Patti Ecker: Home

I've been doing some pretty interesting gigs this summer. Yay!

To my delight, been doing a bunch with L.J. Slavin They've ranged from summer concert series all over Chi-land to marching in the Hoffman Estates 4th of July parade to playing at the Berwyn Police Station with Gus Friedlander. It's all good!

The big news, of course is that Louise Brodie and I have done one mini tour to Michigan, and are getting ready for a nice little weekend tour September 12th and 13th in Wisconsin-- first in Appleton at the Harmony Cafe and then in Mount Morris for the Black Hawk concert series.

Check the calendar page for updates!

Yay! I got a new review from Chip Withrow of The Muse's Muse online reviews.

Go to the "Raves" page and read it. It's a goodun. :D

I am pretty darn tickled! Yaaaay!

I’d like to tell you some things about the genesis of my new CD, “Gypsy Lover’s Eyes.”

Many of you know that I started playing guitar when I was about 15, but you may not know that because I wrote poetry and enjoyed singing as a child, I developed a burning desire to write songs as an adolescent. Artistic self-expression was always encouraged and nurtured in the Ecker household (Mother being a published author and Daddy being a fine singer), so as soon as I learned my first three chords, I hit the ground running.

Just like any young writer/performer, I fumbled around a lot the first few years before I found my style – or rather, styles. For the first few years, I kicked around ideas, first writing protest songs, and then the typical angst-filled singer/songwriter tunes. Sometimes I wrote songs just to get a reaction. I soon developed what Rusty (the engineer and co-producer of “Gypsy Lover’s Eyes”) calls my “Slice of Life” songs -- you know, the quirky little ones that tell a short story (usually about love) but with a little edge, and a bit of saucy humor. At NIU, I snuck backstage at a Steve Goodman concert and played him one of my first funny songs (inspired by John Hartford), called “Influenza Blues.” He liked it, and he offered to help me, but I think I just wasn’t ready yet. It was enough just to know that Steve Goodman thought that I had written a good song.

I sang and played and I wrote more songs. In 1978, I followed Sarah to South Florida, and within about a year, I was playing in bars in Fort Lauderdale. I joined the band October Road and learned how to front a band with confidence, I hung out at the Musician’s Exchange with Gaye Levine as The Ecktones, I joined Top Forty and wedding bands and I wrote some more songs. The oldest song on “Gypsy” is “Okay For You”, written that first year in South Florida, and “Indifferent Love,” “Too Close, Too Soon” and of course, “Shine” are all from that period. I spent a lot of time in recording studios, mostly singing other people’s music, but I learned a lot about the process from those sessions. I was always trying to find the perfect recording situation for myself ; great musicians and supportive fellow songwriters surrounded me. People were constantly pestering me to “get your stuff out there, dammit!” Somehow, I could never find the right musicians to play what I was hearing in my head for my songs. Besides, I had rent to pay, groceries to buy and crappy cars to keep running. And so, more years went by.

Coming back to Chicago set up a whole new set of challenges for me. Of course, I thought I would plug in my sassy South Florida style here and take the town by storm. That didn’t happen. Even with my husband Don’s help, and the friendship of another great bunch of musicians, I never felt like my songs or my eclectic style fit in here. I didn’t think anyone was listening. So I put them away for years and did kids’ shows to get my music fix. I decided that I really wasn’t much of a songwriter, after all. I didn’t write a single word for nine years.

Then something unexpected happened. As I was finishing “Prairieland”, I decided to have Rusty master the CD at his basement studio. When he was working on the song “El-A-Noy,” he looked at me and said, “That’s the kind of vocal I like to hear you do—as if you’re singing just to me.” I knew then that he was the right guy to engineer and co-produce “Gypsy.” He asked me to put down reference tracks of all the songs I thought I’d like to do, and we took some time picking the best of the best. In the meantime, I started writing again, and a couple newer songs are on “Gypsy.” “The Grace of a Song” has little hints of what the studio process is like. Almost four years after we started, and after working with seventeen musicians in the studio, we finished what amounts to my Great American Novel, “Gypsy Lover’s Eyes.” With Rusty’s help, and the help of all of the talented people who helped produce my music, I was able to make this recording sound like a cross between an intimate live concert and a movie soundtrack—everything I have dreamed about for more than thirty years.

This CD tells my story -- not necessarily the "real" me, but the best, strongest part of who I am and who I hope to be. You can hear all of the influences that have shaped my creative life over the years, and the amazing way the songs still stand up, after so much time. I am very happy with the result, and even the beautiful cover design is a bonus. I’m not sure what will happen to these songs. I am hoping to sell them on gigs,through my website and wherever I can. I will be sending them to radio stations and using them as demos. I hope you will buy one, and if you love it, I’m hoping you’ll tell other people about it.