KGNU’s Shawna Sprowls checks in with Boulder musician Lynn Patrick. They discuss her music career, upcoming performances, and creative projects. Lynn talks about her six albums and the upcoming seventh, as well as her interest in creating music videos that sync her songs with visual imagery (Interview date: 5/10/2024)
Shawna Sprowls: I’m joined in the studio by Lynn Patrick, longtime Boulder musician, who’s going to play some songs and tell us about her upcoming show and what she’s been working on. I think she’s got an album coming out, all kinds of fun stuff. Hi Lynn, how are you this morning?
Lynn Patrick: Well, I’m good, thank you.
Shawna Sprowls: Excellent, thanks so much for taking time out and coming in this morning.
Lynn Patrick: Thanks for having me, I’m glad to be here.
Shawna Sprowls: Oh, you’re so welcome. I can’t believe I haven’t had you in before. You look familiar, and we’ve both been in Boulder quite a long time, so I’m thrilled to finally get to meet you. I always like to let musicians introduce themselves musically before we get into too much chatting, so why don’t you play us a song and we’ll come back and talk about the song and more.
Lynn Patrick: Okay, great.
Shawna Sprowls: I like that one. What’s it called?
Lynn Patrick: It’s called “Fire Mountain”.
Shawna Sprowls: “Fire Mountain”. I’m assuming you have written all of these songs that you’re going to play this morning?
Lynn Patrick: I wrote that one the morning of the 2010 Fourmile Canyon fire. I was writing that song and then a string of smoke started coming up and then within 30 minutes the sky was purple, brown and orange.
It was scary. But I just kept working on the song. It doesn’t really capture what happened that day, but I just kept playing it.
Shawna Sprowls: Right. You didn’t manifest this. She did not manifest the fire, folks.. It probably wasn’t named at that point.
Lynn Patrick: Of course not.
Shawna Sprowls: I’m just teasing you. So Lynn, you’ve been in Boulder for a long time?
Lynn Patrick: Yes, since 1985.
Shawna Sprowls: Wow. Love it here?
Lynn Patrick: I do. I live up on Sugarloaf and it’s really beautiful, especially right now. It’s just very green and some flowers are coming up. I love living in the mountains.
Shawna Sprowls: Yes, it really is. You get the full experience of springtime in the mountains. Do you have any snow this morning?
Lynn Patrick: No, it’s pretty wet out there from some rain last night, I guess.
Shawna Sprowls: Yeah, I just heard from somebody who was down in the Crestone area and they got 10 inches overnight. So I had to ask. That’s quite a bit this time of year. So, tell me a little bit about yourself. You’ve been playing music the whole time that you’ve been here?
Lynn Patrick: Yes, when I first came to Colorado, I was playing cover music and singing. And then I started playing up in Vail. I was up there for years. And then ended up going down the road of writing my own songs and realized that my passion really is guitar more than singing.
So then I started doing instrumental music. One of the songs on my first CD, “Winnie’s Guitar”, won an international award, the Independent Music Awards. So then I ended up going down the instrumental road. I still sing with friends and it’s fun, but I like doing instrumental.
Shawna Sprowls: That’s great. You’ve got quite a few albums, don’t you?
Lynn Patrick: Yeah. I have six and I’m working on starting a seventh one. I just need to get to it. I have little song sketches that need to be completed and a few that are completely done. And then I’ve been making music videos of my songs, putting movie clips with my music. Syncing it up. And that’s been really fun. So I have about 12 that I did since last summer. You can see those on my YouTube channel, Lynn Patrick .
Shawna Sprowls: And what’s your website?
Lynn Patrick: Lynnpatrick.com.
Shawna Sprowls: Very easy. And can you find all of your albums there?
Lynn Patrick: Yes, they’re all there.
Shawna Sprowls: Excellent.
Lynn Patrick: And people can find my music on Spotify, Pandora, my YouTube channel, Apple Music. It’s out there.
Shawna Sprowls: Very cool. Tell us more about syncing up the music with visuals. That’s something that people can see next week, right? At eTown Hall? So you’re playing next week. Is that Thursday?
Lynn Patrick: Thursday the 16th.
Shawna Sprowls: Excellent. And who’s going to be joining you?
Lynn Patrick: Sandra Wong will be playing violin and some fiddle. And Chris Engelman will be playing bass. Chris has been playing with me since 1998. He’s played bass on all of my CDs and has performed with me. So it’ll be the three of us. And then I’m taking the music out of some of the videos. There’ll be like nine videos out of a bunch of songs, but we’re going to play some of the videos behind us.
Shawna Sprowls: Oh, that’s great. What a great place to do that. Also, they do movies, Boulder Film Festival, at eTown Hall. So it’s such a great place to watch and listen in a nice intimate setting. If you’re not familiar folks, you should be. eTown Hall is a Boulder treasure, a great place to catch music, including Lynn.
So is it billed as Lynn Patrick and friends? For those folks looking for the show.
Lynn Patrick: It’s called eTown Hall Presents guitarist Lynn Patrick. And then right under there I have Sandra and Chris’s names with me.
Shawna Sprowls: So is this a one time thing with those two or do you plan to do anything else with them?
Lynn Patrick: I did play with them back in November. We played the cafe. I hadn’t actually performed in 10 years. And I used to play all the time, and then I kind of stopped. And then I did the show downstairs. It felt like a house concert. It’s really intimate. I loved it. And we played the videos there. Sandra and Chris played with me.
I think for next summer, I’m sure other things will come up, but I’m definitely going to play sometime next summer at the Dairy Arts Center.
Shawna Sprowls: Very cool. We’re going to have you play us another song. We’ll come back and chat some more.
Another lovely tune. Thank you. What’s that one titled?
Lynn Patrick: This one’s called “Sweet Acceptance”. It’s about appreciating the present moment and meeting life exactly where it is.
Shawna Sprowls: Where do you find your musical inspiration?
Lynn Patrick: All kinds of different things, like trips, different places. The videos I have are mostly trips. One of them’s called “10 Dolphins Dancing”, and there’s a lot of dolphins playing, doing different things. I grew up with horses, and one of the songs is called “Saturday’s Horse”, and there’s just horses from around the world, mostly Iceland and France. And then “Little Karoo” – I went to South Africa, I was there for a month, and I have this one video called “Little Karoo”. And it’s just scenes of different parts of South Africa. And then sometimes it’s just emotional, you know, it’s a mix, it’s instrumental, they’re more like emotional snapshots.
Shawna Sprowls: Exactly, and then you title them and it can kind of guide somebody in their visualization or not. And they could interpret it a whole different way.
Lynn Patrick: Somebody can have their own experience. I wrote lyrics for a long time and I played and performed those songs. I even sang at Red Rocks once. I opened a concert for Dan Fogelberg. That was back in ‘91. And I sang my original songs at that concert. That was pretty fun. So there was a time when I was out doing that. But with the instrumentals, yeah, it gives people the space to have their own experience with the songs.
Shawna Sprowls: That’s a great way to look at it. Wow, opened up for Dan Fogelberg, huh? That’s pretty big.
Lynn Patrick: That was exciting. When I played, it was early. I mean, it seats what, about 8500 people? I think there were about 3000 people when I was there and it was still light out.
So people were playing Frisbee and having fun. It was really festive.
Shawna Sprowls: I was just going to say, a festival feel to it.
Lynn Patrick: Yes, I’ll never forget that day. I see it very clearly.
Shawna Sprowls: Oh, I can’t imagine that you wouldn’t. So, what’s on the horizon for you? Do you have more shows coming up or is this, for now, the only one on the calendar?
Lynn Patrick: This is the only one on the calendar. I’m just going to work on the recording and then make some more videos.
Shawna Sprowls: Spend the summer out getting inspiration.
Lynn Patrick: Yes. So beautiful out.
Shawna Sprowls: We’re so fortunate where we live. So blessed to have the four seasons and yeah, go out and get some inspiration and then stuff to come home and work on when it’s not so nice out.
Lynn Patrick: Yeah. I know. I actually do a lot of kayaking on lakes. My last CD was called Strawberry Boat. And a lot of the songs were from being out paddling. So I kept looking forward to doing some kayaking again this summer. It’s still a little too cold.
Shawna Sprowls: Yeah, it is just a little cold. With wet suits and gloves and stuff, it can be done, but not as much fun. I don’t like to be cold.
So the show next week, folks, Thursday at eTown Hall. It’s doors at 6: 30. Is there an opening act?
Lynn Patrick: Well, yes, Sandra Wong is going to play three fiddle type violin songs for us.
Shawna Sprowls: Very nice.
Lynn Patrick: Yeah. I’m looking forward to that.
Shawna Sprowls: I did just take a look on the website. There are tickets available. So eTown Hall is where you want to go for tickets and more information about next week’s show with Lynn Patrick. And I’m sure it’s gonna be a great time.
Lynn Patrick: I’m looking forward to it. I’ve always loved eTown. I’ve been to a lot of concerts there, and I’m really looking forward to playing on that stage and playing all my originals with some of our music videos. It’ll be fun.
Shawna Sprowls: It certainly will be fun. So folks, get out there, check out Lynn Patrick at eTown Hall. That’s next door. Thursday night. Check out her website, lynnpatrick.com and her YouTube page so you can check out the visuals. If you can’t make it to the show, you can see some of her work linking up her instrumental music with visual interpretations. And thank you so much for coming in this morning.
Lynn Patrick: You’re welcome. Thank you for asking me.
