On Better Paths

Come meet a musical misfit who crawled out of a Louisiana bayou and embarked on a journey paved by progressive rock. She headed for Istanbul and took a wrong turn somewhere around Ireland, creating delicious mayhem along the way: inventing some scandalous new traditions, coining some new words, and playing some blazing riffs with a hypnotic new sound... Beth Patterson She was born in a swamp. Okay, more accurately, she was born in a hospital near a swamp, but that's close enough to romanticize the origin of this Lafayette, Louisiana native. Described by viewers as a cross between a cobra and a puppy, multi-instrumentalist Beth Patterson is foremost a player of the eight- and ten-stringed Irish bouzoukis (adaptations of a traditional Greek instrument). Known for her razor wit and musical versatility, her performances are chock-full of drive, savage energy, and passion, laced with humor and rapport with her listeners, dishing out an eclectic repertoire of original and traditional songs. She integrates her quirky, progressive sound with Celtic music and other ethnic styles, resulting in her own sound she dubs SWAP (Songwriter/World/Acoustic/Progressive). This musical mongrel began her career in her early teens as a classical oboist and a Cajun bass player (with the required teenage heavy metal stint on the side), but not truly belonging to any of these, set out to create her own niche when she was adopted by a stray bouzouki. After moving to New Orleans, she began to play the circuit, initially intending to do the folksy thing, but accepted gigs of all types left and right because no one told her that they shouldn't be played on the bouzouki. (Not to mention that it was a sin.) So she tried on genres as though playing dress-up, snatching up influences like a crazy cat lady with felines...she couldn't bear to reject a thing. Beth later fled to Ireland, studying ethnomusicology at University College Cork, where she explored the music of Ireland, West Africa, India, Indonesia, and the Caribbean, and began to experiment with fusions of these world gems with her musical old flames. This finally rendered her with the mind of a prog rocker, the heart of a world music-lover...and let's just skip the part about her soul. So, what has this hussy actually done? Well, Ms. Patterson managed to receive a bachelor's degree in Music Therapy from Loyola University, New Orleans (qualifying her to mess with people's minds). She has released four CDs and has received widespread airplay in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan. She has appeared on over ninety recordings (including the soundtrack to the motion picture The One-Eyed King, starring William Baldwin and Armand Assante, and the nationally-charting Change of Habit by her former band The Poor Clares). She's performed in eleven countries. Over sixty of her original compositions have been recorded, either by herself or by various artists across the US, France, Ireland, and New Zealand. But she claims that she won't be satisfied until she can start her own Bethodist religion (a fellowship that one can join by purchasing one of her CDs and/or bringing a covered dish)!