Music Notes: Pat Green

Pat Green – The Man & His Music It’s Not Just for Texas Anymore Amy Edgerly

When I told Pat Green that my in-laws, who are from New England, once asked me “What about that Pat Green? Should we go see that Pat Green? Is that Pat Green any good?” He chuckled and said, “That Pat Green! It sounds like the kid who puts the cat in the mailbox!” I’d wager that “that Pat Green” was never the kid who put anything in any mailbox that didn’t belong there. However, he was a young man who was fired by his own father who told him to be a musician because he would be better at that than selling accounts for the family’s wholesale fuel business. Proof positive that it could behoove a person to heed the advice of their elders!

Since that fateful day, Pat Green has been proving to Texas and the world that indeed “Father Knows Best”. He spent the many years of his career making a name for himself on the Texas music scene by playing colleges and honky-tonks, and all the while endearing himself firmly in the hearts of Texans, who can’t shake him loose.

Texans like to claim Pat Green as their own, even though it is obvious that even a state the size of Texas isn’t big enough to contain the talent in this particular guy. He has outgrown the honky-tonks and icehouses, and is now playing and selling out stadiums and arenas in Texas and also in cities all over the United States. He sold so many records as an unsigned artist that he helped break the mold of how music was traditionally marketed and played on the air. He also helped pave the way for multitudes of artists to do exactly the same. As traditional country artist Johnny Bush told us in a previous interview, “I think Pat Green sold a half a million albums before he ever got a record deal.”

Pat Green has made himself synonymous with Texas music, along with so many of his contemporaries, but his contagion has spread outside Texas as well. His current tour has taken him all over the country, but no matter how much his truth-seeking songs and affable, boyish charm may facilitate his marketability in “the other states”, Pat Green will probably never experience the open affection poured upon him by his home state fans. One Case in point is the Fall Fandango concert at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in the Woodlands, TX in early October. (This was a fragment/not a true sentence – not sure what you want me to do – I sort of made this into sentence.

The Fall Fandango concert, after four years of occurring right outside Houston, is becoming a bona fide annual event that Texas country music fans look forward to and make plans around each year. The Fandango is modeled after Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July picnic, in that there are concerts on two stages that alternate all day and into the night so the music never really stops once it...

We hope that you enjoyed reading this excerpt from "Pat Green". If you would like to read the entire article and more, you can order a back issue of Mar / Apr 2006 where this article was originally published.

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