Jeff & Pat
This is one of the unnamed projects between one of my lifelong friends and myself. We started performing together during our senior year in Morris Knolls High School, and continued it into college. During senior year, we covered songs such as Billy Joel’s Prelude/Angry Young Man and The Beach Boys’ Kokomo. I also played in the pit band for the first (and only, to my knowledge) run of Life Is a Musical (LIAM), story by Jason K and music by Pat L.
Freshman year at TCNJ was certainly going to be fun, and Pat and I started it off with a bang. During our Welcome Week, 2005, we gave an impromptu performance of the Barenaked Ladies’ Brian Wilson during the “TCNJ Idol” contest held by the Asian American Association. Between the awesome improvised piano arrangement I did, along with the amazing lead vocals by Pat (I sang some backups), we walked off with the title of “TCNJ Idols.” I have since been at the 2007 and 2008 TCNJ Idol performances as a fill in performance while the judges made their decisions.
During that same year, Pat and I performed at multiple open-mic nights on campus, most sponsored by the Art Student Association at TCNJ. One of these open-mic nights received a standing ovation and an encore as we performed with our friend Scott and did a line of Ben Folds Five covers, including a surprise appearance of Van Halen’s Jump.
Winter break of freshman year, we were both invited to the Sweet Sixteen party of Tina (Uneven Ground) and we had no idea what sort of gift to give her. Pat suggested that we record a CD of cover songs and give it to her, and that started a line of CDs we would record every winter from then on. This CD consisted of one-take recordings of songs such as the Barenaked Ladies’ What a Good Boy and the Goo Goo Dolls’ Think of Me. I believe every recording from this time has been lost to the death of a hard drive.
Our school performances waned, throughout the years, but the CDs did not. The next winter, I had increased my recording equipment to include quite a few more microphones and cables, so we recorded a CD with a bunch of songs that were full band arrangements. Everything was a cover this time as well, including The Bens’ Bruised. This CD also included our first off-site recording, where we used the auditorium at our high school and the freshly tuned Kawai Full Grand Piano to record four piano acoustic covers.
In the winter of 2007, the recording equipment got augmented by a brand new laptop (MB Pro, OS X 10.5) and an increase in the sound quality of the music, as the new laptop had the capability to record stereo as well as mono, giving us two track recording, instead of one track recording. This CD included covers of matt pond pa’s People Have a Way and a return to Billy Joel’s songs with I Go to Extremes. It also marks the start of Jeff and Pat’s co-authoring of songs. It started off with a song entitled What’s True (named in 2008 just before their first TV performance). On first listen (an acoustic version, consisting only of Jeff on acoustic guitar and Pat on vocals) Pat’s mother could not believe that it was an original and not us covering a Barenaked Ladies’ song. This CD is still currently in “production” (if it can ever be found from that stupid hard drive…)
In the winter of 2008, there was an even bigger increase in recording equipment. I got a new mixing board which including a 16-in interface, allowing us to multi-track all of our songs. This CD consisted of one cover, a return to The Bens’ Bruised, and thirteen original songs. Five songs (and an acoustic version of one) were written by both Jeff and Pat, four were written by Pat, and three were written by Jeff.
In 2009, Jeff and Pat joined forces with Cat to create the one-time (at least for the name, I hope) band, The Spooning. The Spooning performed at the 2009 WTSR Battle of the Bands. They performed a combination of Cat originals, Jeff originals, Jeff and Pat originals, and cover songs, ending with a cover medley of Holiday, Never Gonna Give You Up, and Hollaback Girl. Yes, we successfully used the Internet meme of Rick-Rolling on the entire audience of approximately 75 some people. They loved it.
Pat and I are going our separate ways for the time being (mostly because we’re trying to get jobs and start living in the real world) but we currently plan to finish old projects and complete at least one new one.
- What’s True
- One Heart (acoustic)
- No Words
Song Selections coming soon!