Jim Patton (rhythm guitar, vocals) began playing guitar after dropping out of college when his friend Kevin Ranes taught him the three chords to “Helpless” and invited him to join his band. He’s played in bands and written songs ever since.
Patton cites 20th century American fiction (“from Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Faulkner to Kerouac and Salinger and Raymond Chandler”) and the various lives of the friends he grew up with in Maryland (“I knew doctors and lawyers and waitresses and teachers and water rats and gravediggers and the guy who drove the truck that emptied the port-o-pots all over the state”) as the main source of his lyrical inspiration.
Musically, Patton admits he learned acoustic guitar playing Bob Dylan songs,and electric guitar playing the Rolling Stones, and “that was the last time I learned anybody else’s songs but my own.”
Jim Patton & Sherry Brokus 