Trying to pin down Mike Patton has always been a losing game.<\/p>\n
Frontman of Faith No More, architect of Mr. Bungle, collaborator, shapeshifter, professional curveball thrower. The r\u00e9sum\u00e9 reads like a dare. So when he links up with the Avett Brothers for what\u2019s being called the AVTT\/PTTN record, the question isn\u2019t whether it works. It\u2019s what \u201cworks\u201d even means anymore.<\/p>\n
Patton doesn\u2019t seem especially concerned with that part. \u201cWe didn\u2019t really know how it would land in the world,\u201d he says. \u201cBut that is part of the fun\u2026 people\u2019s reactions are something you can\u2019t control.\u201d<\/p>\n
Control, or the lack of it, ends up being the throughline here. Because for all the talk about collaboration, genre, or expectation, the real story is about letting something exist without over-explaining it. Which is harder than it sounds.<\/p>\n
The project didn\u2019t begin with some grand design. It started, like a lot of Patton\u2019s work, through proximity and curiosity. \u201cA lot [of projects] come out of friendships,\u201d he says. \u201cIn this case\u2026 it was sort of a blossoming friendship.\u201d The twist being they hadn\u2019t even met in person before recording. \u201cThere was a real kind of telepathic thing going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Telepathic, but not effortless. Dropping Patton\u2019s voice into the Avett Brothers\u2019 world wasn\u2019t as simple as showing up and doing the Patton thing. \u201cWhere the hell do I fit in?\u201d he asks. Not just stylistically, but structurally. \u201cThese guys are brothers\u2026 they harmonize like angels\u2026 there\u2019s blood in there.\u201d Translation: don\u2019t screw it up.<\/p>\n
So he doesn\u2019t. Or at least, not in the obvious ways. Instead, he listens. He steps back. He finds space. \u201cKnowing when to button my lip,\u201d he says, which might be the least expected phrase in the Mike Patton catalog. But that restraint is what unlocks the thing neither side saw coming. \u201cIt\u2019s a third personality,\u201d he explains. \u201cThere\u2019s them and there\u2019s me\u2026 and it became its own animal.\u201d Something with all their DNA but not entirely recognizable as any one of them. Which is, of course, the ideal outcome. Even if it makes it harder to describe.<\/p>\n
That ambiguity carries into the lyrics, most of which came from Scott Avett. Patton mostly reacts in real time, adding pieces \u201cin the moments.\u201d But what he responds to hits a little too close. \u201cAt that particular juncture in my life, his lyrics were almost as if I\u2019d written them,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was like\u2026 \u2018you know everything that\u2019s going on with me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Haunting, he calls it. Not in a gothic sense, but in the way coincidence sometimes feels a little too precise.<\/p>\n
That immediacy shapes the entire process. No overthinking. No costume changes. \u201cEverything came really\u2026 almost frighteningly organic.\u201d The kind of creative flow that feels like catching something mid-air before it disappears. And once it\u2019s caught, Patton resists the urge to define it. \u201cTo me it\u2019s a document,\u201d he says. \u201cA snapshot\u2026 of a bunch of guys at a certain place in time.\u201d Meaning comes later. Maybe years later. Or maybe not at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like that is the responsibility of the listener,\u201d he says. \u201cEveryone\u2019s going to experience it differently.\u201d Some in a car. Some live. Some with headphones and a notebook, trying to crack it open like it\u2019s supposed to reveal something definitive. He\u2019s not interested in helping with that part.<\/p>\n
What he is interested in is the craft. The nuts and bolts. \u201cWhat color of wood are we going to use? Are we going to use nails or screws?\u201d It\u2019s a builder\u2019s mentality, less precious than you\u2019d expect for someone with his catalog. The emotion is there, sure, but it\u2019s embedded in the construction, not hovering above it like a thesis statement.<\/p>\n
That approach explains how something like \u201cOx Driver\u201d ends up in the mix, a banjo-driven detour inspired by Appalachian musician Doc Boggs, which Patton then drags through the mud in the best possible way. \u201cI added a lot of grit and grime,\u201d he says, aiming for something \u201cmelancholy but also a little bit menacing.\u201d In other words, exactly where you\u2019d expect him to land, even when the surroundings change.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the live show. A 30-plus song set pulling from the Avett catalog, Patton\u2019s own back pages, and a handful of covers that will likely mutate from night to night. \u201cIt could change\u2026 on a night-to-night basis,\u201d he says, which is either exciting or terrifying depending on how much you like predictability. Patton, unsurprisingly, prefers the former.<\/p>\n
It helps that he\u2019s coming into this in \u201ctouring shape,\u201d fresh off a run with Mr. Bungle, even if he describes that world as \u201ca polar opposite\u201d of what he\u2019s doing now. Different muscles, different emotional registers, same underlying instinct to keep moving forward.<\/p>\n
Which brings up the thing he\u2019s been quietly dismantling his entire career: the idea of hierarchy. \u201cI\u2019d never really understood\u2026 the concept of a side project,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s assuming there\u2019s a main one. And for me, I really never had one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything matters. Everything counts. The only difference is how the outside world chooses to label it. So this Avett-Patton record isn\u2019t a detour or an experiment or a curiosity. It\u2019s just another stop in a long line of stops that all carry the same weight, whether anyone\u2019s paying attention or not.<\/p>\n
And if it happens to confuse people along the way, all the better. \u201cIf I can make someone stop in their tracks,\u201d Patton says, \u201cthen I\u2019m a happy boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Watch the full interview above and then check out the video below.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trying to pin down Mike Patton has always been a losing game. Frontman of Faith No More, architect…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":{"0":"post-582898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}