I started my music career in 2001.
As an amateur doing it as a hobby. I really had no intentions or expectations of becoming prolific at doing so. Behind closed doors, I wanted to eventually become the greats at it.
But in reality, no one expected me to go far with my music and the Patrick Lew Band. At times at our very worst, people thought my band and my career wouldn't even last more than 5 years after I started!
The songs I wrote on primitive home recording equipment were mediocre back then. It sounded like if Blink 182 and Simple Plan's adopted nephew was on steroids and booze. Somehow in 2007, I achieved notoriety for the first time on the Internet because I wrote and recorded a song titled AZN GIRLS with the soon-to-be rechristened Patrick Lew Band. That's what got me into a lot of heat online and I became the most hated, ostracized and misunderstood man on social-media at some point in my life.
I got so fed up with people talking shit and I was dealing with a lot of other drama then, I wanted to say..."Okay. I had this hit song online titled AZN GIRLS and it was me venting about how my 21 year old self wanted to find a place to belong." But deep down, I didn't want to be remembered for a song like that 10 years later! I wanted to grow as an artist and evolve and branch out musically.
So I look up to the greats from the past in rock and roll. I liked how they weren't so afraid to try new things, take risks and not make every album sound like the last hit song.
And that's what Patrick Lew Band did! And we still got a lot of flack from most people.
However. As time flies by, people's general opinion evolves with the changing times and the changing trends and a shift in society. When I started my music career in 2001, there wasn't really any Asian male frontman or band leaders in Western rock music. I mean, they were there! But it was very taboo shit. Like something from a UG at a warehouse in Richmond, CA!
When I became a semi-pro musician at the age of 30 in the year 2016. A lot of things changed in terms of how society viewed Asian males in the Western world. BTS and K-Pop had a lot to do with that. And East Asian people started becoming more visible and represented more positively in the media. People started opening up to the Asian brothers more rather than minimize us as third-rate.
With all that, I started embarking on my most successful and memorable run in my music career between 2016 all the way until 2019 prior to the time I formed the band Lewnatic!
I started winning titles. Receiving publicity. Got mentioned on-the-air on 107.7 THE BONE...Which is a Bay Area FM hard rock radio station. I joined the supergroup TheVerse. Toured with them in 2018. Got my CDs sold at Amoeba, which is quite perhaps the greatest record store in America at the moment. Considering the transition from physical media to digital. I started to even work and lend my talents to other outlets, such as an ill-fated run with the death metal band Pleasure Gallows and I did acting on the side. I even became a celebrity spokesmodel for Antennas Direct!
Then on June 7, 2019. I became the first Japanese-American man to become 40 Under 40 Hall of Famer at my university Cal State East Bay! All because of my accomplishments with Patrick Lew Band!
So while I might be semi-pro and an OG in the scene now these days. There was a time while I was younger, I was only doing music as a hobby with nobody expecting much out of me really. Lol.
No comments:
Post a Comment