- Patrick Lew Band rose from the ashes of Power Trip (also known as Band of Asians) to become an eccentric and provocative yet compelling social-media attraction in independent music during the 2010s. After Power Trip disbanded in early 2008, long-time friends and musicians Patrick Lew and David Arceo decided to carry on playing music together by forming not only a local punk rock band, but a multimedia concept. They spent most of the year in Patrick’s home studio tinkering and recording fragments of ideas, leading into the 2009 release Curb Your Wild Life. During the recording sessions for the album, the duo received an intense backlash from music critics on Soundclick.com and barely made a blip on the local Bay Area music scene at the time.
Lew and Arceo began assembling a new cast of musicians to collaborate with them through the Internet, recruiting former Distorted Harmony guitarist Jeremy Alfonso, with bassist David Hunter and multi-instrumentalist Greg Lynch augmenting the lineup for live performances. The band experimented with many different names since 2001, before settling on Patrick Lew Band as this was going to be an outlet for Lew’s music, giving other band members the freedom to pursue other projects. The newly christened Patrick Lew Band began collaborating via Skype and sent each other individual recorded parts in their personal studios, cutting and pasting everything together. That led to the 2009 album Let It Rise And Against, which was released on CDBaby. Alfonso later left the band following its release.
Let It Rise And Against didn’t start making airwaves until the middle of 2010, partially due to the private life of Patrick Lew and his then-fiancee Faith Lambright being exploited on social-media and backlash from critics. The negative press did little to hurt the band’s momentum, as Patrick Lew Band received an offer from Tau Kappa Epsilon at UC Berkeley to perform a benefit concert for the university. The band spent most of 2010 rehearsing and writing new material. However, the UC Berkeley gig was canceled due to Hunter and Lynch being unavailable to make the appearance.
Soon after, Patrick Lew was interviewed by AbsolutePunk.com and Leicester Bangs and an iTunes podcast from Googly Ears gave the Patrick Lew Band more attention in the indies. Soon, Patrick Lew Band became a little more accessible, which wasn’t surprising. After all, Patrick Lew Band fused the prototypical hard rock from the 70’s and 80’s with the anger and rage of the Seattle grunge scene and hardcore punk. Patrick Lew Band’s audience began to grow slowly but steadily during 2011, thanks to a series of live performances, busking and YouTube vlogs. The band released their follow-up Murder Bay in the Summer of that year.
Following a couple low-key tour dates in Antioch, California, which was later broadcasted on YouTube, Patrick began working on ideas in his studio what would have become the next Patrick Lew Band album. However, Lynch rejected the material for religious and creative reasons. What was recorded and kept on his hard drive became released under the name Heavy Sigma: the avant-garde progressive mini LP Taiwanese Rebel (2012) and Voyager (2013). The Patrick Lew Band would sporadically practice in 2012. However tensions began to rise between Lew and Arceo with Lynch and Hunter over creative, religious and personal differences. As it became apparent that the band was growing apart, the Patrick Lew Band, who recently gained some small momentum in the Bay Area music scene, went on an indefinite hiatus by the end of 2012.
Lew and Arceo would not speak during the first half of 2013, Lew began experiencing a huge decline in his relationship with his then-fiancee. Lew took a break from the music business, and began exploring other avenues. He didn’t fully disappear, as he would post new promos and vlogs on YouTube during his break from writing, performing and recording. Lew and Arceo eventually reconciled and performed at the Mama Art Cafe on September 13th of that year, debuting the new tracks “See It Through” and Arceo’s spoken word composition “Reality Check.” However, it wasn’t until Lew and his relationship with his then-fiancee Faith ended that Patrick Lew considered returning to playing and making new music. By the end of 2014, all legalities regarding the Patrick Lew Band were resolved, with Lew being granted full ownership of the Patrick Lew Band name. Lew along with help of Arceo, began marketing and recording again, resulting in their first album since 2011’s Murder Bay, To the Promised Land, which was backed by a heavy campaign on social-media sites Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and using do-it-yourself ethics. The album was released on iTunes and Spotify in June of 2015. Lew also began working with Neverfade drummer Erick Salazar on a forthcoming album under the name Patrick Lew and the Steel Lions in the studio. Clearing out the vaults for another new album, the Patrick Lew Band would release their fifth album Bubblegum Babylon on iTunes and Spotify on November 15, 2015, which was Patrick Lew’s 30th birthday.
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