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Meet Patrick Williams

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Meet Patrick Williams

February 26, 2025
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We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Patrick Williams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Patrick, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When I was 16, driving to my summer job, an original melody suddenly popped into my head. I started singing it aloud and feeling more and more excited. Where did it come from? I’d never had original music come to me. It was energizing! It felt important, and made me want to skip work to go home and record it on my cassette recorder so I wouldn’t forget how it went. I was worried I’d forget and that it would never return to me. I was curious about how it came to be and eager to explore this new experience and try to understand it. Several decades, 3 new albums, and almost 200 original songs later, I still don’t understand how a new song comes to be, but I’m just as energized and curious about it now as I was as a teenager.

After setting music aside for much of my career, I now feel like a wellspring. Within 12 months I will have released 3 albums of original music, stemming from 3 intensive projects, with material spanning decades of time. My days are filled with music from the moment I wake, until my head hits the pillow. It’s all I’ve wanted to do. It feels urgent to create, to build, to release all that’s been pent up inside of me for so long. Once I finally gave it space, a torrent came. It should never have been locked away. That was a sin. Not because of any presumption for the work, but because I was denying a source of joy and meaning. In my act of redemption I am taking to heart the lines from Henry Longfellow’s beautiful poem “A Psalm Of Life”:

“Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.”

The first of the three albums I released this year is a solo album of original songs, written between 2021 and 2024, titled ‘For The Sake Of The Dead’. The second album is a restored and remastered demo album I made in the 1990s with my long time music partner, Taylor O’Connor called ‘The Quick And The Dead’. The third album is the release of original songs for my rock band, RetroFusion. The title track is called ‘Mystic Collision’. Each album project is very different from the others, with completely different challenges. I’ve grown with each album and I’ve also struggled with each of them in unique ways. There is always the ample struggle that comes with the joy. I guess I shouldn’t want it any other way. Pushing against entropy is hard work, but the alternative is a much harder path.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I met my long time music partner, Taylor O’Connor when I was sitting in the stairwell of my college dorm, earnestly trying to write my first song. I was shy about singing and playing guitar so I sought out nooks on my crowded campus where I could be vulnerable with music. Taylor heard me playing and singing and stepped into that space and encouraged me to keep going. It turned out he was a top notch musician, and before long we were writing and recording songs together. We poured all our creative energies into making a demo album in the 1990s called ‘The Quick And The Dead’. We sent that demo out to every record label we could find and were thrilled (and terrified) when one responded and offered us a small record deal! When we received the offer, I had just landed my first career job. It was painful to have to let the music deal go, and sometimes I think about the adventures we would’ve had if we’d followed the music. After that, my relationship with music changed. As my career and responsibilities grew, music got pushed aside until there was almost none at all. It took thirty years, but that would soon change.

Last year I made a road trip to Michigan and found myself driving silently, playing nothing on the stereo, and enjoying the long stretches of peace and stillness. As I entered the mountains I suddenly wanted to hear a track from the demo called ‘Hope & Nicotine’. That road trip was a catalyst to restore the songs on the demo and finish the vision we had for them. It would mark the 30 year anniversary of the album and launch the second creative project I was to pursue. The project took nine months and it became a labor of love to restore and renew those songs. Like most creative efforts, the work inspired me to create more music. This project also reconnected me with Taylor and inspired us to continue collaborating. I hope others enjoy listening to these songs as much as we enjoyed creating them and renewing them! Singles from the album are being released regularly, starting with ‘Drinker 21’. The full album will be released in 2025. Check out www.PatrickWilliams.info for the backstory on all of the songs, and for lyrics, chords, and period photos from when the original demo album was made.

The third album project is with my band, RetroFusion. I’ve been singing, playing guitar, and writing with the band for the past few years. Over the last 6 months I recorded and produced an album of some of our original songs and we just released our first single, ‘Soul Catcher’. Our website, www.RetroFusion.info gives the backstory on each of the songs and more information about the band, including where you can see us live.

In order to capture the energy of a live performance, I recorded the band on 10 individual tracks over multiple recording sessions. These were used as base tracks, allowing us to overdub and add other elements to the songs while keeping the natural groove, dynamics, and energy of the band. After each session, I did intensive editing and remixing, then repeated this process for each of the songs on the album. When it was all done we had a full length album of high energy songs, each distinct in style and feel, and very different from other creative projects I’d done. We are releasing singles in December and January, followed closely by the full album just before our live show at The Pour House in Raleigh on January 22, 2025 (https://wl.seetickets.us/event/will-mcbride-group-with-retro-fusion/627258?afflky=ThePourHouseMusicHallRecordShop).

Last, but not least was my first album project, which was completed in June 2024. This is a solo album of original songs I made as a tribute to loved ones who’ve passed away. The concept was sparked by Walt Whitman’s poem, ‘Hymn Of Dead Soldiers’. This album was a way for me to grieve the loss of my parents and my sister, while trying to focus that energy and grow it into something new. Check out my interview with Voyage Magazine for more about that meaningful project (https://voyageraleigh.com/interview/check-out-patrick-williamss-story).

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal is to make music every day and explore songwriting in every way possible. Each of the three albums were made in a completely different way. One was a solo work with minimal collaboration, another was a partner collaboration from a different time in my life. The third involved intensive collaboration and live recording sessions with a band. Each has offered a unique creative experience.

Several years ago I adopted the motto: “play differently, sing differently, write differently”. It’s a way to remind me to keep changing, and to be vulnerable and uncomfortable as often as possible when creating. When I follow it, exciting things happen. I’m happy each of these 3 albums has its own sound and style that is distinct from the others. It’s a testimony to the power of collaboration and the spark that comes when creative minds join together openly to make something new. The energy and ideation of each person makes its way into the songs, and the culmination is unlike anything one person could do alone. It’s been meaningful and rewarding for me to explore creativity in so many forms. I want to keep the best of what I’m learning and forge new creative bonds in 2025.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

When I make a new song, I go to bed holding a creative joy. The new song keeps running through my head as I drift off to sleep. When I wake up, I’ve often forgotten all but a remnant. I can’t wait to play it and relive it all again. I am a child on Christmas morning, looking at all of the gifts under the tree and bursting with joy to open them and explore what’s inside. How can so much untapped joy be all in one place? How can this not bring deep satisfaction and meaning to life?

I believe creativity is inherent to God’s nature and that everything is made from a word: “Let”, allow, unleash, open, release. I think God is glorified when creation lets out in song and tries in some small way to reflect and emulate that divine nature. If I can open myself, receive and offer something true, letting it free into the world, I am living faithfully and being true to myself and others. For me, this is the source of music’s meaning, and the joy it brings and cascades to others. In his book, ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl says that the primary human drive is the pursuit of meaning, not pleasure, and that meaning finds its source in what you create, how you love, and how you respond to adversity. I’ve found that creating something that contains a part of me is meaningful, and that filling my time with meaningful habits each day brings sustained peace and joy. Creativity, of course, has endless forms, but I’ve known for a long time that creating music is mostly what I want to do. Probably since I was 16 and first fell under the spell of an original melody.

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Image Credits

RetroFusion cover art by Diane DeVaul
The Quick And The Dead cover art by Heather Twomey

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