Wilkes-Barre, PA - I recently had the opportunity to speak with Justin Kurtzweil, bass player for pop-rock band Patterns. Check out the interview below.
1. How did Patterns begin? How long have you been around?
Patterns originally began about three years ago. It started out with me, our guitarist, and our drummer. We though “hey let’s start a band!”. We then found other people, went on for awhile. Recently we stopped, but then we just recently got back together with a new vocalist and a different guitarist, and it’s just been going from there.
2. When and where was the self-titled EP recorded? About how long was that process?
For the self-titled, we recorded it at a studio pretty close to where we are. The process was a lot of just jamming through songs. The actual recording process took about five days.
3. On that EP, “Keep The Melody” was a really standout track to me. How did that song come about?
We really wanted to do an acoustic song. Our old singer, at the time, had this one little part and he always played it. It stuck with us and we all thought “oh this has gotta be our acoustic song.” It came about from us just messing around one day.
4. You guys released a new single this year called “It’s Never Easy”. What exactly is that song about?
That song is basically about how all of us want to be on the road, pursue music, etc., but we all have things here at home that we don’t want to say goodbye to or leave. It’s about the conflicts between the things you don’t want to leave, but how you need to leave in order to pursue your dreams. Like, leaving your girlfriend, your friends/family and things like that.
5. I hear a lot of old-school Boys Like Girls, solid pop-rock vibe from your music. What kind of musical influences do you guys each bring to the table?
The musical taste is all across the board. Every little thing has little elements drawn from different things, like little beats on the drums that are pulled from rap songs. That genre of old Boys Like Girls is on the guitar parts. It’s all over the place.
6. Where do you guys get most of your lyrical ideas from? Both style and content wise?
Most of the lyrics will actually come from situations where we’ll wake up and then someone will say “Hey, I wrote lyrics last night while doing nothing.” Just kind of like, when you’re sitting around at night and you have nothing but your thoughts going on.
7. What kind of message would you like fans to walk away with after listening to your music?
Have fun. We like to put a lot of energy and give a care-free feel to it. We want people to come to our shows and have a great time. When we play shows, if there’s even four people there, we have the time of our lives, and hope those people have just as much fun as we do. We just want everyone to have fun, that’s why we do what we do.
8. What are the future plans for Patterns?
We are booking a lot of shows to busy up our summer. We are also in the process of producing a brand new EP. We’ve been working with a new manager as well, Josh Balz from Motionless In White. He’s been helping us set some stuff up. For the EP, we’re hoping to go in within the next month to record. Once we do that, you’ll definitely be seeing a lot more of us.