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I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1956. I became interested in music at an early age. I begged my mom to buy me a guitar when I was seven. I "played" this $5 cardboard guitar and even wrote a song or two on it before I even knew how to tune it.
At age 9 or 10 I received a "real" guitar- a Sears "Silvertone" acoustic, and a book- "Alfred's Guitar Method book 1", and was told by my dad that I couldn't even dream of another, better guitar until I had learned to play "every damned song in that book!"
In retrospect, I think that was pretty good incentive. I learned all of the songs (including "Buffalo Gals" and other "top hits"), but what opened up my musical horizons most was the back page of the book, which included CHORD CHARTS! I learned dozens of chords, which enabled me to learn other people's songs (The Beatles!!) and to write my own songs. I got my first electric guitar and amp ( a "Decca" from Treasure City) for Christmas that same year.
I formed a "combo" with some other kids from school and we played our first "gigs" on a portable stage called The Show Wagon that was operated by the Lincoln Parks and Recreation department. I can only imagine how horrendous we sounded, but it was my first exposure to playing in public. We also were "hired" ($5 and all the Koolade and cookies we could consume) by another neighborhood kid to play for an outdoor party. This was in about 1967 or 1968, and we dressed like "hippies" for the occasion. The local press came out and took pictures.
I had a good friend during grade school named Ned Thornton, who also had an acoustic guitar. We got together and formed a duo, trying hard to be the next Simon and Garfunkle. Ned had a toddler niece that couldn't pronounce "Ned", so she called him "Mud", and Ned took to calling me "Pitter Pat", so we called our duo "The Pitter Patter of the Mud" (hey, we were only TEN!). We learned to play several Simon and Garfunkle tunes, as well as other popular songs (The Beatles!!), plus several that we wrote, separately and together.
Ned's father had a Wollensak reel to reel tape recorder and two ElectroVoice microphones, and we recorded ourselves with our slightly out of tune guitars and our squeaky little voices doing a bunch of these songs. Although Ned's family remembers these taping sessions, the tapes themselves are lost to the ages. Sadly, Ned died of cancer several years ago, but I still remember parts of a couple of the songs we wrote together.
Pat and his Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar, age 11
When I was 12 I began playing with some "older kids", specifically my brother, Kelly McKeen ( who also plays guitar) and his friend Brandon Nelson (now an attorney) on bass, and a small parade of drummers, including Steve Koontz and Mark Cherrington. We played popular music of the time, including Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and of course, The Beatles!! We played at some private parties and once at a dance put on by the Parks and Rec people at Antelope Park in Lincoln. This all happened before my voice changed, and I was playing rhythm guitar and singing.
My first 'comb-over'!
"Church" with Kelly McKeen, Mark Cherrington, Pat, Brandon Nelson and a keyboard player whose name none of the others remembers!
Junior High school introduced me to several new musician friends that I still keep in touch with to this day. I formed a "band" ( we had progressed beyond the 'combo' by now) with a drummer named John Scofield, Mike Conrad on bass guitar, and my cousin Billy Goggins was our singer. I was now playing "lead" guitar. John Dietrich played the Hammond organ, and we practiced at his parents' golf course clubhouse, because that's where the organ was. The name of this band was: "Fort Mudge Memorial Dump" taken from the comic strip Pogo. It didn't mean anything to us, it just sounded "hip", like "Chicago Transit Authority" and "Grand Funk Railroad". We played a LOT of Grand Funk. This group performed at least once or twice in public but those memories are pretty faded by now.
I then hooked up with a singer/harmonica player from Southeast High named Steve Carter, and he got me interested in old blues. We had Jon Salstrand on drums and Carl Gauger on bass, both friends of Steve's from Southeast ( I was still in junior high). We played at Southeast's Spring Day that year with two or three other bands- my first "festival" style event. I don't remember what this band was called, and it didn't last very long, but Carl and I formed another band with John Scofield, John Dietrich (now playing guitar and singing lead vocals- my voice had now changed, and I was no longer able to sing the high stuff), and Tom Larson played organ. We called ourselves The DeLuxe- named for the 1950 Chevrolet car our "#1 Roadie", Bob Hord, used to haul our stuff around. This was the first band that I was in that really did much performing, and we actually made some money playing high school dances arranged through a booking agent. Another school friend, Phil Hammar, became our "#2 roadie and sound man" and would balance the four (!!!) microphones we used. He recorded several of our performances and some of those recordings are still floating around out there. The main thing I notice when I listen to those old performances is the extremely high energy we all had back then (John Dietrich: "How fast should we play this?" John Scofield: "A million miles an hour!"). Phil pursued a career in audio and went on to become the chief audio engineer for the University of Nebraska ETV television studios.
That band lasted a year or two, and got some local notariety by winning the 'popularity' part of the Battle of the Bands that year at Pershing Auditorium (The overall 'musical' winner that year was a funk band called Poppin' Jay, which featured a horn section with Tom's brother Ted Larson on Sax). I had my first "serious" girlfriend during this time- Terri Bonebright, with whom I still keep in touch. Terri is a phD'd college professor in Indiana now.
I graduated from Lincoln Southeast High in January of 1974, one semester early, and went to work for a "catering" company driving a van full of coffee, sandwiches, chips and junk food around town, stopping at businesses and construction sites to peddle my wares. This job didn't pay much, and it was grueling, driving several hundred miles in town per week, so after I had saved a couple of bucks I quit. I was living with Terri in a tiny house along with Phil Hammar at that time, and hanging around with friends. The three of us moved into another, larger rental and I began to have jam sessions in the basement there. I became involved with some more old friends from back in junior high- Mike and Andy Hall, and Scott Ihms. By now my musical tastes had begun to drift over toward progressive rock and what was to become "fusion jazz". Scotty played guitar, Andy played bass and his brother Mike was the drummer of our group called "Fidelity". We did rock tunes by Wishbone Ash, ZZ top, and Fleetwood Mac, plus music by Jeff Beck and The Dixie Dregs as well as several originals written by myself. Although we were mainly a party and basement band, we did several paying gigs for high schools. We also played a couple of festival-style shows in Omaha at Elmwood Park. We recorded several times, and some of the recordings are pretty good. Scotty died from colon cancer a few years ago, and I still miss him.
Fidelity with Mike Hall, Scotty Ihms, Andy Hall and Pat
My next "real job" was as a packager/shipper for Burton Harpsichords. They made harpsichord kits, and I packed them up to be shipped all over the world. I quit that job one day after a friend, Dave Byorth, talked me into going out to lunch with him. We went to a pizza place downtown and each ordered a pitcher of beer, only to find out that it was 2-fers! Rather than NOT drink all of the beer (that would have been wasteful) we both got totally smashed. I went back to work and left a note saying: I quit. Soon after that I got a job with the public schools as a janitor which is what I did for about three years. I was now living in a rented house on about 32nd and T Street, and playing with Fidelity.
Pat and another Sears Silvertone guitar, 1979
While working as a janitor it occurred to me that I didn't want to be a janitor for the rest of my life. I had been spending much of my spare time (of which I had a lot, since I had no girlfriend) with a cousin of mine named Phil Hauptman. Phil was self employed as an electronics technician. He suggested that I give electronics a try, so I began taking night classes at Southeast Community College in Lincoln. I met a girl named Connie during this time and we became "serious". She moved in with me, and we later moved to another rental on south 18th Street. As I neared graduation from SCC I began to search for a job in electronics. I applied for a position at a stereo equipment store called Stereo Studio, and was hired. At first it was just part time, and for about six months I was working at East High school from 10:30 at night until 7 in the morning; I'd go home and get about 5 hours of sleep, rush off to Stereo Studio until 5:30, then over to MacDonalds for my daily meal of a QuarterPounder with cheese, a medium french fry and a large coke (which I had every day except weekends during this entire time), then over to the Community College for classes until 10 PM. It's a good thing I was young and healthy!
Connie and I went our separate ways and eventually I graduated and went to work at Stereo Studio full time. They went out of business soon after that, but the Repair department manager bought out the service department and started a new company- Audio Tech and I continued to work for him until 1986, when the repair guy at Dietze Music called me to say that he was going to become an instructor at SCC and was looking for someone to take over his position at Dietze. After a lot of thought I interviewed for the job, and took it. I've been there ever since.
In 1981 I was introduced to a lady named Kathleen by my old girlfriend, Terri. I really liked Kathleen, but there was one large problem- she was married. I gave up the idea of trying to date her until I found out that she was not Happily Married, and I heard from Terri that she was soon to be Happily Single again. I began dating her in about 1982. We got married in 1988. Kathleen has always encouraged my pursuit of music, and after Fidelity stopped playing, I was approached by Andy Hall to join a new band that he was putting together with a drummer named Gale Cooper and Bruce McCracken on keyboards. I knew Bruce from a rock opera production that I had played with drummer John Scofield back in high school, where Bruce was the musical director. I was reluctant to try this, as I felt that these musicians were in a class several notches above myself. Kathleen convinced me to at least give it a try, and the band we eventually became, "The Staff", was the most musically satisfying thing I've ever done. We played funk, R&B and fusion jazz, including Pat Metheny, Jeff Beck, Earth, Wind and Fire, George Benson and some of my originals. Although we were a good band, there were very few venues available for this style of music, and we were forced to modify our set list in order to keep playing. Andy didn't want to stoop to playing "top 40" music (I don't blame him) so he chose to go on to a career of mainstream jazz and teaching lessons.
"The Staff"- Pat, Gale Cooper, Andy Hall, Bruce McCracken
The new band we named "Splash" (this was a few years before the movie of the same name came out), because Bruce and Gale had been in a band with that name fairly recently. Steve Rall played bass at first, but soon he quit and was replaced by Steve Pejsar, another member of the original Splash band. Splash was together through the early 80's and made a pot of money by playing mostly high-school dances all around the midwest. Although it was financially lucritive, the travel and the lack of artistic merit of the music, combined with personality clashes eventually caused me to quit the band.
Splash with Steve ":Doc" Pejsar, Pat, Bruce McCracken, Gale Cooper and "Marvelous" Marcia McCracken
They replaced me with a guitar player named Kim Kramer. After Splash broke up, Gale and myself, along with a bass/guitar palyer named Denny Taylor threw together a band to play as 'house band' at a new bar, Devlin's Pub. We practiced twice, then began playing four nights a week. Denny named this band "Big Fun", and it sometimes was, but usually it was just a drag. This was where I learned that drunks will go for just about anything, and tell you it's great. I remember one guy kept coming up and requesting Rolling Stones, but we didn't know any. That didn't phase him in the least, and he kept yelling for Stones after every song, so finally, I started playing "Get Off My Cloud". I didn't know ANY of the words, except the title, so I just made up stuff and mush-mouthed through three verses, total nonsense and gibberish. We got done and he stumbled up and said, "See, I knew you could do it! That was GREAT! You guys are the BEST BAND IN THE WORLD!!!" The bar lasted about four months and we made good money until it folded.
In 1990 Kim, Gale, Steve and I began the band "The Rockin' Fossils". our first gig was March 17th in Wahoo Nebraska at the 'Alibi Lounge' (Hey, you've gotta start somewhere...) and we have managed to play for over sixteen years with no personnel changes, and none of us has ever missed a gig.
The Rockin' Fossils- Kim Kramer, Gale Cooper, Pat and Doc Pejsar
I am extremely fortunate to have been able to play with some truly outstanding musicians during my musical career: Andy Hall, one of the best bass players in the world, Dr. Steve Pejsar, the best rock singer I have ever heard, Tony Hillhouse, the steadiest and most versatile drummer I've had the pleasure of jamming, recording and gigging with, Gale Cooper the best funk-groove player I know, Ted and Tom Larson, Jim Williamson, Joel Nielsen, Scotty Ihms, Kevin Moore and miriads of others. I have done fill-in work for local groups as well as playing on several recording projects by local artists, and each experience has made me a better player.
Some of the best experience I ever got was playing as occasional fill-in guitarist for "Alibi", a house band at a place called The Speakeasy. This group changed constantly, but when I started doing it, it was Denny Taylor on bass (later on it was Jamie Cox) and Kevin Moore on keyboards and vocals. Kevin "Froggy" Kroon played drums and was the anchor of the group, doing the MC-ing, calling off the tunes, directing stage traffic and singing most of the songs. He carried the lyrics for most of 300 songs with him. We did all kinds of music four nights a week and two of those nights were 'open stage', so we got do deal with a huge variety of players. Some were very good- Bud Brinkman on harmonica , for example, and some were just so-so, but a few were so truly clueless as to be laughable, and... we did! I remember the time Froggy leaned over to me and asked, "Do you know 'The Chair'?" I said, "No, I've never heard of it". He said, "Well, it's in C. One... two... three... four..."
Another project that is now taking off (pun intended) is the LIVE KARAOKE band- THE DIVEBOMBERS CLUB, with Bassist Heath Cole (formerly of The Distractions, Helios Creed and currently also working occasionally with Shithook, Lincoln's original live karaoke band, from whom we stole... um, BORROWED, the idea). Heath and I form the core of the group with drummers Tony Hillhouse and Kevin Kroon handling additonal vocal and percussion duties. With over 300 tunes on our set list we invite the general public up on stage to sing a song or three with a live band. It is truly a blast! We are currently playing every Thursday night at Mary's Place in Lincoln, as well as other venues on other nights. Send an email to be added to the schedule email list by clicking here.
Click here to go to the Divebombers Club website.
After saying the same things a zillion times to numerous customers for several years at Dietze, I got lazy and started writing down some of the explanations of how and why the equipment fails and how to keep it from failing again. I started with a short piece on batteries. Then I wrote a tract about speaker failures. They were well received by my customers, so I thought: "Heck, I have two chapters done, I might as well write a book." So I did. I finished the book and illustrations after about two years, then decided to self-publish it under the title: "Plugged In- what every musician, sound tech ad DJ should know about electronics". I had 220 copies printed, and sold all of them. I began to search for a 'real' publisher so I could get national distribution, and started with the inernet. I went to the four major music publishers and sent emails asking the best way to submit a book idea. Hal Leonard emailed back saying they did not accept submissions, period. Alfred gave me a list of things to do before submitting. Musician magazine emailed back saying they no longer published this type of book, but gave me the email address of the company that took it over, and also helpfully gave a few suggestions of other avenues to try. Music Sales emailed back that they were interested and would like me to send any materials I had.
Sharp Dressed Pat New Years Eve, 2003
I did, and after some long back-and-forths via email, I signed away the rights to the book, which they renamed "Keep Your Gear Running".
Kathleen had been trying to get me to try my
hand at drawing and painting for several years, saying that she knew
I had talent and could produce fine art if I just would try. Well, in
1999, I decided to try drawing a pencil drawing of my oldest step-grandson,
Taylor. The results were surprisingly good, and I've been playing 'artist'
ever since. You can check it out by clicking
here
.Art
And visit Kathleen's website by clicking HERE.
Almost everything I do starts out as a hobby and becomes a money-making pursuit. Creating art is the only thing I do just for myself and just for fun, and I'm trying to keep it that way. That being said, I DO take on some commission work, and recently, I finished doing 31 illustrations for a children's book which I also wrote, called "Looking For Isaac" about a family searching for their pet brown rat, while hoping that Sam, the family cat, didn't have it for supper. I'm currently attempting to find a publisher for this and a few other kid's books I'm working on. Wish me luck.