About me!
I am Patrick. Who are you?
I am a singer-songwriter and recording artist from Buffalo, New York and based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in addition to being an all-around pretty cool guy, I like to think.
I've been playing the piano since I looked like this, and I began teaching myself guitar, bass, and drums when I hit my teen years. Owing to my cartoonish obsession with music from the Nixon administration, I was an astoundingly popular kid. Between glamorous social engagements and cuffing my button-downs below the elbow, I spent a lot of time sitting in my attic tinkering with instruments and cables. I started recording in high school and made a boatload of terrible music before I started producing songs I was confident enough to release.
Most of my taste in music comes from my parents. Some of my earliest musical memories involve listening to a CD of The Beatles' Rubber Soul in the backseat of a Volkswagen while driving to preschool down snowy, salty Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. Those peculiar Liverpudlians permeate everything I record. Their Californian contemporary, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, is also a favorite of mine.
Other inspirations, in no particular order: Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Elliott Smith, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and sometimes Young, Radiohead, Simon and Garfunkel, David Bowie, Roberta Flack, Teenage Fanclub, Steely Dan, Talking Heads, The Smiths, Prince, Electric Light Orchestra, The Police, Peter Gabriel and Genesis, Supertramp, Todd Rundgren, Jon Brion, R.E.M., and America.
Some standout influences from after I was born are Alvvays, Weyes Blood, Tame Impala, Clairo, Daniel Caesar, The War on Drugs, Alex G, Japanese Breakfast, Arcade Fire, Mac Miller, Father John Misty, Alice Phoebe Lou, Fruit Bats, Phoebe Bridgers, Death Cab for Cutie, John Mayer Trio, Mac DeMarco, Big Thief, New Pornographers, and Mt. Joy.
Whew. If you're curious about what I'm listening to, I keep an exorbitantly granular spreadsheet.
A radio host in Pittsburgh described it as "divorced dad rock." I have never been divorced, nor am I a dad, but I do rock.
I independently write, record, and produce all of my releases. Every instrument and voice you hear (apart from a feature, once in a blue moon) is me, sitting at a desk in my bedroom with a keyboard, bass, acoustic and electric guitar, microphone, Clarett interface, and a bunch of tangled cables. I've snuck in harmonica, tambourine, kalimba, washing machine, birdsong, and more tracks you'll never notice because they're mixed so low you can hardly hear them. My DAW of choice is Logic Pro. Since 2024, I've handed off mastering to my old friend and bandmate, audio engineer Nick Ceppaglia.
I couldn't tell you why 15-year-old me decided to drop Patrick. Maybe I wanted to be Prince. All I know is it made Swain family reunions awkward. I've been told I'm a "firsty-lasty" — wherever I go, people call me "Patrick Swain," as if everyone I know is secretly in kahoots to refer to me by my government name. I didn't release an album for almost three years between Far Go and Buffalo '66, so after emerging from my creative hermitage at 21, I felt like caving to those conspirators, marooning my mononymic moniker, and owning the binominal nomenclature. That did mean having to create new pages on streaming sites and redirect the oldheads to the recent stuff and the new-gen whippersnappers to the classics, thus necessitating a central directory like this website.
Most of the time I look like this, mainly because I made 14 cents from over 10,000 Spotify streams on my first album. Bearing that in mind, instead of setting out with a song in my heart, I got two degrees in economics. But that's not important right now. I start each day with coffee and a crossword. I love exploring global cultures and languages. I've occasionally edited the Oxford comma into Wikipedia articles and I see a movie solo about once a week. I'm known to shed a tear at the sound of the bagpipes and I aspire to someday invoke the Third Amendment. When I'm not nose-deep in a recreational spreadsheet, you can find me rooting for the Buffalo Bills, reading interpretive signage, and remembering the Alamo.
Sure, why not? Music has historically been a fairly solitary affair for me, and I'm trying to rediscover the joy in music as an act of collaboration and contribution. So if you like my work or want me to be a part of yours, email me or reach out on Instagram. I probably won't sign your face, though, unless it would be really funny.