Saturday, December 28, 2019

For those who don't know...

One of the most common questions we get asked is "what does your name mean/which one is Patrick?" or from those who know the reference, "how did you choose that name?".  Well there's a little more to it than the name just being a line from SpongeBob.  Here's the long version of the story.
 During my(Matt) sophomore year of college I was hanging out with some friends at a venue/youth center that I volunteered at.  We were discussing genres and subgenres of music, specifically punk/hardcore etc.  One friend mentioned how bands like Hundredth and Touchè Amore were true hardcore bands.  I said said something to the effect of them being great bands, but they were a more modern iteration, and that hardcore punk began in the late 70's/early 80's with bands like Black Flag.  This began a debate/argument about what hardcore and punk truly meant, a conversation that I'm sure many of you know never actually leads anywhere.  Eventually he expressed his distaste for bands that had more of an "easycore" (pop-punk mixed with metal and hardcore) sound, including the one and only Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! 
My other two friends and I enjoyed Chunk and other bands like them, so we took positions contrary to our friend.  Eventually he got fed up enough with us to leave.  One friend asked if we just saw him rage quit a conversation in real life, and it seemed like we did.  (We were all still friends, don't worry).  After he had left, the three of us remaining began joking about starting an easycore band just to mess with our other friend.  We began hypothetically discussing what it would be called, and since our friend had called out Chunk, we decided we should have a name similar to theirs.  That being decided, we needed a quote full of punctuation to turn into a band name because Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! is a line from the classic adventure comedy The Goonies.  Somehow we immediately thought of the scene in an early SpongeBob episode where Patrick is manning the phone at The Krusty Krab where he responds to callers asking "is this the krusty krab?" with "No, this is Patrick" until his misplaced frustration escalates to him yelling "NO, THIS IS PATRICK!".  It's a genius bit, and having the punctuation of his delivery was perfect.  For a while after that day we joked about songs we would write for our "band", but nothing ever came of it.  Fast forward a couple of years and I've just moved back to Nashville after living at home in Georgia for a year.  I'm living on the couch at two of my best friends' place, one of which was at the fateful genre argument.  That summer as we rode around getting Taco Bell and trying to figure out what to do we blasted Chunk's newest single "Playing Dead".  It's such a good song we just kept playing it everytime we got in the car.  One day in the drive through line one of us (I think it was me) said 'man, I really want to be in a band like this'.  All three of us agreed with that sentiment and then got our food.  Soon after, my friend who had been there back during the genre argument said 'hey I'm going to go into my room, tune my guitar to drop B flat like Chunk, and see what it's like to write that way'.  An hour or so later he came out of his room with a riff he had written and tabbed out in Guitar Pro.  It was fantastic and we told him so.  I liked it so much that I insisted on continuing to add to the song.  That became our first song "Storm Coming? Hatchet Coming!" (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia fans will appreciate that one).  Soon we were on a roll writing and decided to make it a real band.  We immediately thought of the name No, This Is Patrick! again because it seemed crucial to pay homage to Chunk, and it seemed a fitting name for the style of music we were writing.  To this day it's one of our greatest assets, especially when people our age immediately recognize the reference and then laugh, and then give our music a shot.  After the beginnings of 'Hatchet' that day we began the search for band members, and soon it was down to just Sean and I for a long stressful stretch, but that's a story for another time....

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Getting Out of Town

It had started to feel a little bit like we were spinning our wheels, but last Saturday we got some traction, and that newfound friction shot us a handful of hours east to Knoxville, TN.  We knew that we were playing a house show, and we were stoked on that, but we still didn't really know what to expect.  House shows are always fun, but no two houses are the same.  We were also self conscious about fitting in, not being "punk enough" or dumb things like that.  All our anxieties were assuaged as soon as we got to the Birdhouse.
  It's an old southern style house with a wraparound porch used for not only shows, but all types of local art.  Dug from The Fidget Sinners was super welcoming and helpful.  The lineup for the night ended up being incredible diverse, with us sandwiched comfortably in the middle.  With the added comfort/pressure of a couple extended family members driving into the city to see the show, we did our best to go hard and give our highest energy performance yet.  Despite us worrying about potential audio issues with the unorthodox stage setup, our energy seemed to pay off, with many of our new friends moshing and dancing along with us.  Not only were the audience members and other bands generous with their energy during out set, but we also almost sold completely out of shirts and CD's!  So hopefully people people around Knoxville are going to have to get used to hearing 'Come Around' or 'Unincorporated Ducktown' blasting out of people's cars....