M*****

One of the key elements to Patch is the notion of the Underground. In all of my experience with live and local music, you might be the greatest band in the world, but nobody knows who you are, your shows are going to have little to no crowd. There's no scene for you. This is the hardest element to local music. How to get people to see you time after time after time within the space of a couple months.

My goal is to infiltrate the underground scene. Half of the shows we will do will not be at a traditional venue. There will be a few times when I will ask the boys to pitch in for a noise permit at public places. Free places (I've done enough research on noise ordinances and noise permits recently to outsmart the peeps picking up at 311). Party houses. Secret clubs.

One of these not-so-secret clubs is Medusa. I feel strange telling of its whereabouts, almost like saying "Scottish Play" instead of "Macbeth" while you're in a theatre space. This place is prime Patch space. It's somewhat forbidden, it's dark, it's gross, it's crawling with hipsters ripe for the picking to bang heads with visceral indie rock.

The first show Patch will perform live at will be at Schuyler's new studio space a couple blocks down from my house. It will be small, a few people will be invited. Intimate and stifling. After that, with each Live storyline, there will be a non-traditional venue serving as our performance space. I imagine some places to be parking lots, alleyways, high traffic areas showcasing the nightly jaunts of youngsters and fauxsters.

This will help garner interest in coming to traditional live venues. I'm not spilling the beans on some of the antics we'll be pulling. They will be changing from show to show. That will be half the fun of coming to each show of Patch, shows where I hope to handpick our favorite local bands for bill lineups that would compliment us and compliment them given the theme of the night. That's the ideal, anyway.

So far, what I've been throwing around is the Schematics theme, where different projects are hinted at. Schematics features demos that I hope to rerecord (or use again) that belong on future projects and storylines. "Typosgraphy" and "Switch" belong to one project, "Trachomanic" and "In Hopes to Mend" another, "LCD" on yet another. The live shows will feature these tracks and more, either from strictly live storylines, things I'm working on in the studio currently, or from larger album projects I have planned way down the line. Glimpses. Plans. Schematics to a larger plan . . .

After these, we will start to move in more experimental territory in Live 2.0, doing strictly Karmath material at one show, Omiss at another, Necrotica at another, etc. After that . . . I'm not sure exactly. Bigger stories, I'm guessing. I'm still working on Live 1.0 so I haven't thought too, too far ahead.

Scoping out Medusa last night was another positive step forward. I've got my foot in many doors, and this helps me get through the stress I've been feeling on a daily basis these last two months.

Liars -- "Grown Men Don't Fall In the River, Just Like That"