On the afternoon of July 18th, 2000, Paul Iwancio had the privelige of interviewing her over the phone while she was home in Massachussets. He found her warm, funny and very intelligent. This was just a week before the release of her latest album Regrooving The Dream.

Paul: How is your summer going?

Patty: Great. I've been taking some time off. Not doing anything.

Paul: Not doing anything?

Patty: You know, not doing anything like practicing. But now I'mseriously practicing for Falcon Ridge.

Paul: I've heard you have a new studio album coming out, what can you tell me about it?

Patty: It's called Regrooving the Dream. It's a collection of story songs some of which are about me and most of which are not. It uses drums this time. It terms of songwriting and song styles it's a throwback to my favorite styles of the past century. There are very different styles on the album. Musically and lyrically it's probably more tight. The lyrics are more structured than the last few albums, which were more free verse or run on sentences. There are 10 songs and 4 instrumentals.

Paul: I was curious, that a lot of your songs seem to come from a Joni Mitchell confessional type songwriting, talking about your life or things that happened to you. How much of your music are from your experience and on the other hand are any of your songs totally fictional?

Patty: Yeah, definitely. All of the above. They all come out of some experience I had, something I've seen or have read, or something that interests me, that sticks with me and makes an impression. I think very visually when I'm writing. So some of the things are memory-trying to draw back or color that in. Getting as close to feeling that I possibly can. Songs like Helen are fictional and Metal Drums is not a story that happened to me personally.

Paul: You draw back on memories or feelings when you sit down to write.

Patty: Yeah. Like Metal Drums. I wrote that right after reading an article about it. And I had the article right in front of me. And something like Helen, I had just finished driving up to Maine and Cormac McCarthy would encourage people to write a new song for the show. So I drew back memories of the drive up there.

Paul: What an exercise.

Patty: Yeah, so that's what came out of the memory of that trip.

Paul: So you said there are a lot of different styles on this album.

Patty: The new album starts out with a partial instrumental, just the sample of an instrumental. It sets up so that the instrumentals are lead-ins or end statements, or meant to clear the head. The styles range from hip-hop to traditional mountain music done on a stratocaster.

Paul: Well hip-hop mixes styles, everyone mixes styles these days.

Patty: When I was writing Anyway The Main Thing Is, it's really more of a throwback to Motown or the Rolling Stones, old blues, and then ending up more modern.

Paul: You went to the Berkeley School of Music and I was wondering how much value you place on your musical education.

Patty: I only went there for a semester.

Paul: Really? Didn't they give you some appreciation award?

Patty: Yeah, they gave me an alumni appreciation award for my one semester. Pretty cool.

Paul: But you had some formal musical education.

Patty: Yeah, but what happened to me I had already gotten an English degree and wanted to go back and study music. Back then it was all jazz. So I wound up studying for three years with private lessons. I think that I ultimately realized that I was a songwriter and that's my strength. There's so much to learn. I think I would have enjoyed theory and composition and going in that direction. But in terms of the playing I know there would have been a lot more work and I was already spending 8 hours a day practicing.<laugh>

Paul: So then a lot of your guitar style comes from self exploration?

Patty: Yeah, I think of it that way. I think they are very guitar oriented songs. But I kind of forgot the theory that I had learned. What Berkeley did for me was it helped me analyze music, look at the fretboard in a clearer fashion. I got my reading together. It gave me an overall sense for the instrument and some sense of music history. Going back and learning standards or talking about music theory. It was a good background to have. I know that the reason I did it was I didn't expect to be able to play my own music as a songwriter. I wasn't going to count on that. So I studied bass and guitar and voice and really tried to prepare for playing in a lounge <laugh>. I just thought that would be a good thing to do. Paul: When did your change come from being a musician to being a songwriter?

Patty: I had been writing songs since I was a kid, during Junior High. But I couldn't figure out how the music business worked. I wasn't really aware of the folk circuit. Until I met people like Claudia Schmidt and Greg Brown. I was amazed that there was this whole grass roots, or under the radar thing going on.

Paul: So that opened your eyes.

Patty: Yeah, so I went to Berkeley and did the jazz thing and then the band I put together after that was flirting with jazz. After that I put together more of a r&b and rock and roll band and worked on that for a couple of years and found that I was still writing acoustic songs that I didn't feel I could play in these clubs. And after performing as an opening act for the Persuasions or Loudin Wainwright III, I found myself really enjoying it. And enjoying doing all styles of music- a swing tune like Caffeine, or I could do a celtic influenced thing. And it appeals to the way I write a lot more. I found there was an audience out there listening who were willing to accept my flirtations with different styles. It was fun playing rock and roll but it was grueling too.

Paul: You had songs placed in two Sidney Pollack films and I'm guessing that he is a fan of yours. How did the placement come about?

Patty: Sheer luck. The first one sheer luck and the second one because he had known my work and someone had held on to Angels Running for seven years and was waiting to pitch it to a movie. Somebody at Sony I guess. But the first time it was Buddy Dortch, he was just driving around LA on his way to redo the music for that movie. And there's a great NPR station out there that was playing Perishable Fruit, which had just come out and he must have heard Coming Up For Air or You and Me. He went right over to Tower Records, bought a copy, went to the studio and used one of the songs. And then I had to wait and see if it was going to make it in the film. Because even if it was planned for the movie, it might not make the final cut. So it was an interesting process. But it was just by sheer luck.

Paul: Now I've heard you're interested in pursuing that more.

Patty: Yes, I have a new publisher. I was without a pitching person in LA for a long time and now I'm with Winthrop Publishing now and I'm looking forward to more movie work. I'm going to try this thing where they call and say, okay, we've got a movie about a little boy.... and I'll try to write something. So we'll see how that goes. It will be an interesting writing challenge, whether or not the song will be of any value after 3 days I don't know.

Paul: Do you have a structured time and place to write?

Patty: I have in the past and I'm just now setting up again. In the past it was in the morning for as many days a week I could fit it in. It takes a couple of weeks for the ideas to come close to feasible <laugh>. So 2 or 3 weeks is great for me to be home and working on things. But I'm about to go on tour for most of the fall and it will be interesting. I want to start to write again.

Paul: Will you write on the road?

Patty: Well what happens there is a lot of times there's a nap or a shower or you write. Or you sleep<laugh>. But I want to maintain a schedule to write. There's a lot of dead time on the road, kind of empty time. And I want to get going and write some more.

Paul: This is one of our standard songwriter questions...What comes first for you, melody or lyrics?

Patty: I would say 99% of the time it's guitar chords and melody that come first for me. And some kind of verbiage happens. Sometimes words come very quickly at that point. But for a few songs the words have driven the song, and it doesn't matter what the chords are that I'm playing. Like on Metal Drums or I Told Him That My Dog Wouldn't Run, story songs. It's more just to get the words out.

Paul: Just a rhythmic device to get the words out.

Patty: Yeah. And some of the humorous songs I've written in my car. So there was no guitar there.

Paul: If you write in your car do you use a recorder or just your memory?

Patty: Usually I just try to remember them.

Paul: Interesting. I was talking to Hugh Blumenfeld recently and he was saying that that's the method he uses. Being in the car, not playing the radio and trying to create memorable songs. He says if he can't remember it, then the song probably wasn't worth it. He will try to make up and memorize an entire song.

Patty: That's amazing. When I wrote a lot of those songs while driving my car didn't have a radio. Now it's like I have a whole office in my car<laugh> between the phone and the discman and the radio. Too many distractions.

Paul: I'm like that, I love to turn the radio on wherever I am. I'd like to ask you a couple production questions. You worked with John Leventhal, one of my dream producers. Now you're producing on your own. And I found the differences between Strangers World and Perishable Fruit to be minimal in terms of the quality of the production. I'm amazed at what you did and I was wondering if you picked up some tips and tricks from John.

Patty: Yeah, I think I did. I know I did. I learned a lot from him and I learned a lot from Ben Wisch. I think of John as a great arranger/producer. He's a very musical guy who thinks in terms of arrangements and he's not afraid of pop music. I have this love/hate relationship with pop music. I don't want it to be too big or sound like anything else and he just jumps right in. He loves it.

Paul: Maybe that's one of the reasons I like him, I grew up listening to pop music.

Patty: Well it's great stuff and he's also a very interesting guitar player and I watched how he put things together. I still have a lot to learn about producing. In terms of arranging that is one thing I feel needs the most work for me.

Paul: What kind of things do you do differently as a producer from John?

Patty: When he looks at producing a song with bass, drums, and a band, and you've got a group in the studio ready to go, he knows what kinds of sounds he wants to hear, what he wants done.

Paul: He's got it all pictured in his head.

Patty: Yeah, he's got it pictured in his head. While Ben Wisch and I are very more circular. We're more experimental. We'll go around and around, turn the stone over. We might get back to where we started but usually we don't. Usually it's a matter of trying different things. And I saw Ben Wisch do that in terms of drum parts for Who Holds Your Hand on Angels Running....it was two hours and we finally just taped my part of the song so he could work on a drum part. We just kept turning things over, tryng different approaches, laying out here or there. Right now that's where I'm at. We're also into hearing what the player has to say, let's just run the tape and see what happens.

Paul: This is a question one of our songwriters Eliot wanted to ask, now that you're producing yourself does it change the way you write?

Patty: That's a good question. I think it's changed the way I play guitar. I don't know if it's because I'm producing myself or because I'm writing closer to the recording of the album. I'm not playing the new stuff out so much. When I'm back home I'm writing. All the songs are fairly new when I record them. After I've been playing them out for a couple of years I have a guitar part or break part worked out. Now I'm going back [to the new material] and seeing if it needs a break or a guitar part so that I can play it live and feel like it's a full song.

Paul: Plus, playing it live it's just you and your guitar and you have to see how it's going to work.

Patty: I think it's more just trying to get the songs out and get them finished. I think my guitar parts have gotten a little simpler compared to year ago.

Paul: Well you're certainly into playing guitar, and enjoying the sounds you get out of a guitar. And what I've read is that you're very interested in various guitar sounds. I've listened to a gogo and am amazed by how good your guitar sounds live.

Patty: Thanks. I know that part of that is the way I play but I think the other part is the equipment and also my sound man Ron Schreier who helped produce the a gogo album

Paul: How do you try to grow and progress as an artist?

Patty: I think one new addition and growth spurt happened when I built my home studio. It started as a demo studio and then jumped into recording Perishable Fruit there-that was not my original intent. I'm amazed I did that. I hired an engineer, but there was a lot for me to learn and I'd like to learn more about the technical end of music and the recording process. But I think artistically I really want to write good songs. I feel there's this well that I want to pull stuff out of. I'm looking to dig deeper in my writing.

Paul: Even though there seems to be a lot of, books that you're not reading <both laugh> I get the impression that you actually read a lot. Is there anything you're reading right now that is interesting?

Patty: The new Michael Ondaatje book- Anil's Ghost. And I'm simultaneously trying to finish A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. He's good.

Paul: You're reading more than I am Patty <she laughs>. I'm too busy running this musical group.

Patty: Well being stuck in airports helps. But I just finished the first Harry Potter book so that's how behind I am. <Both laugh>

Paul: My final question is, any advice you can give to the songwriters in our group?