We Were Just Playing Music, Baby
Scattered.
That’s what this writing will be. Because my friend (and probably yours) Pat is gone far too soon and I can’t think straight. Thoughts aren’t sticking, instead they’re bouncing like tennis balls being volleyed not over one net but over hundreds of nets rippling out in every direction, the rules of the game tossed out in a fit of expanding chaos. Meanwhile two massive emotions are having a slapping fight for supremacy inside of me: grief and gratitude. Both slap like a mother. And not “slap” like the kids today say. Old school slap. Red handmark on the proverbial face. The satisfying aural smack of skin on skin.
Back and forth they go. Back and forth I go.
Patrick Campbell loved family, friends, people in general, burritos in general, and more than a lot of music—David Byrne, Calexico, Mingus, Mavis, Latin Playboys (don’t worry: that’s a band, not a magazine), The Beatles (especially St. Ringo), Hank Williams, Levon Helm, Quiet House, Art Pepper, Buck Owens, Sarah Sample, PJ Harvey, Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, Monk, Aretha, Jay William Henderson, Ryan Tanner, Jim Campilongo, and on and on and on and on and on. Not surprisingly, he actually played with some of them and, also true to form, he didn’t really put one above the other. Music was music.
Pat was a bishop for a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A good bishop too, I’m both told and absolutely sure. Was he a bishop because he had the innate gift of checking on people? Or did being a bishop teach him that? I think it’s the former. In the days since Pat checked himself in to the hospital, I’ve heard so many stories of Pat “just checking in” on people from all corners of his life. Dan Buehner said Pat would honk every time he drove past Dan’s house (which was every day, twice a day), and sometimes just stop in on a Saturday. And I’ve found out, story after story, Pat did the same for so many—in the design world, from his San Francisco days, in the music world. I know it was true for me. I’d get a text or call out of nowhere, just asking how I was, asking to go grab tacos at some new authentic supermarket he’d found. That instinct—to look out for others and to connect to others—was just in his DNA.
Like I said, bouncing from thought to thought.
Pat loved the San Francisco Giants, proudly wearing a hat so often that one concert reviewer, seeing (GASP!) two hats between me and Pat, dubbed our music “baseball hat rock”, a term that was as visually descriptive as it was aurally lacking. He loved the Utah Jazz too, something we’d make eye contact about during a rehearsal when the scores popped up on our phones. In a lot of ways, Pat was a Jerry Sloan (minus the sailor’s vocabulary)—someone you would be lucky to go to battle with, who worked relentlessly hard, was unfussy about it, didn’t need attention, was loyal to the core.
Bounce, bounce, bounce. Gratitude. Grief.
Pat was a proud father, the kind any kid would be lucky to have. And four awesome children were, though no one would argue they got enough of Pat. Grief.
Even if he was venting about parental difficulties on some carpool to band rehearsal in Provo, there wasn’t a single time where it wasn’t all diffused through a loving filter of “My kids are just amazing” and “I just want to help them see and be their best.” He really was so proud of them, loved them so much. A book Pat loved, the Bible, says “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” His treasure was his family. They were his gold. And more. I was as inspired by him as a doting father as I was by him as a formidable drummer.
Bounce. Grief. Gratitude.
Pat recommended me the best burrito I’ve ever eaten. I’ve repeatedly re-recommended it and nobody—my wife, my most data-nerdy friend, my designer partner, the biggest foodie I know, nobody—has done anything but agree. (Carne asada with pinto beans at Taqueria Cancun in SF, for the record. Some of you are gonna say “but what about La Taqueria ]or some other Johnny Come Lately”] and I’m telling you: it’s Taqueria Cancun.)
Bounce.
When a song was going well, whether in the studio or onstage or in a rehearsal, Pat would often say:
“We were just playing music, baby.”
I think that was Pat’s way of saying the group had ceased to overthink the song or worry too much about parts or worry about “supposed to’s”, but were just IN THE MOMENT. That was the pinnacle of playing for Pat. Forgetting everything but the song then and there. (Pat would occasionally get so deeply in the “then and there” that he’d drum right through a song’s stop, a thing that sounds positively charming now that I never get to hear him do it again.)
Pat was the ideal drummer to play in The Madison Arm. Part of the ethos of the band was to continually rediscover the songs. A lot of bands aim every night for a Perfect Version of the Song, which is fine and sells a lot of tickets (or did, back when concerts happened), but it essentially declares there’s just one master version of the song, the mountain has one peak. We never believed that. We wanted to keep uncovering new corners of the songs, different peaks to the same mountain, different mountains on the same range even. And Pat was perfect for that because, honestly, he never played the song the same way twice. You see, Pat was never much for “parts” or—like I said—“stopping at the rest” sometimes (though he could be coerced with wide eyes, a dramatically brandished guitar neck, and emphatic head nods). What he was about was this: FEEL, in all aspects of his life actually. Every time we played a song — and because I write songs so absurdly slowly, we played some of the same songs a lot over the years — Pat was feeling out what that song was THAT NIGHT. Not what it was on the album. Or not what it was from the rehearsal (hard to do, since we rehearsed almost never). This kept the entire band on our toes, listening, equally invested in unearthing whatever the song might be THAT NIGHT. One night at Velour in Provo, we were opening for a quiet band — don’t remember who — and had read the room and felt like it was a night to be mellow and subtle, so backstage we huddled up and decided to dial it way back, get really quiet and nuanced, set the tone. Ask Scott or Ryan: it was a discussion and it was an agreement, just four signatures shy of a contract. So we get onstage for our set and we’re opening with “Western Skies”, traditionally a louder and more raucous part of our set. Scott and Ryan and I are all sort of tiptoeing into this more-hushed, intimate, spooky, moody version and then Pat comes in: KABAM! His stick obliterates the drum, surely louder than any drummer has ever played any drum ever, announcing the presence of his drums and the fact that he’s got some demons or midlife crisis angst or something else he’s working out tonight and we’d all better get onboard. Which the other three of us—after exchanging shocked smirks—did. I love the way The Madison Arm listens to each other while playing. And, truthfully, playing a noisy, demon-exorcising set was probably a better, more rock n’ roll call than just trying to match the headliner.
Bounce.
Pat was more than a drummer. He was a pillar. A guy I consistently leaned on. And a guy who consistently was there to be leaned upon.
Bounce.
The Lower Lights have a lot of origin stories, but Pat’s dream of playing old gospel songs and calling it The Pilot definitely gets top billing. I don’t know that I deserve to tell the story of Pat as a Lower Light, what he meant to the band and all that. That honor probably goes to his drumming partner, Darin LeSueur, or our producer/guitarist Scott Wiley. So ask one of those guys. The stories they’ll tell.
Bounce.
If you knew it was the last time you were going to see someone, how would you do things differently? My answer is easy: I wouldn’t cover “Cry Me A River” by Justin Timberlake. See, the last time I saw Pat and the last time I ever got to make music with him was at a music festival called Fork Fest about a month ago. I think it may be the last gig Pat ever played. For certain it’s the last time I ever played with him. It was, to quote Bill Withers, just the two of us. At the time, it was novel, as we were the last duo of The Madison Arm to play a duo show. How could I have guessed the weight of that show at the time? A Justin Timberlake song?!? Ugh, hindsight, leave me alone.
Pat showed up with just a marching band drum, strapped over his shoulder, and a tambourine. And he still played better than any drummer I’ve ever played with and most of the drummers you’ve played with. We stood side by side and played 7–8 songs. It was fun. It was— consistent with Pat’s ethos—in the moment, unprecious, “just playing music.” And, of course, now it is everything.
Bounce.
Pat was a legend. I think I saw his local-legend ska band Swim Herschel Swim no fewer than 15 times—at the Provo armory, a DIY punk venue downtown, the Union building, a ski resort, some old strip mall—in high school (and once a few years ago when they reunited). We even got them to play East High School’s Spring Fest, a gig that very likely—I now know as someone who has played my fair share of “Oh, this is not the best situation” gigs—was not a gig that any of the band was looking forward to besides as a payday. Heaven knows Pat played more than his fair share of those with me, except without any payday.
But there we were, my bassist friend Alex and my drummer friend Seth, watching them set up and soundcheck, starstruck. After their soundcheck, the drummer wandered over to talk to us. Back then it was a shock and a thrill. (Now that I know Pat, I realize it’s just his modus operandi. He reaches out by his very nature.) To us, this was like Michelangelo’s painting of God touching Adam’s hand, except instead of Adam, we were three pimply neo-hippie kids on a high school football field with a hacky sack. That’s right, Pat actually played hacky sack with us. It was 1993.
The next conversation I had with Pat was 13 years later. He’d just moved back to Utah from a stretch of years playing music in San Francisco. Imagine my Make A Dream Foundation level of stoke when, all those years later, Pat said he’d love to play in my band. It’s not hyperbole to say that, every show I assumed would be the last he’d say yes to.
Nor am I exaggerating when I say that at every Madison Arm show someone inevitably asked me, “who was that drummer?!?” Not “great voice” or “that one song is amazing.” The drummer. And rightfully so. I’d give anything to have my part overlooked and play songs for anyone with Pat booming behind me. He was thunder. And he was rain.
He wasn’t showing off. He was just in the moment. We played at Slowtrain record store once and he played the wall. We played a benefit for Haiti and he played the metal grate on the front of the audio monitor. At Kilby Court, he played the famous green plastic behind the stage. It was never a stunt, a gimmick, the stereotypical Drummer Scream For Attention. It always complemented the song. We were just playing music, baby.
Bounce.
We texted often. We had recently started a Record Club with my first guitar teacher Mike Waterman. It was awesome and an incredible counterpunch to everything 2020 was/is dealing. There was Sinatra in there. Joni Mitchell. Delbert McClinton. Jobim. Genesis. St. Vincent. And I can’t believe I won’t get to hear Pat recommend another record.
Pat was my gateway to Mingus, Monk, Richard Buckner, The Staples Singers, Lisa Germano, “Don’t Do It” by the Band (one of my biggest regrets is that I never got to play this one with him), “The One I Love Is Gone” by Hazel Dickens & Alice Garrard, Teatro by Willie Nelson. I would bet my 401k (not all that substantial, sorry everyone including my wife) that everyone could make a list of Fantastic Pat Recommendations.
Bounce.
He loved to laugh, would share the same meme or video time and time again. He recommended (with a Bishop’s grain of TV-MA salt) the show Norsemen to me no fewer than 7 times. If you wanted an automatic laugh out of Pat,you just had to play the SNL skit of Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup.
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Bounce. Grief.
“One day everybody goes and if we’re lucky we get to say goodbye.”
In the setlist of the last set we played together was a song with that line in it, called “Two-Headed Heart.” When I sing the word “lucky”, sometimes I can’t tell if the word needs bite or not, if it’s meant to be sarcastic, if it’s resigned to sadness or defiant in hope or if it’s genuinely, sincerely feeling blessed. Pat taught me that it didn’t have to be the same thing twice. Today it’s both gratitude and grief.
He was my friend in the way that only two guys past 40 who’ve shlepped gear down alleyways and played to no one at Kilby Court and nearly no one at the Gallivan Plaza and bars that aren’t even open anymore, but also to thousands of people at Kingsbury Hall and on the Rooftop Concert stage can. The way two guys who got just as much buzz from playing a fiery song alone in the studio for nobody but the engineer as from any bigger gig. We didn’t agree on everything (who does), but we knew each other’s heart. And he brought out the best in me, as a musician and as a person. I hope he’d say the same for me. I have a few songs you can listen to that make me believe that it’s true.
One of Pat’s favorite artists (and, if you ever heard Pat’s story about him, which you did if you talked to Pat more than once, was one of the greatest cases of sliding doors I’ve ever heard, but that’s another story) Tom Waits once said, “the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.” Whatever Pat was doing—drumming, parenting, bishoping, serving, eating burritos, listening, laughing, Instagramming, designing, loving—was all music.
He was just playing music, baby.