Everyday Inspiration | Music: Patrick Bradshaw

I don’t know about you, but most of the time, while I’m scrapping or doing other creative things, I like to listen to music. It provides a sort of an everyday inspiration and can put me in a whole different frame of mind as far as energy levels or mood. There are days that I love to go back to my junior high roots of heavy metal and/or rock with Twisted Sister, Journey, Van Halen or Quiet Riot. Some days I like to listen to early 90s boy bands or groups like TLC and Boyz II Men. And then I flip to current music or even go back to stuff my mom/dad used to listen to in the early 70s. My playlists tend to be as eclectic as my scrapping.

It is easy to be inspired by popular music. But one musician that inspired me in a different sort of way this week, is a local guy named Patrick Bradshaw. I first ran across Patrick back in 2008. He was performing at a show called River & Sound Review that was held at the local library. I totally loved his quirky songs and the fact that he played the guitar and harmonica (sometimes simultaneously) and just really seemed to be having a great time. He had an album for sale that was called Alice and Other Curiosities. He’d recorded most of the songs in Seattle and talked about himself and his friends hand-drawing the album covers. I bought the CD and enjoyed listening to it.

I ran across it again a couple of weeks ago and popped it into the CD player while I was on the computer. It put a smile on my face, and I wondered if he had any other albums. I scanned the info on the CD insert and tried to find him on Facebook. He wasn’t there, and both his MySpace pages and website were down. I emailed him by chance to see if he was still making music. He wrote back and said he’d dabbled a little but hadn’t put out an album. Then, on Sunday, I found another email from him. He said that he was inspired to pull together the songs he’d been working on and put out a new album. I was totally impressed and inspired by his can-do attitude and artistic drive.

It made me think about all of those projects I’d been putting off recently. All of the writing I haven’t been doing because I think that it doesn’t really matter. All of the paintings I have that are only partially finished. All of the incomplete scrap pages stored on my hard drive because I didn’t think they were good enough. And then it made me think of the quote/saying I have on my refrigerator:

What would you do? Would you sing out loud? Would you create a piece of art? Write a poem? Skydive? Climb a mountain? Lose ten pounds? Submit something for publication? Dance? Create an album?

Here’s Patrick’s album. Take a listen. I think there may be a couple of songs that might have swear words. It is kind of mellow, and not as peppy as Alice and Other Curiosities, but I liked it. Tracks 2, 4, 5 & 7 were my faves so far.

Songs About Girls by Patrick Bradshaw

Will you be inspired to take a chance and do something creative this week??

Will you share your triumphs?