Oakland is the upcoming seventh album from the Patrick Lew Band. It will be released as a double album digitally on social-media through CDBaby in the near future, possibly during 2017 through the band’s indie label The Promised Land Recordings. It will be the Patrick Lew Band’s first album without long-time drummer and collaborator David Arceo involved, and will be the first album to feature Patrick Lew as the sole surviving member of the band.
OAKLAND
Release Date: TBA
Recorded: 2015 - Winter 2017 at the Blizzard of Sound (San Francisco, CA) and the Salazar House (San Francisco, CA)
Producer: Erick Salazar, Patrick Lew
BACKGROUND
On January 2, 2015, the Patrick Lew Band officially partially reunited with long-time friends and bandmates Patrick Lew and David Arceo performing, recording and promoting themselves under the PLB band name. Two and a half years prior to the band’s reformation, the Patrick Lew Band went into an indefinite hibernation due to the lack of progression with the band’s final lineup during the rebuilding process prior to the band’s near three year hiatus. During this period, Lew built a home recording studio with a factory of musical equipment, computers and electronics. Between 2012 and 2015, Lew would sporadically record in his home studio known as the Blizzard of Sound in San Francisco, CA. During the hiatus of Patrick Lew Band, Lew and Arceo would sporadically play music together in The Steel Lions (then known as Heavy Sigma) and was working on an album that would eventually become the first PLB album since 2011’s release Murder Bay.
The album that Steel Lions was working on during sporadic periods between 2012 and 2015 would become Patrick Lew Band’s first album of new material in four years, To the Promised Land. In the meantime, the Patrick Lew Band would perform two shows locally that same year. Patrick and David soon realized that they had an enormous amount of musical work kept in their computer’s hard drive which consisted of outtakes, Chiptune remixes, unfinished song ideas and etc since the Patrick Lew Band became a full-fledged project in 2008. Clearing the vaults for the public, the Patrick Lew Band would release their sixth album Bubblegum Babylon on Patrick Lew’s 30th birthday on November 15, 2015. By the time of that album’s release, Lew began working on several projects outside the Patrick Lew Band: being the Goodwill Ambassador for Antennas Direct and was working on other musical avenues such as making new music in a revamped Steel Lions with a more late 80’s and early 90’s hard rock influence with Neverfade and former Distorted Harmony drummer Erick Salazar in Salazar’s home recording studio based in San Francisco. Himself and Arceo would also form the Shoegaze influenced supergroup TheVerse with Daly City based EDM producer Gem Jewels, consistently practicing and creating music at the Blizzard of Sound and self-producing and self-recording the majority of their output there. While TheVerse became Lew and Arceo’s priority as musicians at that point, Lew was having trouble meeting the deadlines to wrap up the recording sessions and production of Steel Lions upcoming release Unfinished Relics.
The grueling schedule between playing music in three different local bands proved to be both intense and creative for Lew despite studio autonomy for Unfinished Relics at the time. Eventually, Salazar sent Lew files of guitar tracks and riffs that he recorded at his home studio via Facebook and Lew would finish the album Unfinished Relics at the Blizzard of Sound, laying down lead vocals, adding virtual drum tracks and doing the mixing and engineering at his own leisure. The album was tentatively scheduled for release in Winter 2016 but was delayed until May 12th of that year. In the interim, Lew would release an EP with Patrick Lew Band titled Fire in the Sky which consisted of outtakes, unfinished ideas and Steel Lions demos on New Years Day 2016. He would contact DiscMakers on the Internet at the Blizzard of Sound’s office computer and manufactured 50 copies of the EP on CD. He would later sell a few copies at Berkeley’s Amoeba Music, which was consigned to the Rock section at their record store. Johnny Lawrie from San Francisco punk band The Tortured would contact Patrick Lew on Patrick Lew Band’s official Facebook page through private message about performing a show at The Stork Club. He then insisted that his band TheVerse would play that night and get booked. On May 18, 2016, TheVerse would perform at The Stork Club in Oakland, California. Prior to the band’s show, the band would rehearse at the Blizzard of Sound for a week and purchased new musical gear at a guitar store to accompany them. Patrick Lew Band returned to the scene in June 2016, releasing another EP titled Shortcuts to Fame on CDBaby through digital distribution, which was again based off of demos that PLB was self-producing in their own home recording studio.
TheVerse began to head into a crossroads. Arceo left both TheVerse and Patrick Lew Band to focus more on other life avenues, however, he would remain a contributor to Patrick Lew Band on a sporadic basis. Lew then contacted Johnny from The Tortured through their Facebook page as they were looking for a new bass player. Lew began rehearsing with The Tortured, filling in for the band as their bass player for two shows in October 2016. Lew announced his resignation from TheVerse for unclear reasons on his personal Facebook profile via “friends only” status update on October 19, 2016 but insisted he would focus more on Patrick Lew Band and Steel Lions.
Since the Patrick Lew Band’s partial reunion in January 2015, the band recorded an enormous amount of musical output at the Blizzard of Sound. Some of this music would which be posted on the band’s ReverbNation and Soundclick page on the Internet. Lew insisted that the release of the EP’s Fire in the Sky and Shortcuts to Fame are a build up and were conceived as an ongoing studio album cycle leading up to the release of a conventional studio album, similar to the concept of Teargarden by Kaleidyscope from the Smashing Pumpkins. The band was now entirely recording all of their music using Logic Pro X and a 2014 MacBook Air and sometimes, a 2008 iMac. It is rumored however, that the forthcoming Patrick Lew Band album Oakland will contain all of the best songs from Fire in the Sky and Shortcuts to Fame alongside new music that hasn’t received an official big release yet through digital distribution on social-media.
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