matter. There wasn’t one big showcase in Nashville or an onstage event that propelled him into the public country consciousness. “I can’t point at one, but I can point at a lot of different moments,” says Green. “Obviously radio is the biggest tool any musician can have in their bag. Once ‘Carry On’ started playing on the radio everywhere it was sort of ‘game over’ ... and we didn’t even have a record label pushing it. It was just people wanting to hear it.” However, Green didn’t shoot to stardom or straight up the charts. In fact, he’d already heard his music on the radio before, back home in
Waco. The first song of he ever heard coming through his car stereo was “George’s Bar.” “It was kind of like the local flavor, the watering hole for Baylor and for Waco,” Green recalled. “I’d written a song about it and my family. I was driving down Lake Air Drive – and I can drive you to the spot, and point to it ... I was getting a call and ended up turning off the road, pulling into the driveway, getting out of the car and just turning it up as loud as I could. It was just … one of those moments.” Now here is where we cue the rock star excess and inflated ego, right? Wrong! Green still gets the same feeling stepping on stage he got the first time he heard his music on the local airwaves. To hear him tell the story, that familiarity that comes through in the songs isn’t false. “That’s kind of why you do it,” Green says, the shrugging shoulders almost audible over the phone, like he’d do it for free anyway. “It’s almost more of a payoff than making a living doing it – having people put it into their lives at such a high level that they can remember every word that you wrote. That, to me, is really special.” But once the radio play really started to pick up and the CDs started moving, the labels came calling. So, Green picked up with Universal Records, out of New York and the storm winds started picking up in a hurry. “Once you get on a major record label and they start putting
the machine behind your music, it’s a whirlwind,” said Green. “They did their job, and put together a few really big hits for me. At that point, I was in my mid-to-late 20s, and [I decided] ‘I’ve kind of got to figure out what I want to do.’ I didn’t really want to be on a New York record label any more. So, I got onto a Nashville record label.” Green signed with RCA, who he feels had a better overall understanding of the sound, what the music meant and so on – and he had a great time. Plus, even the most casual music fan knows the country music world revolves around that Tennessee town. Making it without selling your wares down Music Row is pretty much impossible. “I mean, you can make it to a certain extent, and I certainly took that to the limit,” said Green. “But you can’t make it, literally, all the way. Those years, where we did "Cannonball" (Green’s seventh album, released in 2006), were huge for me. And, a lot of really good songs came out of those years too. Now, I’ve left that behind a little bit so I
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can get more of the songwriter stuff out that I have in me. When you’re making music for a big record label it’s tough to get that stuff out, because they want to sell lots of records – and the artsy stuff is harder to sell. The way I always feel is that if someone is going to put a couple of million dollars into the project, then you should listen – it’s only respectful.” So, where is Pat Green now? He’s back where he’s always been, really, and the only place he’s ever really wanted to be – writing great music. Now, though, there’s not a “machine” behind it so much. He’s putting himself and his music out there in a way he hasn’t in awhile, for better or worse. “I guess really what I’m doing is making songs that I believe in, for me, more than for a company,” Green says after a moment of consideration. “And, I’m going to go record them, basically as soon as possible. Then [I’ll] give them to a record label still – but I’ll already have the tunes cut before I try to sell it to them – so they won’t really have much choice other than to take it the way it is,” he finished up with a laugh. The next project is a series of covers recorded with friends and fellow artists Green dubbed his “Michael Buble’ kind of effort” called “Songs We Wish We’d Written.” It features the likes of Collective Soul’s Ed Roland and music by everyone from classic country crooners to The Wallflowers – look for that one in the early this summer. Then, Green is back in the studio working on his new, original record, tentatively slated to be released in early 2012.
Hearing him speak about it, the new album should be a return some of the older Pat Green canon in tone, as much as sound or content. Maybe an artist can never recapture the sound and feeling of earlier days – but recreation is not really the point for an artist. You can take those road miles off or the experience away, and you probably wouldn’t want to anyway. But, coming from the place of unencumbered creativity, that’s always the goal. “Well, I think I’m a better writer now” said Green when asked to describe the new album. “But, as far as the feel ... yeah it’s going to be a much rougher, edgier feel. Certainly I think that was the focus when I was starting.” And for an artist of any type – for a songwriter who draws on daily life for inspiration and frustration, wherever you happen to be then must color what is produced. And 2011 singer/songwriter Pat Green isn’t the same man he was in 1997. Being a married man, with two kids, is a different animal all together. “There’s no doubt,” agrees Green. His tone always seems to be relaxed, but there’s a healthy respect in his voice as he continues: “I don’t think there is anything that big in your life ... as a person who lives with expression [being a husband and a father] is going to change everything about what you want to say and how you want to say it. Having kids and a wife has definitely made the most impact on my life, over anything else.” Green is up by 6:30 a.m. most every day, getting the kids off to school. He was even up early on the day of the interview, but after the kids headed out, he headed back to bed. Like so many folks, Pat Green is still a working parent. Maybe it’s just magnified through a bizarrolens. Not many kids can see their parents on the Top 20 Countdown while they are “at work,” but success or radio play doesn’t seem to make being away from your family any easier. Green says, “That’s the cross that you have to bear as a working musician. The upside is amazing B S C E N E M A G.COM