We were lucky to catch up with Patrick Porter recently and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

This past year I’ve been insanely lucky to have worked with so many amazing and talented folks in a variety of mediums as my band A Very Special Episode created our upcoming full length record, “Freak Me Out.” The writing and recording process with my bandmates Kasey Heisler and Chayse Schutter was exhilarating as we gave ourselves some harsh and unforgiving deadlines booking studio time before having fully written all the tracks we intended to record. It wasn’t unlikely this would have ended in disaster (and would have been largely my fault for convincing myself and the others this wasn’t a stupid pursuit) but we prevailed and had all our songs ready to go by the time we walked into Studio G in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to spend a couple weekends with the always lovely Jeff Berner and Ross Colombo.

The months afterward has been a whirlwind of work, creating vinyl jacket art with the help of great pal and artist Dima Drjuchin and shooting music videos with directors Jen Meller and Greg Hanson all the while playing out in local and regional shows. It’s been an exciting time!

Patrick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Since I was a teenager I’ve always wanted to be an active musician in the NYC DIY world (even before I had an accurate notion of what that was) and over years of trial and error to learn how the heck to make music other people can vibe with for 30 loud minutes at a time I think I’ve finally attained something close to that goal. This may seem obvious to some, but having a “if you build it, they will come” attitude in regard to art and music, especially for an indie crowd, will only get you so far. I’ve seen so many musicians pride themselves on their talent while putting minimal effort into attending others’ shows, supporting others’ work, or creating relationships in the community at all and then getting frustrated when that same community shows them a reciprocal amount of recognition (to be clear, very little). Making friends as an adult is hard; to me, truly the most valuable part of joining the Brooklyn music scene *was* joining the Brooklyn music scene.

All that said, you should check out my band A Very Special Episode on bandNada, Bandcamp, or your preferred streaming application.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

Unfortunately, I think they’re a sc*m. Their value to artists were artificially inflated to seem important, or like a new way artists could make a living off their work. Outside of a very small amount of people, that simply has not happened. No one is even talking about NFTs, positively or negatively, as much as they were this time last year.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

Ideas don’t come fully formed, or at least not for me. There’s a lot of improvisation when creating something, like a song, whether you’re writing it yourself or with a band. Learning how to “yes and” with yourself and others was a such a huge breakthrough for myself in learning how to create, how to take a grain of a good idea and snowballing it into something bigger and better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://averyspecialepiso.de/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/avsepisode/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AVerySpecialEpisodeBand/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsepisode
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsepisode
• Other: https://avse.bandnada.com/

Image Credits
Stephen Perry Jen Meller Manny Nomikos