Patrick McBride
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Patrick McBride

Band Folk Singer/Songwriter

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"All That Remains is Anything But Mundane"

Much of what is passed off as art today is just ordinary, a cheap imitation of a once great thing. It applies to all mediums whether it be music, film or literature. Technology has obliterated the walls of creativity allowing anyone with a mac or pc to create whatever their heart desires and then post it on the web for all to see or hear. The flip side to this though is that technology has afforded many great artists to share their gift with a larger audience.

One such artist is Patrick McBride whose debut album All That Remains fills one with hope that great art is still possible. Cut from the same mold as great folk writers Pierce Pettis and James Taylor, McBride pours his passion for life, love and faith into each song.

I’ve found myself captivated by a different song with each listen of the album. Perhaps the most masterful song is the title track, All That Remains. A song born out of heartbreak, but also one that inspires courage to move forward through the uncertainty of life.

Recorded in a home studio, All That Remains, is not polished and over produced and while some may find fault with that, it’s just one of the many factors that makes this album great. An overly polished album is mundane, sterile and simply a poor representation of how life really is. Life is filled with pain and suffering, doubts and questions and it’s the ability to find hope and love in the midst of all the junk that makes awe inspiring art.

- My Crazy Times.com Joel Henderson


"The Walk, The Ache, The Dawn: A review of Patrick McBride's debut album, All That Remains. By: David Odom"

Patrick McBride's debut album, "All That Remains," sounds like it was
born of a thousand long, solitary night walks. We walk along with
McBride as he shares some of what he has learned about loss and
renewal, failure and hope, and God. We walk deep--through the sad,
sweet ache of painful memories and unfulfilled longing that we all
well know. What distinguishes this album, though, is that we begin to
approach something just the other side of The Ache. Of course, there
are times when we pause in the darkness; some parts of The Ache must
be examined up close. But McBride strikes an effective balance
between introspection and action. Throughout the album there is the
hint of a whisper telling us that we need to keep moving. There is a
sense that around the next bend in the dark road, dawn is breaking.

Things get off to an upbeat start with "Someone Between," almost the
Mark Heard song to a Pierce Pettis album. The song is a dose of
humility. The singer recounts the misguided ideas resulting from his
"foolish pride" and then is almost celebratory in acknowledging, "But
I was wrong. Oh, I was wrong!" Up front, the song finds Christ as the
antidote to that foolish pride, but is quick to remind us that finding
the right path doesn't mean finding all the answers: as the singer
hopes, "maybe someday, I'll know what He means." Our feet have
stumbled onto the path, but there is still a long way to go. All the
while, the music is helping to set the sense of urgency. The
relentless percussive guitar, the building background vocals, the
bongo drums, the egg shaker, the syncopated bass: they all combine to
wake us up and convince us that some things, some decisions, can't
wait--too much is at stake.

The soft, reflective "Five Easy Pieces" is followed by the most
unexpected song on the album, "Starlight." The jazzy rhythms and
riffs and the raspy vocals of the verses build into a bright,
full-lunged chorus: "Starlight, won't you guide me; come on down here
and make it right." Near the end of the line, the melody bends as
McBride hits "here," and ah, there's The Ache again. This song also
features one of the best crescendos on the album. At about 2:27, the
song's bottom falls out. A couple instruments pile in; the tension
grows. The vocals kick it up the scale once and then again, and just
when we're starting to wonder how much pressure it can take, one of
the more impressive vocal flourishes of the album breaks through,
landing us back in the full-lunged chorus. Despite the big build-up
and the belted-out chorus, there's really no hurry here. The laid
back tempo, the blue notes in the guitar, the dream-evening picture
the lyrics are painting: they make you want to linger a little in the
milky, starlit glow of this song. Go ahead. Smell the magnolias
blooming just off the road.

In "Ordinary Life," the bare-boned honesty of the lyrics is
complemented by the sparseness of the instrumentation. The
repetitiveness of the chorus, "I am afraid of the mundane and the
ordinary life," builds to take on a rousingly anthemic tone. At
first, the words are sung like a quiet confession made to a friend,
but informed with the extra meaning layered in the music, the line
develops into a bold, confident assertion. The entire outlook
changes. By confronting weakness so directly, so unashamedly, it
ceases, at least for a moment, to be weakness at all. This is true
songwriting: poetry augmented by music's many dimensions.

The Americana-folk-rock-pop-hit of the album is found on track 5,
"Woodstock," McBride's own "American Pie." The background organ and
the harmonica leads are the right choices for this reminiscence of
1960s unfettered youthful idealism (and its hard crash back to Earth).
You might ask, "How can a 26-year-old in 2007 write a credible song
about the atmosphere of Woodstock and the counterculture?" Because
the themes displayed here are timeless. A 1969 concert is merely the
point of departure for McBride's exploration of the necessity and
ultimate failure of all our best efforts to build Utopia. "The grass,
so green and true, tramples to mud after all." Everyone remembers an
Eden-before-the-Fall, but the newsreel footage of 1945 victory parades
and the personal descriptions of the peace-love-'n-mud concert cast
the universal theme in a distinctly American folk flavor.

The sixth song, "All That Remains," is McBride's greatest achievement,
a true triumph. The album appropriately takes its name from this epic
and ambitious song. To merely say that the song takes most of the
major themes of the rest of the album and combines them into a single
compelling story of great loss and even greater renewal would be to
sell it short. It is remarkable to listen to McBride develop the
song's main character in four verses as skillfully as a novelist might
in 200 pages. The sense of personal loss and frustration builds, and
by the time the main character "sho - David Odom, independent reviewer


Discography

"All That Remains", released in March 2007

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Bio

Patrick McBride is a 26 year old singer/songwriter from Pensacola, Florida. After teaching middle school for two years Patrick enrolled in seminary at Duke Divinity School. However, it was here that Patrick realized his true calling and passion: music. Three months later, Patrick withdrew in order to pursue his passion and recorded his first album, All That Remains, in March 2007. After the album, Patrick spent the rest of 2007 performing and working as a missionary in Australia. Now back from down-under, Patrick has returned to touring and recording in the United States.

Patrick plays and sings in a compelling folk style that draws on several influences and genres ranging from the folk styles of Pierce Pettis, Jesse Winchester, or James Taylor to the sounds of Coldplay and Jimmy Eat World. Whether in an intimate concert with just a guitar and piano or performing with a full band, Patrick is a singer/ songwriter who ventures off the folk map to create a sound and tell a story that is uniquely his. As you listen, you may hear a bit of your own story as well.