Although which venue it was at specifically has long since faded from my memory, (I’ve seen them numerous times since then), I still vividly remember my first dose of Young Widows. I had been familiar with Louisville hardcore legends Breather Resist, but I was unaware that after the departure of singer Steve Sindoni, guitarist/vocalist Evan Patterson, bassist Nick Thieneman, and original drummer Geoff Paton, (who was later replaced by Jeremy McMongle), had refined their sound and resurfaced in 2006 under the name Young Widows. I was standing in front of a completely dark stage, (stage lights had been turned off for reasons that would quickly become apparent), when Evan Patterson played and looped the guitar riff intro to “Almost Dead Beat.” Suddenly, the whole band seemed to lunge forward and explode into the song while simultaneously cutting through the darkness with blinding bright lights, (they had cleverly replaced the speakers in a few amp stacks with flood lights that turned on at the exact moment the song kicked in). The band then proceeded to sonically crush everyone in the room for a good 30-40 minutes. I had never seen or heard anything like this before. This sound was nothing like what any other band in Louisville was doing or had done. This was harder than hardcore. This was heavier than metal. This was intense music!
And now, 18 years, four full-length albums, one compilation, numerous split EPs and singles later, Young Widows return with their fifth studio album, Power Sucker, coming a full 11 years after their previous studio album, 2014’s Easy Pain.
If you’ve had anything to do with the Louisville music scene over the past 25 years, you’re familiar with Evan Patterson’s work. As a member of the aforementioned bands as well as the likes of Black Cross, The National Acrobat, Old Baby, Standard Issue, and especially his solo project turned full band Jaye Jayle, you can’t not be. He’s a local music legend in his own right. So when LEO Weekly was given the opportunity to speak with Patterson ahead of Power Sucker’s release, we jumped at the chance!
(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)
LEO: So why the new album after 11 years? What brought that about?
Evan Patterson: Young Widows was never meant to stop. But our bass player had a kid, and our drummer has three kids, so it was hard to get together and tour. I started doing the Jaye Jayle solo thing and was very active with that, so that was also taking up time that we could get together to write. It’s funny, to make this record we had to figure out the oddest practice schedule. We got together at 10:00 AM every Friday when we were writing this record. I don’t think it’s normal for a band to get together at 10:00 AM, but it was just one of those things where one thing led to another. And then with the lock down, we all kind of missed a couple of years there. But we never planned to stop doing the band. We just did a short tour of 6 shows. Before that, our last tour was in 2019 when we went to Europe for two weeks. And before that, we toured the states for maybe a week. So we really hadn’t done much leading up to it. But all of the new songs were conceived around 2021 and 2022 when we started writing. So they’re all really new even for us; and most of them still haven’t been played live yet.
Going into recording this album, did you have a specific idea of how you wanted it to sound?
[image-2] I always kind of have a concept when I’m making a record. With this one I wanted to make a record that sounded like the reason that we are a band; the influences and the things that initially got us together. The idea when we were writing was just to be more deliberate than we’ve ever been. There’s not a lot of space. Our album In and Out of Youth and Lightness, that record was all about creating the space and atmosphere and more of a mood. And with this one the idea was “What is it that we wanted to achieve when we all first started getting together and making music?” This is what came out.
I read where you have done a lot of self-work over the past few years. Can you tell me what that entailed, and how much did it affect the lyrics of the new record?
Yeah, absolutely. It entails a lot of psychological issues that I’ve been dealing with my whole life; just a lot of battling with your day-to-day insecurities and anxieties. In 2021, I microdosed mushrooms for nine months. The thing is that I’ve been eating mushrooms for 15 years, and the reaction to mushrooms always really settled very well with me. The way I felt when I was on them, this is how I actually want to feel. I want to wake up and have it be a little more enhanced. So when I was doing this micro dosing thing, it just kind of hit me. I’ve been through my second divorce, I just really wanted to be less selfish and less self-centered and more accepting of everything that was going on around me. Because as we get older, we kind of realize our lack of control over things, and that we can only really control our own feelings, our own emotions, and our own actions. And with the micro dosing of mushrooms for nine months, I really conquered a lot of anxiety and it showed me a much brighter side of my life that I have always had, and it took away this depression-like vortex of overwhelming, obsessive feelings of sadness and struggle. I began focusing more on all of the positive things in my life and it truly worked, even to the point of just paying my bills on time and not hanging it on the refrigerator and looking at it until it was due. It’s such a funny example, but all of a sudden I was just like “I should just pay this now!” Having regular conversations about life and being an artist and a musician, those things used to give me anxiety. Sometimes people don’t even fucking take me seriously because you tell someone you’re an artist and they’re like, “Sure you are,” [laughs]. So I can’t suggest microdosing mushrooms more. But I don’t do that anymore. I’ve probably had mushrooms two or three times since then. But it’s such a reward to have this new perspective on life.
How did you come about deciding to microdose mushrooms?
It’s something I’ve read about and talked with people about, but mostly because of my experience with not really having any negative side effects, never really having a bad trip, and learning how to control a drug on my own that is not prescribed, that is illegal. Just learning how to do it, like “OK, this much will be the right amount,” and then thinking that out as I go along. I hope to see this legalized next after marijuana.
But this is Kentucky, and we will be the last state to do it.
Yeah, we will be, [laughs]. Mushrooms are legal in certain states already, but it’s something that should be medicinal. Mushrooms are so normal. They alter your own your actual psyche in a positive way.
Back to the new album, is there an overarching theme to Power Sucker?
It’s about the people and things in life that are sucking your powers away. Those words together might not sound very positive, but it’s about not dealing with the things that take away from you and the things that might be holding you down. It’s somewhat of a very positive record. I would say maybe I’m kind of complaining every now and then about some things I don’t like, but all in all it tries to wrap around and give a nice positive spin.
Do you feel like Power Sucker is a reinvention of Young Widows, or a reintroduction?
To me, it’s just a combining of our capabilities. I don’t know if it’s a reinvention or reintroduction as much as it is a statement piece of what we are as individuals and as musicians. I think it really captures what we’re capable of in this kind of smash your face against the wall sound, and what we’re capable of doing without being metal or space rock or whatever.
Related
Listen Local: Four Of Louisville’s Newest Releases That You Need To Hear!
Live, you all seemed to have stopped playing anything prior to Old Wounds some time ago. Do you feel like you’ve just outgrown that material?
Well, the thing about the first record, Settle Down City, is that it was with a different drummer. We lean towards playing the material with Jeremy, our drummer now. He’s less connected to it, and a big part of Young Widows is that it is a band and it’s not just me. I might be the main songwriter and singer, but this band is equal parts Nick and Jeremy. At times when we couldn’t tour because they were busy, I’ve never thought I should get another drummer or another bass player and do this on my own. We are a band. But there’s one song on Settle Down City that we’ll bust out every now and then called “New Forest.” We probably would go back for maybe the 20th anniversary or something and play one or two songs, but I’m a bit of a forward motion kind of creator. So making new songs is the joy I get out of playing music, not going back to it. To me, it’s almost counterintuitive to go back and try to learn how to play an old song.
You just put out a new Jaye Jayle collection a few weeks ago. What can you tell us about that?
It’s called After Alter, and it is four new songs that actually kind of lean towards more of the Young Widow’s sound. They are heavy songs, kind of more in the noise rock world. And then four more songs that I’d recorded and self-released over the past eight years or so. The thing that I love the most about the record is I made a cover of the Beatles song “Help,” and it’s a real chopped and screwed version. A couple friends wrote me and were like “Man, I listened to your cover of ‘Help’ and it really bummed me out,” [laughs]. And I was like “Perfect!”
So is your approach to writing songs and lyrics different for Jaye Jayle than it is for Young Widows?
It is. With Jaye Jayle, I somewhat write the words and the melodies and have the ideas for the songs going into showing them to the band. And with Young Widows, we recorded and wrote all the music prior to me conceiving any way to sing on the songs. I sat with the recordings that are on the album for about six months just to figure out how I wanted to sing and what I wanted to sing, and I really love that process. It’s kind of a nice thing to get in the mindset of just writing words and thinking about vocal melodies rather than going through and playing the songs 1,000 times to the band.
Now that Young Widows has the new album coming out, is Jaye Jayle being put on the backburner for a while?
It’s kind of ending up being that way. I’ve hit a place in the past few years with Jaye Jayle that’s not pushing too hard to tour that much. If something came out or someone asked us to do something, I would go do it if it didn’t interfere with Young Widow’s schedule. But I’m also a new father; I have a one-year old son now, and that’s a whole new beautiful part of my life. So the time that I want to be gone and the time that I have available to tour is less.
[image-6]
So are there any plans coming up for Jaye Jayle?
No plans for Jaye Jayle right now. Our bass player, Todd Cook, is playing bass with Shannon Wright and they are touring Europe. He’s been really focused on that. But Jaye Jayle has an album that’s very different that we recorded the music to in 2022. It’s kind of more of an upbeat, Krautrock kind of album. And it was just kind of happenstance of us having these songs when we were on tour and a friend who wanted to record the music. I’ve been working on those songs and actually collaborating with my partner, Christy O’Connell, to sing on those. That’s somewhere in the future.
And any upcoming plans for Young Widows?
[image-7] We have a tour in April with the band Cherubs from Texas. They’re a childhood favorite band of mine. When I was 15, I heard a Cherubs record called Heroin Man, which to me is a classic noise rock album, and it really influenced me. So we’re taking them and also a new band called Porcelain from Texas on tour for 9 shows. And Porcelain is great; they have kind of an unwound Sonic Youth sound that you don’t really hear a lot of bands doing. So we’re all playing the record release show in Louisville on April 5th at Zanzabar, which I’m actually very excited about, and then we do eight more shows in which we go South and play in Texas, then wrap back around. And in May and June, Young Widows are doing two more weeks of touring in which we’ll be playing the Caterwaul Festival in Minneapolis and Prepare the Ground Festival in Toronto, and doing some headlining shows.
Power Sucker will be released Friday, March 21st on Temporary Residence Ltd. and is available for order through the band’s Bandcamp page at: youngwidows.bandcamp.com.
The record release show takes place Saturday, April 5th at Zanzabar with guests Cherubs, Porcelain, and Bad Wires. Doors 7:00 p.m., show 8:00 p.m., 18 and over. Advance tickets are $15 and can be purchased through Zanzibar’s website at: zanzabarlouisville.com.
Related Stories
Listen Local: Four Of Louisville’s Newest Releases That You Need To Hear!
Young Widows “Power Sucker” Record Release Show at Zanzabar
This article appears in Feb 28 – Mar 6, 2025.