Kraut has a plaintive high-baritone voice, and he shares lead vocals or harmonizes with Barrett’s deeper, back-of-the-throat honky-tonk delivery. Barrett says the band really came together in the recording process in late 2004. As they rehearsed between sessions of listening to playbacks, “things got slower and they got quieter and they got tighter, and our voices came together.” And Kraut found creative solutions to his limitations. “Technically, I couldn’t sing ‘All That Is Tied’ the way I wanted to initially.” And what would that have sounded like? “Solomon Burke is what I was going for.”
The 11 songs on All That Is Tied were written by Kraut, rhythm guitarist Matt Borushko, or pianist Cory Bortnicker. Barrett, who had never sung before joining the band, is a sound engineer who worked extensively with Dwight Yoakam. “I just wanted to be in a band that would let me shuffle. I didn’t want to play rock music strictly. I got more than I bargained for when Jonah put that microphone in my face.”
Kraut came to the band from the New England Conservatory, where he was a jazz student and an assistant to esteemed NEC pianist and composer Ran Blake. “I started really listening to country music in my last year and a half at NEC . . . and the Patrons happened to come along around the same time.” His joining the Patrons was “never a conscious decision to move away from jazz.” But he was also feeling burned out by the jazz world’s insularity. “I would only see other jazz musicians at shows, and it didn’t seem right.” Playing country music in bars was liberating.
Kraut adds, “I’m still very in love with jazz,” and he doesn’t rule it out. He’s still also close with Blake, who recorded “All That Is Tied” and made it the title of his own most recent album; it’s the notoriously abstract pianist’s first country cover. After a period of blissful cohesion, the Patrons, meanwhile, are going through changes. Bortnicker has moved to New York, his piano chair these days usually filled by Shady Hartshorne. And bassist Matt Riley is dealing with a demanding corporate day job. But for now, the Patrons are hot. And they recall another Boston line in the tradition of “Dead Flowers” — the Fritters, the Darlings, the Wheelers & Dealers, and, way back, John Lincoln Wright and the Sour Mash Boys. Boston country is alive and well.
THE PATRONS | Tír na nóg, 366A Somerville Ave, Somerville | August 25 | 617.628.4300
