, but from here it looks like Patrice is a lock for the top five.

7/3/06

Has Patrice Pike Gone Mad?

Our dear friend Patrice Pike has gone completely stark raving mad. Either that or she's pulled off an ingenious master stroke of career catapulting jujitsu. In what can only be described as a shocking (shocking!) turn of events, she has landed on a CBS reality show this summer called Rock Star: Supernova! (Show airs Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Check local listings for times.)

Should we rejoice? Have to admit her decision to pursue this left me scratching my head a bit at first. I knew she was involved in some top-secret clandestine television thing, but never in my most completely unhinged dreams did I imagine something like, like, this! All that cleavage and makeup and manufactured drama? Yes, it’s a bizarre set of circumstances for our girl Patrice, who puts such a premium on authenticity and artistic integrity. But the reality (bad choice of words) is she’s worked the indie side of the street faithfully for almost six years now, and the break she so richly deserves hasn’t come callin’. So in yet another classic example of the boundless irony of the universe, she lands on a reality television show called Rock Star. With this Tommy Lee person no less.

Never fear. I’m betting our favorite earth lovin’ ninja warrior goddess superhero can navigate these deeply, deeply disturbing waters with grace and style and remain true to herself in even the most vexing of circumstances. I’m betting she has something subversive and beautiful up her sleeve. (Or on this show, more likely stuffed in her…jeepers, where will she put it?) We know she’ll nail the performance part, cuz she oozes charisma and she can BRING IT like a freight train. It’s the manufactured drama part that’s the variable. Will she be expected to eat live kittens? I'm fairly certain she will not eat live kittens.

I was hoping, aspiring even, to go my entire life without having to watch one of these goofy shows, but if this isn't must-see TV, I don't know what is. (I'm compelled to watch, yet I’m afraid to watch!) Tune in, vote early, and vote often! And check back here weekly, too. We couldn’t resist putting together some spoofy stuff, including a much improved name and logo for the band and a video ad for their first album. We’ve rewritten some of Patrice’s lyrics to make them more Supernova-ish, and we’re contemplating singing them. We have incriminating video clips. This is going to be fun fun fun!

Bring it home, Patrice! Bring it home.

The Arc

by Pride Scott Wright

i was first introduced to the music of Patrice Pike by our good friend Megan Slankard—the Tracy folk phenom and Brushwood’s favorite little sister—who was opening for one of Patrice’s shows last summer in the valley. Patrice and her band, the Black Box Rebellion, played a blistering set, but I was just as struck by her demeanor and her stage presence, which is at once commanding and imminently accessible—both charismatic and endearing. There was a transparency and an authenticity about her that was palpable, that cannot be faked. Above all else, Patrice Pike knows how to connect with an audience.

That powerful, throaty wail simply has no business coming out of that diminutive body. To make sure I wasn’t hearing things, I took my wife Michelle to see her up at Lake Tahoe two nights later, and I got another little glimpse of the inner Patrice. The opener for this particular show, a local singer/songwriter, was not faring well. About three songs into her set, the crowd was still congregated in the back of the room near the bar, completely disinterested, waiting for the main event. The poor gal then made the mistake of timidly pleading with the audience to come closer to the stage, a request that was roundly ignored. Suddenly Patrice came bounding out from backstage and plopped down cross-legged on the floor a few feet in front of the startled performer, and instantly others in the crowd joined her at the front. What was threatening to become an extremely embarrassing situation for this young aspiring musician ended happily. Patrice didn’t have to do that, and the fact that she did made as much of an impression on me, again, as her music, which is to say considerable. The thought that entered my mind? This woman was made for Brushwood!

I contacted her people, and a couple of months went by with no response. The receptionist at the agency alluded to the fact that Patrice was having a difficult summer, although I had no idea what was happening behind the scenes. But before we get to that, here’s the short version of the demise of Sister Seven, the highly successful jam band she fronted throughout the ’90s.

Sister Seven had a good long run, making two records for Arista (the band’s third label), playing the high profile festivals like H.O.R.D.E. and the Lilith Fair, and opening for the likes of the Dave Matthews Band, Sheryl Crow, Blues Traveler, and the Allman Brothers. They even charted a couple of Billboard hits. Rolling Stone said this of Patrice: “She’s Tina Turner, Bessie Smith, Janis Joplin, and Robert Plant all rolled up into a tiny but explosive package.”

In early 2000, she mailed off the demos for Sister Seven’s new record, “Wrestling Over Tiny Matters,” to Arista’s Clive Davis, the label’s legendary founder. Davis, who was coming off the stupendous success of Carlos Santana’s mega-platinum “Supernatural”, was blown away. Davis flew Patrice to New York for a meeting, told her “Tiny Matters” would be the band’s breakthrough album, that he would see to it personally. Unfortunately, the 66 year-old Davis was in the process of being unceremoniously shoved out the door by Arista’s parent company, BMG. In a story far too common in the music industry, Sister Seven found itself on the outs with the new management team, and “Tiny Matters” now collects dust in Patrice’s garage—a tremendous album few will ever hear. (It's available on iTunes.) After almost a decade, emotionally drained and without the collective desire to pursue a fourth record deal, Sister Seven disbanded.

Even as the band was flaming out, Patrice was in the process of being reenergized as a songwriter. Her new material was taking a more narrative direction. She formed another band, the Black Box Rebellion, with Sister Seven lead guitarist Wayne Sutton. (“Black Box” is a reference to the book A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber.)

Fast forward to the summer of 2002 tour in support of the Black Box Rebellion’s debut album, “Fencing Under Fire”. Suffice to say it would not have been wise to be standing next to Patrice in a lightning storm. Most of the band’s gear, including the jumbo Taylor acoustic she wrote all of her songs on, was stolen after a show in Dallas. The band’s van caught fire in Chicago. There were other assorted mishaps. At one point, she flew home to Austin to gather herself before returning to California to finish the tour.

But Patrice, who has been on her own since she was 16, is nothing if not resilient. Over the next year or so she divided her touring between the Black Box Rebellion and a couple of acoustic configurations. Lyrically, her songwriting during this period was arguably the strongest of her career, and it increasingly reflected her deeply held political and social sensibilities. Her sound has evolved into a pleasingly eclectic mix of acoustic folk, alt-country, and borderline funk.

She’s also finding more formal ways to express her seemingly boundless empathy and social awareness. She partnered with a San Antonio educator named Keitha St. Clair to develop “The Fairy Tree”, a program designed to help teachers better understand and meet the needs of at risk youth. Patrice knows of what she speaks; she is the product of a disadvantaged latchkey childhood. The two travel around the country, putting on presentations for both teachers and students.

“This is a place where I can apply my creative passion directly to the mission,” she explains. In addition, she sits on the board of the Simms Foundation, an organization that provides musicians with everything from family counseling to treatment for alcoholism. She’s recently been involved in fundraising for a new Peace and Conflict Studies program at the University of Texas.

I visited Patrice in Austin in April of 2003 to discuss the Brushwood Institute (our fledgling non-profit), possible common objectives, and her relative willingness to participate in our series of events.

Patrice flew to California that May to hang out here in the Central Sierra and shoot some footage for our upcoming Brushwood documentary project. Since then we've done better than thirty Brushwood events across the West. Now in her mid-'30s, she's weathered the turbulence of those difficult post Sister Seven years and has the radiant, self-assured look of a woman who knows she’s doing the thing she was put on this earth to do. She’s a gifted performer with a strong desire to do some good in the world, and that’s a potent combination.

“I look at these Brushwood concerts as a kind of beginning, a window opening to the possibilities of what we can do. I’ve learned I have to strive to put the art-making into every moment of every task I do. I want to wake up every morning and create a life of beauty, guided by the purest intent. My spiritual path and my life as an artist have parted ways at times, and looking back, those were the times I was most unhappy, strained and chaotic. But those times were necessary for me to understand the need for the two to be merged.”

Brushwood. Very Brushwood.

We sincerely hope you’ll join us for a long, leisurely evening of awesome music and community celebration.

Peace,

Pride S. Wright