 |
 Caught in the Carousel - "There will be music despite everything"
|
Patches and Gretchen
I Steal Carrots
Blue Skin
Sandpaper Tongue Records
Patches and Gretchen is a band that deserves far more attention than it currently gets. Having released four albums to date, lyricist and band leader Gretchen Seichrist has produced a consistently fine body of work, not only proving that she is no mere idiosyncratic curiosity, capable of capturing our attention for the span of a single record, but in fact, a gifted artist of real integrity and depth with the power to deeply move anyone willing to listen to her music with something more than the cursory and superficial attention most popular music today asks of us. These are albums for living with. Play them again and again, the way you might an artist like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or Charles Thompson, and they will reveal the gems that are contained in their devastatingly beautiful and original songs.
Gretchen Seichrist is making hats. She sews them together from scraps of satin, knits, tulle, in bright, gaudy colors and patterns, then photographs them and posts the pictures on her website. One hat is an impossible looking thing in brilliant colors-rich purple, lavender, fuchsia, and a seventies inspired multi-color flower print.
"There's no real place to put the head," she comments beneath the picture.
"You gotta make it work."
"It's a hat without a choice."
"You're smart."
"You'll find a way."
"There must be a way, screams this hat."
Advertising them for sale at twenty-seven dollars each, she promises other Patches and Gretchen "stuff" will be included in the envelope. "Maybe an apology," she writes. "Or maybe a form for you to give one to me."
For a hat that fits, she asks, "Tell me the size of your head in relation to a fruit if you wanna order."
Gretchen Seichrist is an artist in every sense of the word. She draws, paints and works in fabric. She writes poetry and songs. It would seem her life is one creative process, in which everything is both subject and material for expression. She is also a single mother, who provides for her children through determinedly hard work. That too becomes part of her artistic expression. If she's cooking soup, it's going to find its way into her art. If she sees you riding on the bus, there's a good chance, if you seem interesting enough, that you will end up in a line of her lyrics. Not that eccentricity is the requisite quality for interest. The ordinary gestures, the mundane experiences and conversations of everyday life can reveal to her artistic eye profound moments. The more I observe her and listen to her, both as an online presence and as singer in her band, the more I get the feeling that ultimately, for her, it's the creative act that is supreme, that she has to get out, by any means possible or available, the art that resides within her. She will paint it, sew it, write it, or sing it—whatever she can. The important thing is that it gets expressed. It's creativity as a way of life.
And for her, it's essential.
Although she writes and arranges her songs in collaboration with her band, it is Gretchen who provides the artistic vision and writes the lyrics. She doesn't really regard herself as a musician, and is only interested in mastering the guitar to the extent that she needs it to write her songs. "I don't know how to play guitar that well but I don't mind..." she said in a 2008 interview with a Minneapolis newspaper. "I needed one more chord and I would go and find someone to show me that chord. That's all I wanted to know." The rest is filled out by a loosely organized band of veteran musicians from the Minnesota area and beyond, who contribute their considerable talents in creating a unique sound that is instantly recognizable as Patches and Gretchen, though the individual musicians have changed since her first album, Music From Little Big Pink was released in 2008.
Gretchen describes Patches as not so much an individual or a band, than a community of musicians. The lineup includes a fairly constant core group, listed on their facebook page as "Gretchen Seichrist, Tommy Tousey, Steve Dupuis, Terry Easton, Van Johnson, Paul Mcfarland sometimes, and maybe somebody else blowing in." In her live shows, often billed as "Headquarters and Dimes," any number of local artists and musicians could drop in for a guest spot, either to perform their own work, or join her and the band in performing their songs. She hosted local luminary Scarlet Rivera, (who gained national attention when she played with Bob Dylan on his Desire album, and toured with him in the Rolling Thunder Review). Also of note, Mid-America Music Hall of Fame inductees, Arnie Fogel, and Barry Thomas Goldberg, though their names may not ring an immediate bell, (they were two of the founding members of Candy Floss Productions, who wrote, performed and produced many pop hits during the sixties, and both remain very active today) are often present. The mutual affection between Gretchen and these two men is abundantly clear in the home-produced videos of her shows. There really isn't enough room here to detail the many guests who hail from the music scene in the Minnesota region and the various bands they are associated with, but you get the point: This is as much a community building endeavor as a recording and performing one.
Much of that sense of community, of openness, spontaneity and inclusiveness is evident in her recordings. Made with as little fuss as possible and with many guest musicians contributing, they have a live feel, even when you know there has to have been some overdubbing in the production. The songs are loose, almost painterly in their sound. Background vocals are layered in with broad strokes. Studio chatter, asides and background sounds add to the ambience. Gretchen's vocals have a spontaneous quality, treating time and tone with a freedom and casualness that a lesser band might find impossibly difficult to accompany. Yet all this seeming looseness, and even occasional disorder somehow works perfectly together to make powerful music.
Take "That's Not News," the opening song from I Steal Carrots for example. Two blasts on a party noisemaker and the band and Gretchen simultaneously kick into gear. Well, almost simultaneously anyway. Over a very danceable riff, reminiscent of mid-sixties soul, she sings, "They're calling me a drunk when I speak/ I don't know who raised these people to call other people freaks." Beginning with the next line, things almost fall apart: "Maybe I'm a (mmmmmmmm)member of the tribe/Where all the rest have fought and died," she sings, perfectly stretching out the "m". Then a rush of words: "And I'm hanging on the memory of my mother that never lied and when she spoke it came out glistening red wine." All in the same number of beats as a single line. Whatever else it may do, it gets your attention. Something is happening here; something you don't hear every day.
From that opening moment and throughout the album, Gretchen takes us on a wild ride, full of bumps, grinds, rough spots and smooth grooves that at times can make you tap your foot and at times close your eyes and just feel the gutsy, rootsy, emotion-packed music. There's plenty to enjoy on the casual listen. The danceable groove of "That's Not News," the stately and gorgeous chord progressions of "Oh, Jenny," the hand-clapping, foot-stomping glam of "I Am No Proof Of Life (On Mars), the upbeat "Troublemaker," the brooding, stalking "I Steal Carrots," with its backing chorus sounding like a choir in hell, even the cheesy, humorous music of "So Take That"—are all as enjoyable a music as any you might put on for sheer pleasure.
But always, always there's the call to pay attention, to attend more closely, tugging at your ear. And when you do—when you just sit down and really listen—she's going to astonish you with her vivid imagery and break your heart with her pathos. There's something of Whitman, Dylan and Patti Smith in her songs. Rhyme and meter at times break down in the attempt to encompass all of life in its messy, beautiful, heart wrenching, and tender whole. This is humanizing music, written from the heart. On her website, under the heading "Influences" she lists one word: Soul.
For example, near the end of "Forward Thinking" she sings, "Yes the beating was worth it just to get the succeeding lift/Oh the glorious walk into the arms of the bed/Bruised and nipped/And after the beating and the berating/They must start all over." After a few beats of silence, she speaks: "And then there will be a crack/when they actually touch you." I've shared this moment with many people, talking about this recording, and I cannot quote it without feeling as if I might burst into tears. I know of no moment in recent music more moving. Rather than telling us how to feel, she simply presents the cycle of abuse, the beating and remorse and the need for love so strong as to make the victim grateful for the moments of gentleness when they do come. There are many moments like this in these songs; moments that confront us with painful, sad and even bleak images of life made all the more powerful because she never intrudes, never directs us.
Gretchen has the ability to communicate volumes of information in just a few lines, and the courage to look life directly in the eye without blinking. "And the boys on the 21 bus/Look like sticks of dynamite/That the girls are burdened to ignite" from "Who Do You Belong To" contains a whole world of teenage sexuality in one simple image. "I betray her/When I put her on the school bus/If we are all forgiven what's the use?/You may not know what you do/ But I intentionally pick and lick the envelope" from "Three-Legged Cat" paints a picture any parent can relate to. The things we do to our children, sometimes because we must, even though we know the pain it may cause. Yet, there are no excuses. And how much of the unglamorous business of motherhood is captured in the one line "My fingers surrendered to sticky buttons" ("Forward Thinking")?
Intimately observed, specific details abound: "In someone's window there is a cup/and all the pens with their caps gone." ("That's Not News"), "Take me to page 98" ("I Am No Proof Of Life"), "At the bottom of the jungle bed-spread is our clothes/In piles in the shape of a pond" ("Troublemaker")—all contributing to the sense of reality, the certainty that these songs are taken from the stuff of life and making the declarations and revelations all the more poignant when they come.
Not that everything is heartbreak. Acquaintance with tribulation, loss and grief doesn't preclude enjoyment. Blues celebrated sex as much as it bewailed its frequent consequences, and rent parties may have been intended to keep a roof over one's head, and something on the plate, but they were also an excuse to release the tensions and pressures of living through drink and dance, sex and fighting. "While they are taking my furniture/And the money from the bank/They'll probably turn off the heat at the end of the week/You've got to accept the things you can't beat/But not in the night babe/We both can be kings, well so to speak" she says in "Troublemaker," one of the most upbeat songs on the album.
Nor is there any lack of humor. In "So Take That" the protagonist, a waitress, is speaking. While the music plays—a guitar with cheesy effects, accompanied by a mocking chorus repeating the lyrics—she tells her boyfriend, "I'm ironing my uniform on a towel on the bed/ And I'm gonna leave your ass someday." She warns him not to show up at the restaurant because the manager will tell her he's coming and she will "hide in the ladies restroom or something." And who is she leaving this man for? "That boy from Menards" who "can get a discount on all kinds of stuff." Is he really a better choice, or is she simply making a lateral move? "I think his mom is like somewhere in Shakopee (a suburb of Minneapolis and the location of a women's prison) I asked him what for but he wouldn't answer me. Well he kind of yelled at me. But anyway..." It's clear she will really do no better, if she actually takes up with this lout. And the future? "We're planning a trip to Six Flags when he fixes his van." Sounds bright, huh? Really, her motive isn't as much a desire for anything better, which she doesn't even seem to expect, but a far less mature one, revealed in the line that closes every verse: "So take that." Something I haven't heard since I left elementary school, and indicative of spite more than anything else. It's the verbal equivalent to sticking out her tongue. The whole scenario is pathetic really, and yet the humor undeniable.
Blue Skin, the fourth album, which was released simultaneously with I Steal Carrots, has an entirely different feel. If the latter is something of a party, from the opening blasts of a noise-maker, to the live studio chatter in the next to last song, "Worst Lost Blues," Blue Skin is a spare and solitary feeling album; introspective, even quiet. Although there are a few that employ a full band—the clomping "Seneca Hotel", and woozy, fuzzed up "Sex Hotel"—most of the songs employ the barest of arrangements: a solo guitar, perhaps some percussion, but little more. One might think of it as the day after, when the head is pounding and the chickens have come home to roost.
In what has to be one of the bleakest songs about drug addiction ever recorded, on the title track she says, "Everyone weighs your worth by the bag." Over a continuous electric hum, sounding as if it emanates from within your head, a guitar and an occasional percussive accent seems barely able to focus on the song; it's a perfect embodiment of the line "And everyone's lost the effort again/And slinks around with the blue skin." With the sparest of strokes, Seichrist paints us a picture of a life revolving around addiction: barely furnished quarters, empty refrigerator, relationships based on drug use ("But she's gonna cop, so it's hard to hate her"), are all here in stark, chilling clarity. The line "Or you can do what I did/And sharpen it all up with sandpaper" contains a world of information not explicitly described, but powerfully present. No need to be didactic here, the message is all too clear.
There are gorgeous moments here, too. You may find "Queen Of The Winter Carnival" to be the most sonically beautiful song of either album, as I do. With a stinging slide guitar provided by guest Terry Isachsen, and a simple acoustic accompaniment by Steve Dupuis, it's the perfect setting for the song, painting a sonic landscape that conjures images of drifting and blowing snow in the night. I can't help but think of Ennio Morricone, it sounds so spacious and lonely.
"The Honey And The Apple" and "How Many Flies" are the only two songs on either album that Gretchen performs entirely without accompaniment. Both are quiet numbers, very personal in feel and contain some of the most beautiful lines of poetry. "I wonder how light I have to be/So that you like me, but you don't detect/My presence in your decisions", from "The Honey And The Apple" beautifully describes the tentative quality of relationships. And her description of grief and loss in "How Many Flies" nearly broke this heart with its truth: "I remembered that it just adjusts/It hits you driving down the street/A hollowness in your stomach and chest/It's like a leaf floating down/ It says 'Death is coming'/It's going to take someone—someone you can't lose/Someone who holds the other end of who you are." This powerfully describes loss and grief, its sudden descent on us even after we think we've accepted it. Yet, for us and for Gretchen, "you carry the bag to another day." Somehow we have to carry on and "practice breathing."
It is often the case that when art is presented to a public inured by a flood of derivative and inferior substitutes for the real thing, the public is unable to appreciate, or even recognize what is before them. The painting of the Impressionists was not greeted by hostility as much as indifference. Used to the umber tinted varnishes and formalized, overwrought and conventional art of the academy, people were unable to recognize the freshness, the truthfulness, the honestly and carefully observed and recorded scenes of life as it actually presents itself and as the artists experienced it. Gretchen brings that kind of life to us through her songs and they are beautiful for it, even when they are not pretty. They are full of honestly observed detail, emotion and hard truths learned through hard lessons.
October 18: Gretchen is making hats. She sews them together from scraps of satin, knits, and tulle, in bright, gaudy colors and patterns, then photographs them and posts the pictures on her website. "The New P&G Fall Hat Line", she comments.
"Remember there is something messed up about every P&G fall line." "Messed up?" someone asks. "Whaddya mean?" "Not right," Gretchen responds. "Messed up." "Like things are." (Each sentence a separate entry.) "When you look close." "ly" "But it makes it better," she adds.
And you know, it does.
—Michael Dill
Can we help you find something?