Beth Patterson seeks the other side of covid-19

“I also played for my brother’s outdoor wedding up there,” she says. “The weather was glorious, the wind stirred the trees in the middle of the vows sending leaves down like confetti, and then a bald eagle circled overhead at the reception. It was truly magical.”

Patterson is no stranger to music, either.

“I am the youngest in a musical family of four, so before I could read music, I taught myself how to figure out harmonies by listening to what everyone else was singing and figuring out what was missing,” she says. “My folks signed me up for piano lessons, oboe, and even a summer of Suzuki violin lessons. But when I got my first bass guitar at age 13, I knew that I had found my calling.”

Like every other gig musician, Patterson — who is now officially Beth Paxton after her 2018 marriage to fellow New Orleans musician Josh Paxton — has been searching for ways to keep playing, keep relevant and keep an income coming in.

In light of her just-released single, “Return to Our Caves,” she agreed to answer some questions for What’s Up!

Q. How long have you been playing and recording music? And how has your music changed over the years?

A. By the time I reached my teens, I was playing electric bass in assorted heavy metal bands. But I wanted an extra level of influence. A friend of mine in high school got me turned onto Irish groups, so I got a mandolin and began to learn the dance tunes — playing with my fingers because nobody told me I was supposed to use a pick! I found a used bouzouki in a vendor booth at the North Texas Irish Festival my senior year of high school, and suddenly my two musical passions were divided.

I don’t consider myself having been a professional musician before I went to college, because before then I was living with my parents. But I was still making money and recording back then. My first real money was from playing English horn with the Acadiana Symphony when I was a junior in high school. I played three seasons with them. My first real recording session was when I was a senior in high school playing upright bass with my mom’s Cajun band, Renaissance ‘Cadienne. We spent a day in La Louisiane studios, cut each song in our repertoire twice, and the better of each take made it to the tape. I might even still have a few copies of it somewhere.

Q. How would you describe the genre of what you play now?

A. If I wanted to use a supergenre, I’d say folk, because the word is so all-encompassing. It can mean everything from world to acoustic singer-songwriter. For a while I tried to say that my little subgenre was SWAP: Songwriter World Acoustic Progressive, but it never really stuck. I’ll grab whatever elements of various styles speak to me and weave them into whatever I try to create, most of it unconsciously.

Q. And then there’s all the OTHER people you play music with! Tell us a little about those groups.

A. I’ve been playing bass in the duo Iron Roux with my friend Hugh Morrison, a Scottish singer-songwriter. I’d really missed being a bass player, and I perform double duty of holding down the low end and taking solos high on the neck when it’s time for a break. We play a blend of his originals, traditional Scottish and Irish songs, a few of my own, and the occasional tune when he and I switch to accordion and bouzouki, respectively. Hugh’s very much a team player, he’s always striving to better himself, and just a good person to have in my corner.

I’ve also been playing with my friend PH Fred for over 10 years now, gigs ranging from duos and trios to 11-piece shindigs. It’s nice to have the focus off of me and just be able to play the instrumental breaks and sing backup. Fred is an astonishingly prolific songwriter, and I can barely keep up with new material he wants me to learn. It keeps me on my toes! His sense of humor is as warped as my own, so there’s never a dull moment.

Of course, these side endeavors are all on hold until we all figure out how to play safely. We’ll find a way to make something work. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the parallels of musicians and shapeshifter myths: because we have to change, adapt and survive. I’ve been called to play everything from klezmer to mariachi. It’s time to assume a new form to make a living.

Q. How did you meet your husband?

A. Josh and I met back in 1994 when I was in college at Loyola, he was in grad school at University of New Orleans, and we were playing the same tips-only nights at this little coffeehouse called The Neutral Ground. I had just returned from studying in Ireland for a little over a year, I had a crazy mixed-up accent as a direct result, and he thought I was Irish. The story he tells is that he had wanted to ask me out back then, but that he thought I was out of his league. Apparently that wasn’t true, because he went on to accomplish some pretty amazing things. So after that we were only on the periphery of each other’s awarenesses until January of 2016. I was over halfway through my four-month tour of Australia and New Zealand. He dropped me a line through Facebook, asking me how I’d managed to get gigs Down Under and how he might go about doing the same. I’d been noticing him on social media and had always thought he was cute, so I suggested that when I got back to the States we grab a bite to eat and he could pick my brain. When this finally came to pass, we spent about 10 minutes talking about Australia and about 90 minutes swapping sick jokes and bizarre anecdotes. And we eventually ended up as a couple! We got to go to Australia a year later as a duo act.

Q. And what kind of music do you make together?

A. The music is about pushing each other out of our respective comfort zones and meshing our styles. My jazz education ended when his began, so I had to work really hard to catch up and play everything from James Booker to Chick Corea on the bouzouki. Likewise, Josh just recently learned some reels (with my signature evil twist) that I wrote in my early 20s. It’s refreshing to have him give a new dimension to my material.

Q. What has covid-19 done to the music scene in New Orleans? And how have you adjusted to continue to play music? What do you think the outlook for live music is in the foreseeable future?

A. It’s rendered all of our musicians unemployed, of course, but the collective spirit is strong. Musicians need to connect to audiences and to each other, so I’ve seen some really creative split-screen videos of people jamming together from their respective homes.

Before the quarantine, I was frustrated with about 90 percent of my gigs: people talking at the tops of their lungs on the front row, making it hard to hear myself or concentrate (and causing me to question what I was even doing up there), the startling clack of pool balls, people yelling at each other, harassing me, and so on. Unlike bar gigs, on which people in the venues might be there to socialize with each other and not really pay attention, everyone tuning in to a livestream is there for the music.

Livestreams are beginning to dwindle in both interest and revenue, as people everywhere are feeling the pinch of their own unemployment and getting anxious to get out into the real world. I suppose the next step for me is to do socially distanced porch concerts. I won’t advertise them in order to prevent flocking, but I will offer my services within reasonable driving distance.

It’s breaking my heart to see so many venues, record stores and music stores going out of business — not to mention other kinds of organizations under threat. I wish there were an easy solution.

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Go Online!

Beth Patterson

Buy The Music

A few of her physical CDs are out of print, Beth Patterson says, but her entire catalog is available digitally at www.bethpatterson.bandcamp.com.

Buy The Books

Louisiana Music Factory is still open for mail orders, and they carry both Patterson’s CDs and her husband Josh Paxton’s, as well as their books. Hers is a novel; his is a collection of James Booker transcriptions.

Listen At Home

Patterson is still doing livestream shows on her Facebook page at facebook.com/bethodist.

She also recently started a YouTube channel at youtube.com/c/bethpatterson2112.