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!
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