Check out my band Heavy Sigma!

99 in the shade.
This is peace, love and rock and roll.
No struggles in the world. Just rocking in the garage and doing our thang.
www.facebook.com/heavysigma

One Crazy 2015 For Me

This year was bipolar as f**k. Lol. I went through setbacks and dealt with a severe breakup with an ex who I did love at the time. Plus some people out there were attacking me. Well fuck you and drop dead assholes! Plus I experienced losses financially. But this year was also one of those years where the good made up for the bad. I returned to playing music, started a side project, been releasing new albums and I played two shows since I returned to the local scene.

If anyone deserves a 2015 Comeback of the Year award or nominated for one, it's me. And that's just real talk breh. tongue emoticon Anyone who doesn't think so are scummy people who makes this Generation look bad. I'm doing what's right for me and creating my success on my own terms without having to please everyone or kiss anyone's ass.

I would like to take the time to thank my friends for all the wonderful support, whether it's the Bay Area rave scene, the Bay Area music scene or anyone I've met over the years whether it was Whole Foods, college, high school, social media, just about anywhere. Most of all, I would like to thank my girl Momo, my parents and my son Steven for being my biggest pride and joy. And of course, I would like to thank Erick Salazar and David Arceo for being the best and most dedicated musicians and people I've ever played guitar in a room with.

Heavy Sigma Biography

Heavy Sigma is a San Francisco Bay Area rock band formed in 2012 by Asian American-Canadian musician and artist Patrick Lew. Patrick Lew has been active in the Bay Area music scene since 2001, playing guitar and singing in a variety of different local bands, the most notable, being the Patrick Lew Band. Lew was active online on social-media heavily promoting his work with Patrick Lew Band.

Originally, Heavy Sigma was a creative project which Lew recorded music in his studio that was rejected from former members of the Patrick Lew Band prior to their hiatus in 2012. Heavy Sigma released three albums during 2012: Oddities, Taiwanese Rebels and Voyager. All of the music on these albums consisted of material that was turned down by his former bandmates from the then lineup of the Patrick Lew Band. 

Patrick intended Heavy Sigma to be a continuation of the Patrick Lew Band's musical style during their hiatus. Since 2015, he now intends Heavy Sigma to a modern and polished update of the 80's  and 90's rock bands he was inspired by growing up. The band uses modern musical gear such as computers, guitar synthesizers and more incorporated in their music, but maintains their self-described intentions and sound.

For a short time, Anti-Nonsense Networking, an upstart indie label in Washington, handled the band's distribution on social-media. 

After the release of Voyager, Patrick Lew briefly retired from the music business for personal reasons. Following the return of the Patrick Lew Band in music during 2015, Neverfade and former Distorted Harmony drummer Erick Salazar contacted Lew through a private message on Facebook about collaborating on new music together in his studio. Currently the band is recording their fourth album Play It Loud which is being produced by Erick with all music being written by both Patrick and Erick in the studio. 

Alongside his pursuits and activity with the newly revived Patrick Lew Band on the Internet and with the Bay Area music scene, he is also dedicated and passionate about his upcoming musical work with Heavy Sigma with Erick producing. Stay tuned for the latest news on Heavy Sigma's Facebook page!

www.reverbnation.com/heavysigmaband
www.facebook.com/heavysigma
www.youtube.com/djaudiorage66

Timeline of Patrick Lew Band's return to the music scene. From indefinite hiatus to the present day.

Regarding the 2012-13 split of the original PLB:

In 2012, I was still passionate about playing music right before the hiatus. There was a lot of different directions that me, Greg and the rest of us were going at the time. We were still getting along fine at the time. The original plan was to make Patrick Lew Band a serious band. Not an online collaboration like we did during Let It Rise And Against and Murder Bay. Jeremy moved out of the Bay Area, and I decided to let Greg take over. However, there was a lot of difficulty getting everyone in the same room at the same time when it boiled down to writing and recording. There were a lot of differences when it came to how everything was being handled. I moved out of Antioch back to San Francisco after we did a show in Antioch, and the plan to make PLB an actual band was put on the back burner.

I written a lot of material during the Fall of 2011, and unfortunately the rest (except David) didn't want to record those ideas I contributed to the table. I always had problems trying to get my ideas across, even during the online collaboration days of Patrick Lew Band. I've received little support for my input and whatever direction my life was heading at the time. So as a result, I took the rejected ideas and recorded them under the name Heavy Sigma.

I announced on March 6, 2012 that the Patrick Lew Band will take a brief hiatus to rebuild ourselves for the long run. I was still on good terms with everyone involved. But a former friend from the Bay Area music scene who I will not mention openly criticized PLB publicly while we were hanging out and created a wave of self doubt because of his brutal honesty. I cut ties with him since then, and PLB was rebuilding ourselves and I went out and did Heavy Sigma. Heavy Sigma also had a label backing me up from the Pacific Northwest at the time. I was on good terms with everyone by that point.

But the rebuilding process for PLB was dormant most of the time. I think it had to do with creative differences, going into different directions, commitment issues and everyone having different priorities by that point. I began to lose a little patience. As 2012 rolled around, my relationship with Greg and David H began to slowly drift apart. Greg actually wasn't very keen on my musical ideas and my input when it came to things, and was closed minded about what I can bring to the table. There were some other trivial problems as well, most of which was related to religion and other things. But we did squash the misunderstanding, and I announced on social-media near the end of Summer of 2012 that we couldn't carry on with the rebuilding process. My relationship with Greg and David H was still cordial at that point.

By late 2012, my relationship with my former girlfriend took a 180 dive and once 2013 rolled around, shit really hit the fan within everyone involved. David himself went through his moments, and my relationship with my ex began to decline considerably. We were arguing pretty much more than 50% of the time and we just weren't getting along anymore. The same can be said about my relationship with Greg and Little David. Greg became more insensitive and disingenuous as my friend and me and Little David pretty much drifted apart considerably. Me and David also didn't speak for about half a year. Also, despite the fact I've received some reward for my work as a musician, I became utterly disillusioned with the nature of the music business and the scene itself. After all I've done for 12 years up to that point meant nothing to me because my self doubt began really kicking in when ruthless competition, politics of the music business and the fact that we're so polarized by the public for what we do. I could have been DGAF about the whole thing, but my self doubt created by these experiences caused me to rethink being an artist.

As my relationship with my ex began deteriorating at a fast pace, I received no support from her when it came to my music career. She even said very harsh and insensitive things that added more fuel to the fire and made me want to reconsider. I believe after all these years, she never really wanted me to be a musician or be who I really am and wanted me to be someone I'm not.

So me and David began talking again after half a year caused by difficulties created by bad experiences and a former friend who is out of the picture by now, and we began hanging out more. Deep down, I missed playing music and performing in front of others. So with the encouragement of others locally and motivating ourselves, Patrick Lew Band returned for one night only with just me and David on September 13, 2013 at Mama Art Cafe in San Francisco. It was a fairly good experience. And suddenly, my difficulties with my ex continued where I was being knocked down and I came to a point again in my life where didn't want to play music again.

A friend I know from the Bay Area music scene by the name of Salvador, saw the video footage of PLB playing at Mama Art Cafe and offered me and David to start a band with him. Unfortunately, we were playing third wheel in the whole situation and we had little input with the whole thing. Plus, my heart wasn't really into it creatively and personally. Not much happened with the band Kings of Malevolence. We jammed, but it wasn't going anywhere creatively. No original music was even recorded or written during me and David's time with the band. While this was my original plan to return to the music scene, it didn't work out for everyone involved. Creatively, it wasn't going places. Personally, it wasn't something our heart was into at the time.

The first half of 2014 was silent. There were various reports about a new Heavy Sigma album I was working on which was going to be titled Radio Daze or Some Kind of Misfit, and it almost became a Chinese Democracy kind of situation. By this point, all legalities and disputes regarding Patrick Lew Band were resolved and I was granted full ownership of the band's name and legacy. Because my heart wasn't into it still and how I resented being in the business, I put out a limited edition PLB album Rebel on the Dance Floor which was released in a very low-key manner on social-media. It went on sale as a ReverbNation exclusive album on CD and was a limited edition only release.

But good news! I got so disillusioned with my crumbling relationship with my ex and became a free man. Me and my ex mutually decided to end our six year relationship in the Summer of that year. I also decided to sever ties with Greg because during the last two years of our friendship, he became a hindrance. He had no faith in what I was doing and wasn't being supportive of my ideas, plus he did something really shady and I decided, no more. By the time this all happened, I really felt like I had to return to playing music and performing and recording. So I picked up the guitar again and began writing, playing and recording new material. My passion for rock and roll music has finally returned! In August, I recorded a Heavy Sigma demo titled Cut the Cord, which was my piece of music I written for the cord cutting movement and passion for digital television. It was actually the first major release from me as a musician and artist since the 2012 Heavy Sigma album Voyager. The song became popular with television technology people in the United States, and that led to Antennas Direct endorsing me as their Ambassador and spokesmodel.

In September that year, I did my first exclusive interview as a musician which aired on social-media and YouTube for the first time since the Patrick Lew Band hiatus, announcing to the world simply, "I'm back." So I was getting pretty serious about creating music. If I didn't do it, I would go completely crazy. So I would spend most days off work in my home studio recording, fine tuning and self-producing new music. Because I now owned full rights to the Patrick Lew Band name, I can release new material under the PLB name and pursue my musical entrepreneurship as the Patrick Lew Band because of that. While it's a solo project of mines as we speak. My good friend and broski David helps out whenever I need him or whenever he can. He's an integral part of this as much as I am.

As 2015 came around, that's when I really decided, I don't care about what other people think. I don't care if we're not mainstream, I don't care if we're not loved by music critics or the music business themselves, and I don't want to base my level of fame or success through likes on social-media and numbers. Patrick Lew Band is back with a vengeance. It's gonna be no nonsense and all about the music. And we don't really care what people think or what happens, we're going to create our fame and success on our own terms and continue doing what we love doing. Playing music. Recording. Playing shows sporadically. Keeping the audience up-to-date on social-media and putting ourselves out there no matter what. Which pretty much led to Patrick Lew Band releasing the first album since 2011, To the Promised Land, on digital music downloading services like iTunes, Spotify and Amazon MP3 in June. What was going to become the next Heavy Sigma album, which was in the works for about three years up to that point, instead became the return of the Patrick Lew Band. Instead, Heavy Sigma became a collaboration between me and my friend Erick (who plays drums in Neverfade) after he contacted me in March 2015 about collaborating on music together in his studio.

We're here. We're now older, wiser and more conscious about everything around us. It might have been a three year break from doing music, but Patrick Lew Band is back! This time, with a vengeance. We're now rebels without a pause. And definitely rebels without a cause. We're doing it ourselves, I'm doing it myself, and we're gonna continue to record and create new music and create our own recognition on our own terms without the middle man getting involved for sure!

Patrick Lew Biography

Patrick Lew
Born: November 15, 1985 in San Francisco, CA
Instruments: Guitar, Bass, Vocals
Years Active: 2000s, 2010s
Member of: Patrick Lew Band, Heavy Sigma, Power Trip
Style of Music: Alternative Rock, Hard Rock, Post-Grunge, Punk Revival, Alternative Metal

BIOGRAPHY

As the singer/songwriter and only constant member of the Patrick Lew Band, Patrick Lew is one of the most charismatic and decorated individuals in the second half of the 2010s. He parlayed that recognition into the dynamic project Heavy Sigma, a group heavily indebted to the late 80’s and early 90’s rock of Nirvana, Mother Love Bone and Green Day, which Lew formed while Patrick Lew Band was on hiatus in the first half of the 2010s. For awhile, he kept a dormant Patrick Lew Band and Heavy Sigma afloat, but after the lineup of the Patrick Lew Band collapsed in 2012, he briefly retired from performing and recording partly due to his disillusionment with the music business and his crumbling relationship with his former fiancee Faith Lambright. In 2015, Lew returned to music and launched a solo career under the Patrick Lew Band name with the clearinghouse demo To the Promised Land.

To the Promised Land appeared nearly fifteen years after the Patrick Lew Band formed, but that was only the first major breakthrough that Lew has experienced in his music career. A San Francisco native, the teenage Patrick Lew loved television, extreme sports and rock and roll, learning how to play guitar in his early teens. In his mid teens, he formed a band with drummer Tommy Loi and lead guitarist Eddie Blackburn, flying through a variety of names before landing on Patrick Lew Band. They cut a demo called Live! Like a Garage Band in 2002 and began self-producing their own music. Psychotic Love, their official debut, arrived in 2003, supported by do-it-yourself efforts promoting their group through the Internet, all of which helped the Patrick Lew Band reach out to listeners on social-media.

In the mid 2000s, Lew formed the alt-metal outfit Band of Asians (also known as Power Trip) with college classmates David Arceo, Augusto Hernandez, Zack Huang along with Blackburn, putting the Patrick Lew Band aside so he can focus on his new project. Revenge, the group’s only album, came out in 2006 and the Band of Asians began touring locally. Different priorities in life came ahead, as both Blackburn and Loi left the Patrick Lew Band during 2007, with Band of Asians drummer Arceo replacing Loi. The Band of Asians however, split amicably in early 2008. Lew and Arceo began directing their main focus on the Patrick Lew Band. They recruited former Distorted Harmony guitarist Jeremy Alfonso and newcomers Greg Lynch and David Hunter, and the new lineup recorded 2009’s Curb Your Wild Life and Let it Rise and Against. The latter, helped raise their profile in the San Francisco Bay Area. The idea for PLB initially was an online collaboration between close friends who knew each other while attending college. 

Over the next few years, the Patrick Lew Band embarked on a long road to thrust themselves in the spotlight and further their band in the music business. Their 2011 album Murder Bay, sustained their momentum. The Patrick Lew Band went on a short tour playing small shows in the Bay Area during the Summer of that year, and later broadcasted some of their performances on their YouTube and Facebook account.

Despite their promise and lofty ambition, tensions started to surface in the band when polarized reception from audiences and critics affected Lew emotionally at the time. Lew got engaged to his former fiancee Faith Lambright, and his relationship with her initiated many tensions with his creative pursuits and his personal well being. His creative pursuits and ideas didn’t satisfy some of his bandmates, and a growing number of detractors began to appear. Then came further fractures in the band’s relations, highlighted by the lack of support from some of his bandmates, David Hunter and Greg Lynch’s projects outside of the group and Lew’s desire to slow down his music career so he could spend more time reconciling with his significant other. All this led to the Patrick Lew Band’s breakup in 2012.

Lew resurfaced later in the year with a new band called Heavy Sigma, a hard rock outfit inspired by 80’s and 90’s rock icons Guns N Roses, Nirvana, Bon Jovi, Green Day and Oasis. Heavy Sigma released an experimental debut, Taiwanese Rebel in 2012, quickly followed by Voyager (consisting of rejected PLB material) in 2013. Following the release of Voyager, Lew quietly announced his retirement from the music scene. However early retirement was not to be, as Lew personally missed performing and recording music and developing a bond with his audience. Patrick Lew was working with guitarist Salvador Martinez to form a new band called Kings of Malevolence, but the two parted company due to creative differences. In mid 2014, Lew ended his six year relationship with his fiancee Faith and began pondering a return to the scene. He began sporadically recording new material in his home studio, and revived Patrick Lew Band with long-time friend and collaborator David Arceo by the end of the year.

A full fledged campaign followed on social-media sites Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, and Lew decided to pursue a solo career under the Patrick Lew Band name in 2015. After several months of home recording, the album To the Promised Land surfaced in June of that year. Along with participating in Patrick Lew Band, Lew began collaborating with Neverfade drummer Erick Salazar with Heavy Sigma, currently working together on the new Heavy Sigma album Play It Loud. While turning his attention to Heavy Sigma with Salazar, he turned his attention back to Patrick Lew Band, compiling new music for the upcoming album Bubblegum Babylon, which is set to be released during the fall of 2015.

Hi. My name is Patrick Lew. I'm a punk rocker and I love TV.

My love for television started pretty much the day I was born and stepped into this world. When I was a rugrat, me and my family had an old mid 70's Mitsubishi CRT TV in our living room. Me, my mom and my brother Ricky would watch Full House and Perfect Strangers on ABC on Friday nights after grabbing dinner at a nice Chinese restaurant. Me and my dad would sit at home on his day off work on Thursday nights binging on a brand new scary episode of Unsolved Mysteries on NBC. We didn't subscribe to cable that time. We were using rabbit ears. That is, until my mom got a job once I started Kindergarten. It was around 1991 or so, and my parents called the cable guy and hooked up our service at our house.

Because my family subscribed to cable during the 90's, I grew up with the shows that most people from my generation remember fondly like the Nickelodeon shows from the 90's like Clarissa Explains It All, Doug, Rugrats, Rocko's Modern Life, Are You Afraid of the Dark and more. I also enjoyed watching wrestling on Monday nights. Many many years before MTV became all about catfishing, pregnant teens and bad reality shows, they played music videos from all the latest artists in pop music! Because of that, I got into 80's and 90's rock and hip hop.

I didn't have an easy time growing up. I didn't have a lot of friends. Being an outcast and experiencing the death of my grandfather affected me deeply. I turned to TV as a source of comfort. If it wasn't rock and roll music, it was watching television that kept my mind straight. When DJ from Full House had to deal with gossip and high school crushes, it helped me cope with similar situations growing up. Whenever I would watch the latest episode of Doug on how he handled bullies or dealing with issues most kids go through as they get older, it became life lessons.

As many of you know, I play guitar and sing in a local rock band in San Francisco. My main passion in life. A lot of people my age go on Facebook to communicate with their friends, maintain their relationships with the opposite sex and for the latest news. I go on social media a lot to put my band and our music out there. But I'm more fascinated about the world around me through television.

As I got older, I wanted to know more about television. Not just the programming, but the technology itself. TV went digital in 2009, and since then, the price of paying for cable every month tripled over the last couple of years. It's kind of funny, because I enjoyed having cable growing up because of the great programming Nickelodeon and MTV was putting out. Now there were hundreds of channels, but nothing good really on the air. For the most part, I was only watching a handful of the channels that were through the bundle I subscribed to. Most of the time, I wasn't home. I was mostly touring and performing as a musician or doing something else outside the house. Plus a lot of the programming gotten very mundane. I found out there was an alternative to the big fat cable bills, so in 2013 I cut the cord officially. I bought two modern TV sets, a television antenna and a Roku and began getting my television programming through over-the-air and through streaming. I began studying the technology of TV and how it can save me money. I am all about saving money and having extra benjamins in my bank account.

Today, I'm still mesmerized by over-the-air television. I think it's the greatest medium out there even in the 21st century. You can get some amazing programming through over-the-air TV nowadays. Not just that, the picture and sound is now 3X better than what you get through cable or satellite. Speaking of programming, there's now sub-channels and we get additional programming and more channels that show things like women's interest, kid's shows, throwback channels, movies, African American programming and more. If you don't believe me, we have channels like K-POP, which is a Korean pop music network that was what MTV used to be back when it wasn't about pregnant teens. Escape is a women's interest channel which is similar to what you get on WE and Lifetime. GetTV is what AMC used to be before The Walking Dead by playing mostly Hollywood movies from the golden era. Bounce is like BET. Qubo is like Disney or Nickelodeon. BUZZR is like the Game Show Network. And Me-TV and Antenna TV is what TV Land used to be by playing nothing but throwback sitcoms and dramas from the 50's all the way until the 90's.

With that programming I can get through a television antenna and monthly subscription to Netflix, that's all I need when it comes to TV. Less is more. Because I cut the cord, I can stream some of my favorite shows I miss that are on cable like Better Call Saul or binge on some of the latest movies via Netflix. The antenna gives me 69 digital channels in San Francisco after I scanned my TV!