For as long as Patrick Nehoda has been alive, people have used words like “taciturn” and “melancholy” to describe his disposition. “I was that 4-year-old who people would call an old soul,” the Franklin-residing singer-songwriter-guitarist, now 39, tells the Scene.
But Anyways…, the debut from Nehoda and his three-piece band — also called Nehoda — distills a lifetime of resilience into nine rugged songs. It’s out Friday, Oct. 2, with a ticketed, socially distanced record-release party Saturday, Oct. 10, at Dee’s Country Cocktail Lounge in Madison.
Nehoda cut his teeth playing in bands in his native Northern California, but at 23 he put music on hold to become a fireman and EMT. After a too-close call battling a wildland blaze in the state’s northeastern corner, he dug deep, weighing the risks and rewards of such noble yet dangerous work. He discussed his harrowing experience at length on a 2018 episode of Crash and Ride, Athens, Ga., drummer Patrick Ferguson’s podcast about musicians and mental health.
Nehoda left the fire department and the Golden State entirely. He landed in Seattle, where he worked at a guitar shop and met his fiancée Masha. In 2016, priced out by the city’s second tech boom, the couple relocated to Middle Tennessee with Nehoda’s father Kenneth and ailing mother Olive in tow.
“When my mom got sick, I stepped into the role of nurse,” Nehoda remembers. “It was 24/7 for 17 months, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. But it wore me out.”
While caring for his mother up until her passing in March ’18, Nehoda wrote and recorded a solo album, Don’t Forget the Hat. Through the wonders of the internet, the album’s penultimate track, an eight-minute burner called “Devil’s Bitch,” caught the ear of a radio DJ in Gloucester, U.K. The station extended an invite to play its annual summer fest, and Nehoda made a much-deserved vacation of it. The gig went great, and he came home resolute to keep momentum alive.
Later that winter, Nehoda was onstage one night at Springwater, and Grayson Papa and Jeremy Gill were in the crowd. Papa (a bassist and recent arrival from Philly) and Gill (drummer for local psych crew Floridian Slim and bandleader in Kitchn) were both struck by the Californian’s imposing presence — he stands 6-foot-7 — and compelling songs.
“It was just him up there with a Les Paul and an amp, cranking it out solo, and it was awesome,” remembers Papa. Gill heard something “heavier and more grown-up than a lot of bands,” he says. “The feeling behind it, the timbre of his voice, the reality of the songs spoke to me. I was like, ‘Dude, you need drums.’ ”
The trio got together to play, and the chemistry was instant. They debuted at Springwater in March ’19, and went on to play some 50 to 70 shows over the next year. “We took every gig we could, sometimes three in a week,” Nehoda says. “We found our identity, for sure.”
In February, just before the COVID shutdown, Nehoda, Gill and Papa entered Sundog Recording Studio with producer Mike Esser and tracked 11 songs. Nine went on the album, and the other two on a 7-inch, “Dear Mr. President” backed with “Eternal Sunshine” (featured in the July edition of the Scene’s monthly overlooked-releases series). Both are issued via Nehoda’s own label, Olive Records.
“My mom was always my biggest fan, biggest supporter, best friend … so I just thought it was fitting,” Nehoda says of his label’s name. “When I’m down or feeling like I’m waiting on something, her words of encouragement [remind] me: ‘Fuck it, don’t wait, just do it.’ Even when it feels like the world is collapsing, [she’s] pushing me forward.”
Clocking in at a perfect LP-length 40 minutes, But Anyways… includes amped-up full-band versions of Nehoda solo songs like the angsty, bluesy opener “I Don’t Know” and flannel-flying rave-up “Shakey Pop.” There’s also headier newer material like the standout “Just Another Season,” a Southern Gothic murder ballad in the vein of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put a Spell on You.”
With little in the way of effects, solos or other excesses, But Anyways… is a moving, breathing band-in-a-room rock record, the likes of which you don’t hear often these days.
You could call it the work of an old soul.
