IF YOU GO
Murphy’s Taproom (murphystaproom.com)
393 Rte 101, Bedford, NH 03110
Tickets: It’s a free show. Starts at 6 p.m.
BEDFORD, NH – It’s always good to come back to your hometown. It’s an opportunity to rediscover your roots, catch up with people you don’t get to see that often and experience a little bit of nostalgia. For singer-songwriter Patrick Synan, this is exactly what’s going to be happening this Friday night. He’s going to be performing a mix of covers and originals at Murphy’s Taproom & Carriage House in Bedford starting at 6 p.m. He’s also going to be joined by his good friend and former bandmate Andrew Galucki, which will be their first time playing together live in quite a while.
We had a talk ahead of the show about his musical roots in the area, the band he and Galucki used to be in together and plans for his debut solo album.
Rob Duguay: As it pertains to your development as a musician, what was your upbringing like in Bedford and how formative was it for you?
Patrick Synan: Completely, because of my next door neighbors and classmates. Everybody who I associated with was playing guitar, playing drums and playing keys, so there were lots of projects during high school. The one that had the most momentum was a band I was in called Kascade and we played around a gig every week for the better part of two years.
RD: What was it like being in that band? You guys were around from 2007 to 2010, so what would you say were your favorite memories and how did Kascade initially get started?
PS: Most of us grew up next door to each other. The other vocalist and guitarist Andrew Galucki, who I’ll be playing with this weekend, we started writing tunes together when we were about 13 or 14 years old. We didn’t take anything out on the road until a few years later when we had our driver’s licenses, but then his older brother was doing drums with us. Then they got a friend of theirs, who I met through them, named Craig Tupelo to play bass. Craig then moved to Bolivia and we ended up playing with Ryan Tidwell, who was in a group called Traces David, which was also a pretty successful band for the time and for our age group.
We linked up with other bands that were playing the same gigs as we were while trying to negotiate. We would open for them and they would open for us, that sort of thing where we wanted to share whatever opportunities came our way.
RD: That’s a good approach to have. Outside of music, you’re also a teacher, right?
PS: That’s right, I teach at East Boston High School.
RD: How did you get into that field and what do you teach there?
PS: I teach math and I’ve been doing it for almost 10 years. I initially came down to Boston for graduate school, I was looking for a job and this one came up. It’s pretty easy to kind of follow the trajectory that they lay out for you, they got professional development, they got their sort of incremental growth and you just stick with it. The district takes care of you, the kids are great and we have a good time. I actually started a guitar club at the school, which enables me to take the things that I like in my personal life and share them with my students, so that’s nice.
RD: That sounds awesome. For this upcoming show at Murphy’s Taproom, what are your thoughts on coming back to your hometown to play there?
PS: I’m super psyched because that’s where all the people Andrew and I used to play for back in the day still live. We haven’t played together in 15 years and in the age of iPhones, we’ve been sending each other voice memos with our versions of the songs that we’re going to play. That’s how you practice in an age where we’re all geographically separated, but it’s a lot of fun. We’re really enjoying it, it gets your hopes up and it gets you excited. Our families will be there and our friends will be there, so we’re just hoping that we can get a little bit of momentum as far as interested parties who didn’t see us play back in the day but they’d like to come see what it’s all about.
RD: You’ve mentioned that you’ve been working with Andrew on your debut solo album, so what’s the status of that? Do you have a name for it? Do you have a release date for it?
PS: We’re about five tracks in and I’m thinking that it’s probably going to look like 10 or 12, so I would say that it should be mixed and mastered by the end of the year. I don’t know what the release date will be and as far as a name goes, we’re still toying with that as well. “Midnight Music” was one name that came up because there’s a track on there with the same title, but we’re still working that one out. I’m actually kind of hoping that Andrew will take on some tracks, do some of the vocal work and some guitar work because he’s just so talented. I don’t know if it’ll happen, but it would be such a treat to have him on there as well.
In terms of the mixing, mastering and production, that’s all him at this moment in time. He’s very talented and he’s done this work for a lot of artists where he’s currently based out of in Nashville. He ran a business down there for a while called “Nashville For Hire”, which was kind of like a Facebook for musicians but just in that area. It was a good way to get people linked up for projects, gigs and kind of what we did with our friends and classmates in high school, but in a more formal and lucrative way.
