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Glenn Patrik: a mash-up of Kansas City, Texas, and Chicago blues
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Glenn Patrik and the tools of his trade
Like many blues players, Glenn Patrik comes from humble beginnings, but has gone from a housing project to playing with blues giants. Via phone, he discussed hopping trains, how he was drawn to the blues, and the evolution of his style.
You used to hop trains. How did you get started, and what did you do when you hopped trains?
I lived in a federal housing project in Kansas City, Kansas, on a dead-end street. At the end of that street was a fence. If you went under the fence, you were now on Interstate 70. If you crossed Interstate 70 and the Kansas River, you were in the train switching yard. From what I understand, it was the main switching yard for the country. There were fifty or sixty tracks from one side to the other. And there were all these trains sitting there. Sometimes they'd sit for days. It was just right behind our place. As a kid, it was in my sphere of where I hung out. Now, if you jump a train, it's a felony because of the terrorism act. When I was a kid it wwas no big deal, and they'd let your run around down there. I got to know a couple guys that worked in the yard. I would ask them where the trains were going. They'd say, "That one's going to Chicago." Or "That one's going to Minneapolis." First time they said Dallas, I knew where that was, so I hopped on that train and went. And I was down there on Saturday morning. I rode to Dallas. I didn't do anything. I was thirteen years old. I just asked them when was the next train to Kansas City and I came back. I got home, and mom goes, "Where have you been all day?" And I lied. "Oh, just out." After I did that, it was pretty easy. I rode trains until I was twenty. I used to take trains to Mexico, Colorado, just wherever. I even took friends of mine with me to New Mexico or Arizona. You use what you got around. The reason that's in my bio, my grandparents lived in Oklahoma on the Choctaw reservation and the train went right through there. I thought it was cool that I could get off a train and go to my grandparents' house. What I didn't realize at the time was only the poorest people live on the railroad tracks. Sometimes, I'd get off a train, and there were juke joints around. I'd follow the music until I found the juke joints that were near the tracks.
How has your experience riding trains influenced your music?
It influenced my whole life. We were poor. I grew up in a house without a telephone. Things were pretty spartan. We were pretty isolated. My dad had a car, but he didn't really take us anywhere because he didn't have the money to operate it. Once I got on a train, it was personal. It was freedom. Once I felt the freedom to move about the country and I started thinking bigger. I'd say that was a heavy influence. If I wanted to go somewhere, there was nothing to hold me back. I'd just hop a train.
How would you describe your style?
That's a really heavy question. I was real lucky to hang out with a lot of legendary players. I was in the gifted child program that they had at the ghetto schools. Kids that can't afford it, they get you an instrument and instruction. I was able to hang out with some pretty heavy hitters. The Count Basie Orchestra would play Kansas City once a month for free. I later became friends with some of the guys in Basie, and ended up doing shows with two or three of the guys. I came up with Basie. A lot of people outside of Kansas City think of Basie as jazz. Basie's always considered his music blues. Kansas City blues has a jazz edge to it, I guess. We don't hear jazz in it. Whenever I got into another band, I moved to where that band was. After Kansas City, I moved to Texas and played with a band from Houston for four years. I got a little of that Texas style. Then I moved back to Kansas City for a while, and moved to Chicago where I played with Buddy Miles, Junior Wells and people like that. So then I picked up some of that Chicago style. I'm kind of a mash-up of Kansas City, Texas, and Chicago. The one thing I don't have in my style is rock. When you hear blues today, you hear a lot of rock in it. I never did get to the point where I put rock in it. As a result, I would think my music is not as popular, even though it's all over the radio worldwide. I think in general people like more rock in their blues.
You kind of addressed this, but how has your style evolved over the years?
I'm gonna keep with the moving. I moved from Chicago to Long Beach to play with Joe Houston. It was 1992, and the blues started getting popular with the white crowds for the very first time in my life. When I hit LA, they'd never seen a guy who was playing straight blues who wasn't black. I was king of blues in LA from 92 to about 98. I started touring with a lot of cats. It always evolves by who I'm playing with. I did my first performance when I was eight years old. I think my style is more listenable. The appeal is the actual ability to pull it off. And the musical maturity that doesn't make people get up and leave.
Was there anything in particular that drew you to the blues?
My parents loved country music. We had a lot of country music around. And I liked it. But we had a neighbor who had a Freddie King, a BB King, and a Bobby Blue Bland record that he just loved. He'd play them over and over again. He'd put the speakers in the window. I liked him in general. He was pleasant to be around. He was into the blues and would talk about it at length. With his knowledge of it and how much he liked it, I started trying to learn it. When I found out that no young people were playing the blues at all back then, I thought I was doing something special. I was twelve years old the first time I played blues with a band. At that time, Albert Collins lived in my neighborhood. He was in a band that I later played with. Everybody that was in that band, I played with. That was Lawrence Wright and the Midnighters. It was called the Starlighters when he was in it, the Midnighters when I was in it. Bobby Blue Bland would come to Kansas City every Thanksgiving with Albert King and they would play a breakfast dance at the National Guard Armory right by my house. I'm pretty sure Bobby Blue Bland still does it. They would come up and do that every year, right there in my neighborhood. I came up playing with old-school blues players. The guy that taught me to play was taught by Magic Sam. I didn't learn anything off of a record ever. I didn't have a record player. Even if I had, I wouldn't have had the money to buy a record. All the blues I got, I got from a blues player. Which is why I think it sounds different than a lot of cats that play the blues. I'm not putting anybody down, but they're so called blues players who played rock all their lives. The rock thing didn't pan out and they got older, they thought, "Well, I'll switch over to the blues." It sounds great, but to me, it's rock with blues in it. People buy it as blues. I think if you start playing rock and switch to blues, you'll always play rock. Like Gary Moore, he was in Thin Lizzy for how many years? He played in the heaviest rock band known to man. He and Albert Collins made a live album together. I've heard some cuts and Albert don't even sound like he's doing anything because Gary's guitar is so overdriven. He's got all the pedals. That's another thing. I use no pedals. No blues player that I know uses pedals. The second you see a blues player setting up pedals, he's about to play some rock. Nothing wrong with that. That's just how I see it. Once you enhance the tone with the pedals, you're not getting a pure tone anyway. You're getting a surgically-enhanced tone.
If you could write and perform a song with one artist, who would it be?
That's easy. BB King, because he's the oldest, he's the top of the heap. I've opened for him three times, but I've never played with him. I'd flip if I could play with BB. He's the last of the greats. I don't know if you could name anyone bigger. And he's been the man for so long. He's kind of the guy that took blues mainstream, and crossed it over. He's a legend in many aspects. He's not my favorite performer, by the way. He's the one with the longest tenure. Just because of his age, I'd love to perform with him.
What would you be doing if you weren't making music?
Dancing. I'm a painter. It would be art of some type. I taught myself Photoshop recently and it was easy, just because of my artistic composition ability. Not that I'm so good with Photoshop, I just put it together in an interesting fashion. I draw a lot. I paint. I've been told I'm a good photographer, but I've never put any effort into it. Something artistic, I'm sure.
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